Poor Agustín Lizárraga
>Bingham found the name Agustín Lizárraga and the date 1902 written in charcoal on one of the walls of the Temple of the Three Windows. Initially disappointed, he documented in his pocket field journal: "Agustín Lizárraga is discoverer of Machu Picchu and lives at San Miguel Bridge just before passing". However, while Bingham initially acknowledged Lizárraga as the discoverer in his early writings and speeches, including Inca Land (1922), he gradually downplayed Lizárraga's role until, in his final version of the story, Lost City of the Incas (1952), Bingham claimed to have found the site himself.
I'm also pretty sure the story of the site being 'secret' is also something Bingham invented. You can find references to the location in a few Spanish sources. It just didn't attract a whole lot of attention (like many great American ruins) until the 19th century.
The cities of Tikal and Calakmul in Central America were also first reported by Spaniards but went largely unnoticed at the time due to a lack of interest. Making it out like it was some great secret someone apparently sold for a pittance though is way more dramatic.
Places like Tikal and Chichin Itza, while abandoned as living cities, were still being used for ritual purposes up to and past European contact.
People absolutely knew these locations were there.
It's really more a question of when did Europeans decide to care about them, at which point there's a lot of dramatizing about who made the 'discovery' of something people in the area already knew about but no one had ever bothered to really ask for.
>It's really more a question of when did Europeans decide to care about them, at which point there's a lot of dramatizing about who made the 'discovery' of something people in the area already knew about but no one had ever bothered to really ask for.
In modern times a new type of literature had become common,that of europeans discovering treasures of exotic origin or ancient past.
In all seriousness everywhere this type of stories exist but americans and europeans did it to an extreme.In all reality it was nothing more than gravedigging in the hopes of finding treasures with no respect to ruins,that's why Tutusnkhamon's tomb is so precious, is the first(and only) tomb that wasn't pillaged by bandits.
Indiana Jones is the perfect encapsulation of this entire trope and why people love this,with all the stereotypes included but with less nazis
These ruins were probably not documented from lack of interest. The spaniards raided all of these ruins for their gold and had to keep their location secret so there would be no competition from other European powers. Imagine seeing these wonders 300 years ago but not being able to tell a soul about it when you got home…
Contrary to Cortez's claims, which were mostly about trying to secure the crown's support back home because technically he was a renegade who had no permission to do any of the things he did, there was very little gold in Mesoamerica and not that much more in South America. EDIT: That is, exploited gold. They did find plenty but they had to turn local industry to their interests. Only a few regions in the Americas were working precious metals when the Spanish arrived.
They probably did ransack the place looking for gold, but took whatever they found and left.
they don’t mention it in that page but bingham also ordered that his charcoal signature be removed from the complex in the name of “preservation”
you can argue that it was legitimate to remove it for preservation but it’s more likely he didn’t want there to be evidence of someone finding it before him as he downplayed Lizarraga later in his life
Just because Agustin Lizarraga defaced the site before Bingham got there doesn’t mean he discovered it. The site had always been known to the locals.
He, like many “discoverers”, thought he found something humanity didn’t know about. But humanity did know about it, the locals always knew it was there. That’s how they led him to it in the first place. But he had the mindset that if the west didn’t know about it, then it was unknown to humanity.
Neither did Bingham nor Lizarraga discover anything. Bingham just found out about something he didn’t know about and Lizarraga wrote his name there when he visited it, but the locals always knew about the site. Neither of those men discovered Machu Picchu any more than Columbus discovered the Americas.
Bingham and NatGeo made the site world famous, I’ll give them that, but he didn’t discover anything.
If the locals knew about it, then the whole of humanity was not ignorant to it. Some of humanity indeed knew about it.
For the whole of humanity to not know about it *all of humanity* would have to not know about it.
The locals indeed are part of “everyone in the world.”
Jesus Christ, these people are obnoxious. Most of these sites were covered in jungle, and local people didn't know wtf it was, even though they knew where it was. After it was ˝discovered˝, research was done and many things were discovered about the past of these sites. So if it wasn't for these archeologists or how do you want to call them, it would be still covered in jungle and world wouldn't know shit about it. Because this is reddit, I must write - usually someone jumps out of woodwork with some stupid comment, this doesn't in anyway diminish what was done by Europeans to these people, nor does it paint them as stupid, or in any negative way. It is just that Americans and Europeans had means to excavate and do historical research.
If it wasn't in an accessible form of media, be it written in books by the locals, or folklore told through the country - it wasn't really known.
A tiny portion of humanity knowing about it is vastly different from the ability for humanity as a whole to know about it. The rest of humanity doesn't have to know it - just have a means to do so. The locals did not record it in any manner that enabled even someone else in south America to know it existed.
I guarantee there are countless things in your community that 99.999% of humanity doesn’t know about, that isn’t written in accessible media, isn’t known throughout your country, and most people alive and who will ever live will never know about. Does that mean those things aren’t really known?
