Customer Reviews

Machu Picchu: Unveiling the Mystery of the Incas

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This book is a companion volume to the largest exhibition of Inca artifacts in the US. A complete overhaul of previous scientific investigations was done using the most modern equipment and techniques of contemporary archaeology. Although it builds on the work of Hiram Bingham, some of Bingham's conclusions were wrong, and are corrected here. The quality of the book itself, which includes many color photographs including a catalogue of all the pieces in the exhibit, is first-rate. Those new to Machu Picchu and the Inca, or those with an in-depth knowledge of the subject will find something of value in this book. I found the chapter on the contemporary significance of Machu Picchu to be particularly interesting.

However, the authors describe Machu Picchu as a 'summer palace', likening it to Camp David. Anyone who has been there and/or seriously investigated the spiritual practices of the Inca and the the wide-ranging impact of those practices (even to the present day), will understand that this was a place of the highest spirituality, not a place of recreation for the royalty.

This book is a must for anyone specifically interested in the detail of Incan culture, but perhaps is not for those wanting a more general guide to Machu Picchu itself.

I found the main text of interest from an academic point of view but not especially earth shattering. The photographs of the site were fairly average, though those reproduced from Binghams early investigations were of interest from an historical point of view to see how much restoration had taken place - in many cases suprisingly little.

It is certainly not a guide book to the site.

Those wanting a well illustrated guide book to Machu Picchu would be better directed buying 'The Machu Picchu Guidebook: A Self-Guided Tour by Ruth M. Wright, Alfredo Valencia Zegarra, and Alfredo Valencia Zegarra' or reading the appropriate chapter in John Hemmings 'Monuments of the Inca'.

Where this volume really does come into its own in my opinion is in its catalogue. This is largely of artifacts collected by the Bingham expeditions to Machu Picchu, supplemented by other pieces from other sites. The photography is excellent, as are the descriptions. Together they provide the reader with a rich appreciation of Incan world, especially that at Machu Picchu. It is very rare to find such a focused study of Incan material so this volume is a very valuable and unusual addition, to anyone seriously interested in the Inca for that reason alone it is a 'must-buy'.

Regards, Dave Essery www.ancientdave.com

Having recently visited Machu Picchu via the Inca Trail I wanted to obtain a first-rate "coffee-table" style book to commemorate my experience and to render handy various names for various sights I saw along the way. When in Peru I saw several marvelous, fat volumes which contained all the information, photgraphs and poetic insight about the awesome Inca people and their accomplishments that I would ever desire. I figured I could score one off of Amazon once I returned home.

Alas, I saw none of those titles listed as currently available. This book appeared to be the best available, but it falls way short of those that I had seen in Peruvian bookstores. Slender, with only a handful of small color photos, and several older, blurry photos taken by or of Bingham (all of which I've seen countless times before), this book was really close to being sent right back to Amazon. However, there is a section in the back which contains some nice photos of various Inca artifacts which (coupled with the hassle of sending stuff back) inspired me to keep the book. I learned the sharp, bronze item I bought in Cusco is called a "knife." (I'd been incorrectly calling it a "ceremonial knife-like thing with which I think they sacrificed alpacas.")

Anyway, don't be too impressed by the publisher, "Yale Press." The name perhaps sounds compelling, but scrounge around at your local used bookstore and I'm sure you can do way better for your library.

Burger and Salazar produced Machu Picchu: Unveiling the Mysteries of the Incas as a companion piece to a museum exhibit. It contains some valuable history of the Bingham's early hypothesis formation, original photos of the site before it was fully cleared, and a catalog of the pieces brought back to Yale by the early explorers. The text targets people already very familiar with the story Machu Picchu, so it shouldn't be treated as a coffee table book. If you need a set of impressive pictures and easily interrupted text on current hypotheses about Machu Micchu, you have many other choices.

This book belongs in an academic library, or the history section of a public library that already has a book on Machu Picchu that caters to the casual reader.

Ten years ago, I read a book about the child sacrifices the Inca civilization carried out at Machu Picchu. It has stuck with me all these years and, when I saw the Nova program, "Ice Mummies" all of that disturbing feeling came back. How could they do that to the children?!

The first known Incas, a noble family who ruled Cuzco and a small surrounding high Andean agricultural state, date back to A.D. 1200. The growth of the empire beyond Cuzco began in 1438 when emperor Pachacuti, which means "he who transforms the earth," strode forth from Cuzco to conquer the world around him and bring the surrounding cultures into the Inca fold. Consolidation of a large empire was to become a continuing struggle for the ruling Inca as their influence reached across many advanced cultures of the Andes. The name "Inca" refers to the first royal family and the 40,000 descendants who ruled the empire. For centuries historians have used the term in reference to the nearly 100 nations conquered by the Inca. The Inca state's domain was unprecedented, its rule resulting in a universal language - a form of Quechua, a religion worshipping the sun, and a 14,000 mile-long road system criss-crossing high Andean mountain passes and linking the rulers with the ruled.

What remains of the Inca legacy is limited, as the conquistadors plundered what they could of Inca treasures and in so doing, dismantled the many structures painstakingly built by Inca craftsmen to house the precious metals. Remarkably, a last bastion of the Inca empire remained unknown to the Spanish conquerors and was not found until explorer Hiram Bingham discovered it in 1911. He had found Machu Picchu, a citadel atop a mountainous jungle along the Urubamba River in Peru. Grand steps and terraces with fountains, lodgings, and shrines flank the jungle-clad pinnacle peaks surrounding the site. It was a place of worship to the sun god, the greatest deity in the Inca pantheon.

Mummies-named after the bitumen tar, mum, used to coat the linen winding strips around them-have long held an almost magical fascination. The world was titillated by Egypt's elaborate cult of death and by the extreme care devoted to preserving bodies for eternity. It was not uncommon in the 1800s to pick up a box of "mummy pills" made of ground, compressed mummies; they were thought to impart some measure of the eternal. The mummy of a pharaoh's son stood on the bar of a venerable men's club in Boston until the late 1960s, when he was returned to his homeland.

We have come to understand "mummy" as meaning a remarkably preserved body, a corpse that has withstood decay and putrefaction. By design or accident, the corpse's dissolution has been arrested, the effects of time slowed, and this human form, with its trappings and ornaments and clothing, becomes the physical representation of another time. A time machine bearing both gifts of knowledge, and prickly questions as to how best to handle the remains.

Similar kinds of questions hold sway whenever a mummy is unearthed. Decay and controversy attended the removal and study of Inca children, even the one found dressed as a commoner. The girls were killed by a skull fracture, being hit in the head. The more recent the remains, the more controversial they are likely to be. Witness the contentious debate in the United States over the bones of Native Americans, both those uncovered in archeological sites and those already housed in museums. Many people would argue that the dead, whether recent or thousands of years old, should be left to rest in peace, undisturbed.

That would be so if it were a proper burial, but there are those who would destroy the mummified remains to get the Inca treasure trove left with the dead.