Lost City of the Incas

Thursday, March 14th
In The Air

Inka or Inca?  Cusco or Cuzco?  Both, Neither?  In(c/k)a society was highly advanced, including a complicated three dimensional method of communication using long strands of colored string tied in knots, but they did not have a written language.  In a spelling protocol only Tres could appreciate, many authors use multiple spellings for the same word in the same document.  There is also some revisionist linguistic history going on here, a repudiation of colonial subjugation and bastardization of indigenous languages.  So, we don't know what was, is, or should be correct.

Hiram Bingham of Yale University is credited with (re)discovering Machu Picchu in 1911.  It was never really lost, exactly.  It was sparsely inhabited and the terraces were being farmed when he was guided to it by a local.  It was, however, never discovered or ransacked by the Spanish conquistadors, and thus was not a part of the historical record known by the rest of the world.  Bingham himself did not fully appreciate the significance of the find at the time.  It was not until he returned for further exploration and excavation in 1912 and 1914 that the magnitude and archeological value of the discovery became apparent.

Bingham published multiple academic papers on Machu Picchu, and was regularly published in National Geographic, which sponsored many of his expeditions.  The April, 1913 edition of the magazine was a special expanded edition devoted entirely to Machu Picchu, and included more than 250 pictures and a triple-fold-out poster.  Bingham spent the rest of his life trying to put Machu Picchu, and the discovery of it, into proper context.  Lost City of the Incas, originally published in 1952, nearly forty years after the most important day of his life, was his final attempt to do so.  It has sparked our sense of adventure, and will inform our own exploration.

This edition includes an introduction written by Hugh Thompson, an accomplished explorer himself, and provides the perspective achieved over an additional sixty years of research and understanding.  "All explorers operate in a continual mist of rumor and half-truth, and cutting through to the reality takes commitment."

This is the rainy season in Machu Picchu, so we are going to embrace the mist.

In more general terms, we are relying on Frommer's Easy Guide to Lima, Cusco, and Machu Picchu for reference and guidance.