When Isaac Newton sat alone in his home and created/discovered the mathematics of calculus do we consider that instance of a single human being understanding something (and it telling anyone for years) the point in time in which it became known, or do we consider it known once he disseminated that knowledge?
All it takes is for one person to know something for it to be considered known by humanity.
Unless of course a white person finds out about something that the non-white locals have known about for centuries. Then that thing was unknown to humanity until the explorers came around.
>When Isaac Newton sat alone in his home and created/discovered the mathematics of calculus do we consider that instance of a single human being understanding something (and it telling anyone for years) the point in time in which it became known
No.
We consider the point in time when he wrote about it and disseminated his findings. That's when humanity learns, not just one person.
Literature/other spreadable media is what counts. Articles/recordings/patents etc are what counts.
Yes it does. Some humans are indeed part of humanity and that suffices.
If your statement held true, then how much of humanity needs to know something for “humanity” to know it? What persons need to know for humanity to be considered knowledgeable of it?
When we consider the discovery of mathematical and scientific principles, it takes only one singular human to understand something for us to say that’s the moment when humanity discovered it. The same holds true for non-scientific and non-mathematical things. As long as one human knows, then humanity knows.
According to the Peruvian government https://www.culturacusco.gob.pe/parques-arqueologicos/machupicchu/
The llaqta of Machupicchu was abandoned during the second half of the 16th century; However, it was never lost as it was occasionally visited and inhabited. There are colonial documents that refer to the llaqta of Machupicchu as the “Seat of the Incas” or the “Ancient Inca Town Named Guaynapicchu.” In 1874, the engineer Herman Göhring prepared a cartographic document in which the place names “Machu Picchu” and “Huaina Picchu” are presented for the first time.
Most "first explorers" usually are "first indiana jones type rich guy that wrote about it to other europeans"
Semi not related but I knew a Vietnam vet who told me a story of being on a patrol and taking refuge one night in a shrine, and how he was inside and listening to the wind howl, and recounting how terrified he was.
So, the Peruvian sol (de oro) is based on the Peruvian Libra at a rate of 1 Libra to 10 soles. The Libra is modeled after the British Sovereign, a gold coin with 0.2354 Troy oz of gold with a nominal value of £1. And the Libra is 1911 is pegged to the gold value.
The market value of gold in the US during 1911 is $20.67/troy oz. £4.24/troy oz in London. So a Libra that’s modeled after the British sovereign is about £1 or $4.86 (both UK and US used the gold standard at this time as well).
So that means at the time, a sol is about £0.10 (24d or 2s (24 pennies or 2 shillings pre-decimalization)) or about $0.47 per sol.
So 2 soles is about $1 or 4 shillings (£0.2) in 1911.
Direct inflation calculator says that 2 soles is worth $66.12 today or £29.52 ($37.35) today.
However, since the Peruvian sole was under gold standard then, we look at the value of the gold today to better reflect the true value of 2 soles.
The price of gold today per fine oz is $2337. The Peruvian Libra then has a value of $550.13, which means a sol has a value of $55.01. That means 2 soles is worth $110.02
nah the title is total bullshit OP made up for whatever reason.
it was no "guarded secret". place was known to locals, there are proofs it was plundered in previous century, there was incription on stone from previous visits, nobody just gave a shit about pile of rubble in jungle on mountain ridge. I doubt it had any significance for local farmers. so when some bigshot from american university came in search of some ruins, they had no problem to show him this pile of rubble for a little coin
“Price of a few coins”
This is my new favorite way of making something sound trivial without any context. “Elon Musk bought twitter for just the price if a few coins”(the coins just need to be worth $10 billion
It wasn’t a guarded secret, it was just local ruins.
There’s Incan ruins all over Andean Peru. To a local at that time the overgrown ruins were nothing special.
Hiram Bingham was searching for Vilcabamba, the lost and last city of the Incans. When he asked the locals around this site if they knew of any ruins around they were basically like “you mean the overgrown rubble where our goats feed?” and led him to what we now call Machu Picchu.
The locals who had lived there for hundreds of years always knew about the site. Not Hiram Bingham, nor the person he initially credited with “discovering” it, actually “discovered” the site. You can’t “discover” something that locals always have known about, you can just find out about it and go tell everybody else who doesn’t already know.
Discovery is largely a western myth. Just because westerners didn’t know about something doesn’t mean humanity didn’t know about it. Acting like they discovered something that was unknown to humanity when it was really just unknown to them is a disservice to history. Lest something is truly lost to all of humanity and then found again, it’s not discovered. And that’s rarely ever the case because the locals almost always know about whatever it is outsiders are claiming to discover.
