Abstract
IN this volume Prof. Bingham describes a part of the work accomplished by the four expeditions of Yale University and the National Geographical Society to Peru between the years 1909 and 1915. Where so much is new and of absorbing interest it is difficult to select any one discovery as outstanding; although in archaeology most will, no doubt, agree that the exploration of the ruins of Machu Picchu has been the most important in its results. This site, with its magnificent and, in some respects, unique architectural remains, is held by the author to be probably the Tampu Tocco to which the pre-Inca people, the Amautas, retired when the country was invaded from the south about A.D. 800, and from which the first Inca, Manco Ccapac, began to extend his Empire about A.D. 1300. Fascinating, too, is the story of the search for Uiticos, the lost stronghold of Tupac Amaru, the last of the Incas, defeated and killed by the Spaniards in 1572, and for the “white rock over a spring of water,” the site of the Temple of the Sun burnt by two zealous Spanish friars in 1568. The results obtained by these expeditions were little short of remarkable, and have added enormously to our knowledge of the geography, archaeology, and natural history of the country.
Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of Peru.
Hiram
Bingham
By. Pp. xvi + 365 + 45 plates. (London: Constable and Co., Ltd., 1922.) 24s. net.
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Inca Land: Explorations in the Highlands of Peru. Nature 111, 665 (1923). https://doi.org/10.1038/111665c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/111665c0