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A review by steelcitygator
Lost City of the Incas by Hiram Bingham
2.0
Hiram Bingham discovered Machu Picchu (and several other Inca locations that were unknown to scholarship at the time) and this is his half history, half memoir of said discovery. The first section on the history of the last Inca's is mostly good. It describes their lives in and around the Spanish colonial conquests and how they attempted to survive and utilizes a ton of primary sources relative to what was available. Some is out of date to a degree just given the age of it but it's overall still a good overview in material even if I don't find the writing all that interesting.
The second half is a mix of the discovery, excavation, and Bingham's theories on his discoveries with a larger focus on Machu Picchu. The discovery is a neat look at early 20th century Peru but I don't think it's a particularly enthralling travelogue. The excavation is a bit more interesting if you don't know how archeology in this time period worked. I have read some middle eastern memoirs on it and it's strikingly similar in a lot of the foundations but I'm always interested in seeing how these early modern archeologists went about their business.
Lastly, the Machu Picchu findings and theories. And here is the biggest issue. While his more general Inca history still has enough merit where you can read it and have a solid foundation his actual site theories are very, very wrong compared to the accepted modern interpretation. I know it's not his fault as he pioneered it and didn't have nearly a centuries worth of development to get there but, as a modern reader, few of his conclusions to the sites purpose or significance are worth knowing so it makes it less valuable to the lay reader.
In the end it's a bit too dry and out of date for me to rate higher. That said, it's still a 2* because if you take special interest in the subject of the Inca or South American archeology/pre-Columbian matters you can probably get a lot out of this. My main interests not being there it falls a bit lower on my totem poll.
The second half is a mix of the discovery, excavation, and Bingham's theories on his discoveries with a larger focus on Machu Picchu. The discovery is a neat look at early 20th century Peru but I don't think it's a particularly enthralling travelogue. The excavation is a bit more interesting if you don't know how archeology in this time period worked. I have read some middle eastern memoirs on it and it's strikingly similar in a lot of the foundations but I'm always interested in seeing how these early modern archeologists went about their business.
Lastly, the Machu Picchu findings and theories. And here is the biggest issue. While his more general Inca history still has enough merit where you can read it and have a solid foundation his actual site theories are very, very wrong compared to the accepted modern interpretation. I know it's not his fault as he pioneered it and didn't have nearly a centuries worth of development to get there but, as a modern reader, few of his conclusions to the sites purpose or significance are worth knowing so it makes it less valuable to the lay reader.
In the end it's a bit too dry and out of date for me to rate higher. That said, it's still a 2* because if you take special interest in the subject of the Inca or South American archeology/pre-Columbian matters you can probably get a lot out of this. My main interests not being there it falls a bit lower on my totem poll.