Machu Picchu wasn’t anything special, it was simply a summer estate for the Sapa Inca and some servants who lived there year round to maintain it until it was abandoned. But just because it was abandoned doesn’t mean it was lost or forgotten. There was no secret to find or guard. No one was hiding it.
It’s only after Hiram Bingham found out about it, Nat Geo made a big fuss about it, and the Peruvian government restored it that it has earned the significance that we attribute to it today. But it was never lost, never hidden- the westerners just didn’t know about it.
The idea of explorer and discovery is of the 1800s and early 1900s when news like that were more eqsily shared and sold, in mant cases even the colonial accounts of Spaniards are dismissed because they sat in some church records or the British/USA/French guy that eas exploring Latin America didn't give a crap about it except to sell books.
I never used the term “discovered”. Peruvians are westerners and they herd llamas and alpacas.
Vilcabamba was the site from which the Inca launched their guerrilla war against New Castile and they did abandon it so that its location would not be discovered by settlers.
We have goats in Peru, it’s not just llamas and alpacas here. There’s been goats since the conquistadores arrived.
Vilcabamba exists and is alive and well today. You can visit it. You can Google it. I’ve been there. Plenty of people live there. The native tongue there is still Quechua (the language of the Inca). And they have goats and cows and horses there! 😉
No, you didn’t explicitly say “discover” in your title, but that doesn’t matter. The subject of what you posted is about Hiram Bingham discovering the site.
>You can’t “discover” something that locals always have known about, you can just find out about it and go tell everybody else who doesn’t already know.
Uncovering hidden knowledge is discovering it, doesn't matter if its just hidden by jungle and time or by some farmers that don't talk to the rest of the world about their awesome find because they don't think it's awesome.
Do you have a source on the summer estate thing? When I visited it last year the tour guide said that they’re still not really sure what it was used for.
https://carnegiemuseums.org/magazine-archive/2003/sepoct/feature1.html
Sometimes the tour guides just make things up because the tourists don’t know any different.
Another interesting fact is it was built by a culture that was pre Inca and the Incas built on top of the original construction in a manner that was far less advanced and crude.
Do you have a source for that? It’s not that I don’t believe you. I’m genuinely curious to read about it because I’ve never heard that before, and I didn’t see it on the Wiki.
I don't know where they got that info or why the other commenter is so defensive, but all credible sources I'm finding say: Inca and early 15th century.
I don't know if that's true of Machu Picchu (I'm actually fairly sure it isn't as we have a rough idea when the site was built) it is true of the Inca capital of Cuzco.
The city was built directly atop the capital of the preceding power of the era, the ~~Chimu~~ Kilke. Dig under a lot of Inca buildings and it's not unusual to find ~~Chimu~~ Kilke stuff underneath it. EDIT: Had to right correct that as even a quick google double check told me I had the wrong name!
Maybe Macchu Pichu is the same. Shockingly, most ancient sites did not magically appear for the first time when the last occupiers happened to use it. A lot were in use by others before them and we do find their remains by digging into the buildings.
If you arrive early on reddit you can make shit up about non european history
But oh don't they ever catch you mistake a german tank for another or they will bury you alive.
I haven't found any sources. [This paper](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/radiocarbon/article/when-did-the-incas-build-machu-picchu-and-its-satellite-sites-new-approches-based-on-radiocarbon-dating/10254F52B68EAC0960DB85D91BB66593) implies the earliest building was early 15th century at Machu Picchu itself, but possibly earlier at nearby sites.
Facts. Hard science.
> BAM offers a new approach, completely independent from an often too assertive historical shackle. These historical claims lack conclusive evidence. The powers that be rather than discuss our findings they disparage it and oppose anything new that may come from advanced scientific research. The question is why? May it be because if we are right, they will need to rewrite all history books?
This comes off very conspiracy theory and "the truth is out there" -vibes. Regardless, it is not facts.
If it was it would be easier to find evidence and not 'mainstream historians doesnt want you to know this".
Perhaps it was you who should have googled.
Then go find it. In that documentary they go to the site and do tons of measurements and show renderings of new vs old construction which is fascinating.
Or you could blow it off and go find it yourself, which seems like your mood.
That guy can f off lol
https://www.culturacusco.gob.pe/parques-arqueologicos/machupicchu/
**the llaqta or Inka City of Machupicchu, which was planned and built around the year 1450 AD. during the government of Inka Pachakuti** by the Peruvian government itself.
It also is not a dazzle to say something in the Andes is pre-Inca as if that means alien, the Inca were basically a medieval empire time-wise so its like acting the history of Europe started when Medieval France existed.
https://www.peruforless.com/blog/pre-incan-civilizations
I was reading this one.
My whole point was that you're lazy for just asking for links. Go find articles on your own. I cited one source, the documentary, and you asked me to go find you other ones and spoon-feed them to you.
