Pictures at an Exhibition…
From fine arts…
… through antiquities…
… to natural history…
…”grannybeelee” has collected a mesmerizing set of museum (and, as at the top of this post, analogically-related) photos at Hours of Idleness.
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As we gallery-hop with glee, we might recall that it was on this date in 1911 that Hiram Bingham discovered the Lost City of the Incas, Vilcapampa (now called Machu Picchu), where the last Incan Emperors found refuge from the conquistadors.
Machu Picchu had been forgotten by all but a few Peruvians living in close proximity. An academic, explorer, treasure hunter, politician and acknowledged inspiration for the Indiana Jones character, Bingham, leading a Yale expedition, followed one of those locals, Melchor Arteaga, to the site, then published his findings. Machu Picchu has become one of the major tourist attractions in South America– and the switchback-filled road that carries tourist buses to the site from the Urubamba River is called the Hiram Bingham Highway.
(While Bingham is widely-acknowledged as the man who brought Machu Picchu to the modern world’s attention, there are credible claims to its re-discovery that predate his: the Cusco explorers Enrique Palma, Gabino Sanchez and Agustín Lizarraga are said to have arrived at the site in 1901; and descendants of two local missionaries, Thomas Payne and Stuart McNairn, claimed to have climbed the ruins in 1906.)
Bingham (above) and Arteaga, at Machu Picchu