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Related: About this forumWhat Hiram Bingham Got Wrong About Machu Picchu
What Hiram Bingham Got Wrong About Machu Picchu
Lily Rothman @lilyrothman
July 24, 2015
The explorer had first reached the ancient Incan city on July 24, 1911
Until the archeologist Hiram Bingham came across it on this day, July 24, in 1911, most of the world thought the ancient Incan city of Machu Picchu was lost, as was their capital Vilcabamba. As TIME reported in 1948, when Bingham returned to Peru to celebrate the opening of a road to the site, which would bear his name, he began by studying old charts and texts, until he was sure that there was an Incan capital city somewhere in the Andes that had never been found by the Spanish invaders. He got a key tip from a local muleteer and, upon climbing Machu Picchu peak, found the lost city hidden under vines.
Of course, the very fact that the muleteer had the tip to offer means that Machu Picchu was never completely lost in the first place. It was just ignored by all but the locals who lived their lives around the site. Shortly after Binghams death, when a plaque was dedicated to him at the site, the magazine had cause to revisit the tale:
More:Some experts believe that parts of the city, which Bingham named Machu Picchu (Old Peak), are 60 centuries old, which would make it 1,000 years older than ancient Babylon. More recently, if its ruins are interpreted correctly, it was at once an impregnable fortress and a majestic royal capital of an exiled civilization.
Built on a saddle between two peaks, Machu Picchu is surrounded by a granite wall, can be entered only by one main gate. Inside is a maze of a thousand ruined houses, temples, palaces, and staircases, all hewn from white granite and dominated by a great granite sundial. In Quechua, language of the sun-worshipping Incas and their present-day descendants, the dial was known as Intihuatanahitching post of the sun.
http://time.com/3962462/machu-picchu-hiram-bingham/
(13 excellent photos at the end of the article.)
Judi Lynn
(160,656 posts)You will appreciate this amazing post by DUer Coyotl. Please do carefully check the fantastic links. They are unforgettable:
Shooting the Highest-Resolution Photo Ever Made of Machu Picchu
Here are a couple of videos by Cremer and Destin of Smarter Every Day, who accompanied Cremer on the trip (the first video offers a more technical look):
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http://www.democraticunderground.com/1229611