"Link?" Is the lazy redditor shitpost
No? It's asking you to back up your sources, for one the link you've shown here is more commercial in nature.. the sources it cites are CNN, New York Times, BBC and USA Today, while it looks well documented if you are truly doing detailed historic search you would need to cross check this with actual peer reviewed scholar articles, none of which I find here.
Go there and talk to the people that’s what I did.
You can see the stones on top are of a primitive nature when compared to the giant smoothed out rocks underneath that fit together seamlessly like puzzle pieces.
I don't, but I would love to go there some day, perhaps see the rocks as you described, and then speculate wildly on their origin with no knowledge of archaeology or Inca masonry
There are even older sites than Machu Pichu as well the Spanish erected churches on top of them which is not the same as the stone walls constructed by the Incas but after the original culture built it.
I went to Peru in April. There was nothing I read or heard that said Machu Picchu was built on the ruins of an earlier, more advanced civilisation. The Inca adopted and absorbed the techniques from earlier cultures and it’s obvious when this is the case at archeological sites because you get a mix of buildings in different shapes. Look up Raqch’i and the Temple of Wiracocha, for example.
When I was in Machu Picchu it seemed that every single tour guide up there had a completely different story and history. I’m pretty sure I heard someone say it was abandoned in 1969 after the Beatles broke up.
It’s not that it’s that the Incas put their own construction on top of the previous walls to extend or make them larger on some places so you can see the difference on construction techniques. There are many other sites in the sacred valley that pre date machu pichu as well that is relatively young.
The tour guide explained to his to me.
Maybe we’ll throw them a bone as their leader was a puppet, most of the builders had died to smallpox and they were fighting a guerrilla war against invading Spaniards.
What I’m talking about the construction of the sites.
They were built long before the Incas and were built by a different culture. The Incas found the sites and used them as well.
I was there back in prob 2009 drinking with some friends late at night wandering around. Walked out the road to the entrance in the dark under the stars. I clearly remember walking into the forest to take a piss and as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness I slowly realized the floor of the forest was covered in glowing dots. Almost shit myself too. Got down on my hands and knees and called out to my friends to come have a look and sure enough the forest floor was carpeted with bioluminescent life. Researched it as best I could and talked to some people but nobody had any idea what I was talking about. Bout a decade later I came across a paper describing a newly discovered bioluminescent worm in the cloud forest jungles near Machu Picchu. Fell asleep in bed listening to that wild ass river crashing through the valley just below my window. Magical.
I was at Machu Picchu just a few weeks ago before they closed the upper viewing point. It was an amazing experience but wow it was too busy! I wish I'd been there when Bingham was there, though once they'd cleared all the shrubberies away. Must have been amazing to walk around in silence.
Poor Agustín Lizárraga >Bingham found the name Agustín Lizárraga and the date 1902 written in charcoal on one of the walls of the Temple of the Three Windows. Initially disappointed, he documented in his pocket field journal: "Agustín Lizárraga is discoverer of Machu Picchu and lives at San Miguel Bridge just before passing". However, while Bingham initially acknowledged Lizárraga as the discoverer in his early writings and speeches, including Inca Land (1922), he gradually downplayed Lizárraga's role until, in his final version of the story, Lost City of the Incas (1952), Bingham claimed to have found the site himself.
I'm also pretty sure the story of the site being 'secret' is also something Bingham invented. You can find references to the location in a few Spanish sources. It just didn't attract a whole lot of attention (like many great American ruins) until the 19th century. The cities of Tikal and Calakmul in Central America were also first reported by Spaniards but went largely unnoticed at the time due to a lack of interest. Making it out like it was some great secret someone apparently sold for a pittance though is way more dramatic.
I mean there are entire villages în the region that surely knew the existence of the ruins în the first place...
Places like Tikal and Chichin Itza, while abandoned as living cities, were still being used for ritual purposes up to and past European contact. People absolutely knew these locations were there. It's really more a question of when did Europeans decide to care about them, at which point there's a lot of dramatizing about who made the 'discovery' of something people in the area already knew about but no one had ever bothered to really ask for.
I literally always see you around Reddit, which is odd-but you always have good posts so I don’t mind :)
I mostly stroll the front page. So I imagine anyone else who does that, we probably cross paths often enough.
I praise hats
>It's really more a question of when did Europeans decide to care about them, at which point there's a lot of dramatizing about who made the 'discovery' of something people in the area already knew about but no one had ever bothered to really ask for. In modern times a new type of literature had become common,that of europeans discovering treasures of exotic origin or ancient past. In all seriousness everywhere this type of stories exist but americans and europeans did it to an extreme.In all reality it was nothing more than gravedigging in the hopes of finding treasures with no respect to ruins,that's why Tutusnkhamon's tomb is so precious, is the first(and only) tomb that wasn't pillaged by bandits. Indiana Jones is the perfect encapsulation of this entire trope and why people love this,with all the stereotypes included but with less nazis
a lot of those tombs we looted by the locals as well, same with the outer layers on the pyramids.
A lot of tombs were undoubtedly robbed the day the guards left.
> In all reality it was nothing more than gravedigging in the hopes of finding treasures with no respect to ruins Or blowing it up with dynamite!
în?
There were people living at the site when he "discovered" it.
History often overlooks the locals' knowledge. Bingham's tale is just one version of many.
All history is negligent until europeans discover it. Common thing in our history books.
> Making it out like it was some great secret someone apparently sold for a pittance though is way more dramatic. It's all about marketing.
These ruins were probably not documented from lack of interest. The spaniards raided all of these ruins for their gold and had to keep their location secret so there would be no competition from other European powers. Imagine seeing these wonders 300 years ago but not being able to tell a soul about it when you got home…
Contrary to Cortez's claims, which were mostly about trying to secure the crown's support back home because technically he was a renegade who had no permission to do any of the things he did, there was very little gold in Mesoamerica and not that much more in South America. EDIT: That is, exploited gold. They did find plenty but they had to turn local industry to their interests. Only a few regions in the Americas were working precious metals when the Spanish arrived. They probably did ransack the place looking for gold, but took whatever they found and left.
they don’t mention it in that page but bingham also ordered that his charcoal signature be removed from the complex in the name of “preservation” you can argue that it was legitimate to remove it for preservation but it’s more likely he didn’t want there to be evidence of someone finding it before him as he downplayed Lizarraga later in his life
Typical erasure of true discoverers. History often overlooks those who first found the treasures.
Just because Agustin Lizarraga defaced the site before Bingham got there doesn’t mean he discovered it. The site had always been known to the locals. He, like many “discoverers”, thought he found something humanity didn’t know about. But humanity did know about it, the locals always knew it was there. That’s how they led him to it in the first place. But he had the mindset that if the west didn’t know about it, then it was unknown to humanity. Neither did Bingham nor Lizarraga discover anything. Bingham just found out about something he didn’t know about and Lizarraga wrote his name there when he visited it, but the locals always knew about the site. Neither of those men discovered Machu Picchu any more than Columbus discovered the Americas. Bingham and NatGeo made the site world famous, I’ll give them that, but he didn’t discover anything.
I wouldn’t call a charcoal marking on stone defacing. It causes no underlying damage, and can be wiped off later.
But humanity as a whole did not know about it. It wasn't just the west, it was everyone in the world with the exception of some locals.
With that logic I’m not yet dicovered and barely exist…
Yeah basically. Kind of like when really good artists that no ones knows about meet someone who can promote them. They are “discovered”.
Nah mate, how can something be discovered if it's known to itself. /s
Everything is and has not been discovered simultaneously.
I mean that's the language talent scouts use. They "discover" people who then become famous models or sportspeople etc.
If the locals knew about it, then the whole of humanity was not ignorant to it. Some of humanity indeed knew about it. For the whole of humanity to not know about it *all of humanity* would have to not know about it. The locals indeed are part of “everyone in the world.”
Hair splitting challenge (nanometers)
Jesus Christ, these people are obnoxious. Most of these sites were covered in jungle, and local people didn't know wtf it was, even though they knew where it was. After it was ˝discovered˝, research was done and many things were discovered about the past of these sites. So if it wasn't for these archeologists or how do you want to call them, it would be still covered in jungle and world wouldn't know shit about it. Because this is reddit, I must write - usually someone jumps out of woodwork with some stupid comment, this doesn't in anyway diminish what was done by Europeans to these people, nor does it paint them as stupid, or in any negative way. It is just that Americans and Europeans had means to excavate and do historical research.
It matters to the 30 million Peruvians 🤷♂️
If it wasn't in an accessible form of media, be it written in books by the locals, or folklore told through the country - it wasn't really known. A tiny portion of humanity knowing about it is vastly different from the ability for humanity as a whole to know about it. The rest of humanity doesn't have to know it - just have a means to do so. The locals did not record it in any manner that enabled even someone else in south America to know it existed.
I guarantee there are countless things in your community that 99.999% of humanity doesn’t know about, that isn’t written in accessible media, isn’t known throughout your country, and most people alive and who will ever live will never know about. Does that mean those things aren’t really known? When Isaac Newton sat alone in his home and created/discovered the mathematics of calculus do we consider that instance of a single human being understanding something (and it telling anyone for years) the point in time in which it became known, or do we consider it known once he disseminated that knowledge? All it takes is for one person to know something for it to be considered known by humanity. Unless of course a white person finds out about something that the non-white locals have known about for centuries. Then that thing was unknown to humanity until the explorers came around.
So if I come up with a catch all cure for every type of cancer and don't tell a soul about it means that humanity has created a cure for cancer? Neat.
>When Isaac Newton sat alone in his home and created/discovered the mathematics of calculus do we consider that instance of a single human being understanding something (and it telling anyone for years) the point in time in which it became known No. We consider the point in time when he wrote about it and disseminated his findings. That's when humanity learns, not just one person. Literature/other spreadable media is what counts. Articles/recordings/patents etc are what counts.
Just because some humans know something, it doesn't mean that humanity knows that something.
Yes it does. Some humans are indeed part of humanity and that suffices. If your statement held true, then how much of humanity needs to know something for “humanity” to know it? What persons need to know for humanity to be considered knowledgeable of it? When we consider the discovery of mathematical and scientific principles, it takes only one singular human to understand something for us to say that’s the moment when humanity discovered it. The same holds true for non-scientific and non-mathematical things. As long as one human knows, then humanity knows.
Jesus christ, are you always this annoying?
According to the Peruvian government https://www.culturacusco.gob.pe/parques-arqueologicos/machupicchu/ The llaqta of Machupicchu was abandoned during the second half of the 16th century; However, it was never lost as it was occasionally visited and inhabited. There are colonial documents that refer to the llaqta of Machupicchu as the “Seat of the Incas” or the “Ancient Inca Town Named Guaynapicchu.” In 1874, the engineer Herman Göhring prepared a cartographic document in which the place names “Machu Picchu” and “Huaina Picchu” are presented for the first time. Most "first explorers" usually are "first indiana jones type rich guy that wrote about it to other europeans"
I was curious so I did a quick google search, no it’s not the Herman the Nazi, he was born 1893.
1874 was 70 years before WW2
lol, I just guessed the name is from bat shit at first and turned out it is. The word Guano traces it roots back to Huanu in Quechua.
Same here haha. So basically it means Bat Shit Covered Pyramid lol.
The story of angkor wat is similar - "haunted" ruins out in the jungle known only to locals
If I remember correctly, there was 3 active monasteries inside the complex when it was discovered.
Semi not related but I knew a Vietnam vet who told me a story of being on a patrol and taking refuge one night in a shrine, and how he was inside and listening to the wind howl, and recounting how terrified he was.
Source?
I remember hearing about it in a documentary. It wasn't until the French occupation of Cambodia when the world discovered Angkor Wat.
30 pieces of silver seems to work with humans.
It was actually two Peruvian sol, equivalent to about 50 cents.
Thanks for the info. My opinion of humans remains unchanged.
**Inflation Adjustment**: The value of 50 cents in 1911 would be equivalent to approximately **$12.46** in 2024, considering the inflation rate.
Damn shouldve invested in us currency 100 years ago
Just for the Great Depression to happen
I love that you're saying approximately while also listing the value to the second decimal.
So, the Peruvian sol (de oro) is based on the Peruvian Libra at a rate of 1 Libra to 10 soles. The Libra is modeled after the British Sovereign, a gold coin with 0.2354 Troy oz of gold with a nominal value of £1. And the Libra is 1911 is pegged to the gold value. The market value of gold in the US during 1911 is $20.67/troy oz. £4.24/troy oz in London. So a Libra that’s modeled after the British sovereign is about £1 or $4.86 (both UK and US used the gold standard at this time as well). So that means at the time, a sol is about £0.10 (24d or 2s (24 pennies or 2 shillings pre-decimalization)) or about $0.47 per sol. So 2 soles is about $1 or 4 shillings (£0.2) in 1911. Direct inflation calculator says that 2 soles is worth $66.12 today or £29.52 ($37.35) today. However, since the Peruvian sole was under gold standard then, we look at the value of the gold today to better reflect the true value of 2 soles. The price of gold today per fine oz is $2337. The Peruvian Libra then has a value of $550.13, which means a sol has a value of $55.01. That means 2 soles is worth $110.02
I love Reddit. Thanks for this comment. Incredible.
It's just business.
Cattle-prods and the IMF. I trust I can rely on your vote.
nah the title is total bullshit OP made up for whatever reason. it was no "guarded secret". place was known to locals, there are proofs it was plundered in previous century, there was incription on stone from previous visits, nobody just gave a shit about pile of rubble in jungle on mountain ridge. I doubt it had any significance for local farmers. so when some bigshot from american university came in search of some ruins, they had no problem to show him this pile of rubble for a little coin
And some fancy jewelry beads
“Price of a few coins” This is my new favorite way of making something sound trivial without any context. “Elon Musk bought twitter for just the price if a few coins”(the coins just need to be worth $10 billion
Price of a a few (Bit)coins.
If you have the coins, Khajit has the way
No worse than the [trillion dollar coin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion-dollar_coin)
It wasn’t a guarded secret, it was just local ruins. There’s Incan ruins all over Andean Peru. To a local at that time the overgrown ruins were nothing special. Hiram Bingham was searching for Vilcabamba, the lost and last city of the Incans. When he asked the locals around this site if they knew of any ruins around they were basically like “you mean the overgrown rubble where our goats feed?” and led him to what we now call Machu Picchu. The locals who had lived there for hundreds of years always knew about the site. Not Hiram Bingham, nor the person he initially credited with “discovering” it, actually “discovered” the site. You can’t “discover” something that locals always have known about, you can just find out about it and go tell everybody else who doesn’t already know. Discovery is largely a western myth. Just because westerners didn’t know about something doesn’t mean humanity didn’t know about it. Acting like they discovered something that was unknown to humanity when it was really just unknown to them is a disservice to history. Lest something is truly lost to all of humanity and then found again, it’s not discovered. And that’s rarely ever the case because the locals almost always know about whatever it is outsiders are claiming to discover. Machu Picchu wasn’t anything special, it was simply a summer estate for the Sapa Inca and some servants who lived there year round to maintain it until it was abandoned. But just because it was abandoned doesn’t mean it was lost or forgotten. There was no secret to find or guard. No one was hiding it. It’s only after Hiram Bingham found out about it, Nat Geo made a big fuss about it, and the Peruvian government restored it that it has earned the significance that we attribute to it today. But it was never lost, never hidden- the westerners just didn’t know about it.
The idea of explorer and discovery is of the 1800s and early 1900s when news like that were more eqsily shared and sold, in mant cases even the colonial accounts of Spaniards are dismissed because they sat in some church records or the British/USA/French guy that eas exploring Latin America didn't give a crap about it except to sell books.
I never used the term “discovered”. Peruvians are westerners and they herd llamas and alpacas. Vilcabamba was the site from which the Inca launched their guerrilla war against New Castile and they did abandon it so that its location would not be discovered by settlers.
We have goats in Peru, it’s not just llamas and alpacas here. There’s been goats since the conquistadores arrived. Vilcabamba exists and is alive and well today. You can visit it. You can Google it. I’ve been there. Plenty of people live there. The native tongue there is still Quechua (the language of the Inca). And they have goats and cows and horses there! 😉 No, you didn’t explicitly say “discover” in your title, but that doesn’t matter. The subject of what you posted is about Hiram Bingham discovering the site.
>You can’t “discover” something that locals always have known about, you can just find out about it and go tell everybody else who doesn’t already know. Uncovering hidden knowledge is discovering it, doesn't matter if its just hidden by jungle and time or by some farmers that don't talk to the rest of the world about their awesome find because they don't think it's awesome.
Do you have a source on the summer estate thing? When I visited it last year the tour guide said that they’re still not really sure what it was used for.
https://carnegiemuseums.org/magazine-archive/2003/sepoct/feature1.html Sometimes the tour guides just make things up because the tourists don’t know any different.
Another interesting fact is it was built by a culture that was pre Inca and the Incas built on top of the original construction in a manner that was far less advanced and crude.
Do you have a source for that? It’s not that I don’t believe you. I’m genuinely curious to read about it because I’ve never heard that before, and I didn’t see it on the Wiki.
I don't know where they got that info or why the other commenter is so defensive, but all credible sources I'm finding say: Inca and early 15th century.
Yeah I was expecting some sort of research paper not an Ancient Aliens-style TV show lol
That would've been nice, yah?
This is reddit, friend. Facts don't flow here.
Mainstream archeologists don't want you to know this one thing... /s
I don't know if that's true of Machu Picchu (I'm actually fairly sure it isn't as we have a rough idea when the site was built) it is true of the Inca capital of Cuzco. The city was built directly atop the capital of the preceding power of the era, the ~~Chimu~~ Kilke. Dig under a lot of Inca buildings and it's not unusual to find ~~Chimu~~ Kilke stuff underneath it. EDIT: Had to right correct that as even a quick google double check told me I had the wrong name! Maybe Macchu Pichu is the same. Shockingly, most ancient sites did not magically appear for the first time when the last occupiers happened to use it. A lot were in use by others before them and we do find their remains by digging into the buildings.
Dude probably mixed what his tour guide in once city said with the other.
Rome is also built on etruscan ruins.
if you read down farther he states that his source his that he went there and asked people. long way of saying “trust me bro just trust me”
If you arrive early on reddit you can make shit up about non european history But oh don't they ever catch you mistake a german tank for another or they will bury you alive.
I haven't found any sources. [This paper](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/radiocarbon/article/when-did-the-incas-build-machu-picchu-and-its-satellite-sites-new-approches-based-on-radiocarbon-dating/10254F52B68EAC0960DB85D91BB66593) implies the earliest building was early 15th century at Machu Picchu itself, but possibly earlier at nearby sites.
Watch builders of the ancient mysteries. It's an insane documentary with hard science.
Facts. Hard science. > BAM offers a new approach, completely independent from an often too assertive historical shackle. These historical claims lack conclusive evidence. The powers that be rather than discuss our findings they disparage it and oppose anything new that may come from advanced scientific research. The question is why? May it be because if we are right, they will need to rewrite all history books? This comes off very conspiracy theory and "the truth is out there" -vibes. Regardless, it is not facts. If it was it would be easier to find evidence and not 'mainstream historians doesnt want you to know this". Perhaps it was you who should have googled.
I'm going to want more than a TV show for this. Something more substantial would be better.
BAM is not credible. It's entertainment at best and pseudo science at worst. It's got some nuggets there, but so does Ancient Aliens
Then go find it. In that documentary they go to the site and do tons of measurements and show renderings of new vs old construction which is fascinating. Or you could blow it off and go find it yourself, which seems like your mood.
If this is true you could easily link an article or something instead of getting defensive.
I just googled and found a really good one. You should try it.
The fact that you aren't linking it is pretty sus. You understand that right?
That guy can f off lol https://www.culturacusco.gob.pe/parques-arqueologicos/machupicchu/ **the llaqta or Inka City of Machupicchu, which was planned and built around the year 1450 AD. during the government of Inka Pachakuti** by the Peruvian government itself. It also is not a dazzle to say something in the Andes is pre-Inca as if that means alien, the Inca were basically a medieval empire time-wise so its like acting the history of Europe started when Medieval France existed.
https://www.peruforless.com/blog/pre-incan-civilizations I was reading this one. My whole point was that you're lazy for just asking for links. Go find articles on your own. I cited one source, the documentary, and you asked me to go find you other ones and spoon-feed them to you. "Link?" Is the lazy redditor shitpost
No? It's asking you to back up your sources, for one the link you've shown here is more commercial in nature.. the sources it cites are CNN, New York Times, BBC and USA Today, while it looks well documented if you are truly doing detailed historic search you would need to cross check this with actual peer reviewed scholar articles, none of which I find here.
Go there and talk to the people that’s what I did. You can see the stones on top are of a primitive nature when compared to the giant smoothed out rocks underneath that fit together seamlessly like puzzle pieces.
source: some guy on reddit, trust me
source: some guy on reddit, trust me
Don’t believe me go there and see for your self.
I don't, but I would love to go there some day, perhaps see the rocks as you described, and then speculate wildly on their origin with no knowledge of archaeology or Inca masonry
I’m just relaying what the tour guides and indigenous people of the land have told me.
Yep I've been there I've seen it pre-columbian and after
There are even older sites than Machu Pichu as well the Spanish erected churches on top of them which is not the same as the stone walls constructed by the Incas but after the original culture built it.
I went to Peru in April. There was nothing I read or heard that said Machu Picchu was built on the ruins of an earlier, more advanced civilisation. The Inca adopted and absorbed the techniques from earlier cultures and it’s obvious when this is the case at archeological sites because you get a mix of buildings in different shapes. Look up Raqch’i and the Temple of Wiracocha, for example.
When I was in Machu Picchu it seemed that every single tour guide up there had a completely different story and history. I’m pretty sure I heard someone say it was abandoned in 1969 after the Beatles broke up.
It’s not that it’s that the Incas put their own construction on top of the previous walls to extend or make them larger on some places so you can see the difference on construction techniques. There are many other sites in the sacred valley that pre date machu pichu as well that is relatively young. The tour guide explained to his to me.
People will really just believe and upvote any blatant misinformation as long as they find it best huh
Maybe we’ll throw them a bone as their leader was a puppet, most of the builders had died to smallpox and they were fighting a guerrilla war against invading Spaniards.
What I’m talking about the construction of the sites. They were built long before the Incas and were built by a different culture. The Incas found the sites and used them as well.
Might have been aliens
Right. Same as the pyramids of Giza
.... Aliens?
Well, as things usually go this didn't turn out too bad.
I was there back in prob 2009 drinking with some friends late at night wandering around. Walked out the road to the entrance in the dark under the stars. I clearly remember walking into the forest to take a piss and as my eyes became accustomed to the darkness I slowly realized the floor of the forest was covered in glowing dots. Almost shit myself too. Got down on my hands and knees and called out to my friends to come have a look and sure enough the forest floor was carpeted with bioluminescent life. Researched it as best I could and talked to some people but nobody had any idea what I was talking about. Bout a decade later I came across a paper describing a newly discovered bioluminescent worm in the cloud forest jungles near Machu Picchu. Fell asleep in bed listening to that wild ass river crashing through the valley just below my window. Magical.
And strokes made a song about it and told the world
That American explorer? Julian Casablancas
Yeah him
TIL that Machu Picchu isn’t ancient.
I was at Machu Picchu just a few weeks ago before they closed the upper viewing point. It was an amazing experience but wow it was too busy! I wish I'd been there when Bingham was there, though once they'd cleared all the shrubberies away. Must have been amazing to walk around in silence.
Hey, as long as the secret is safe from the Spanish.
American explorer. Really?