The caves of Carlsbad

The caves of Carlsbad
country : United States of America
place : New Mexico State

The Guadalupe Mountains span the Texas/New Mexico border and rise to heights of 8,749 feet, in great contrast to the flat Chihuahuan Desert land all around. Two national parks are found within their range; Guadalupe Mountains (in Texas), which features rocky peaks and scenic valleys with varied wildlife, and Carlsbad Caverns, one of the oldest and most famous cave systems in the world. The caverns are a full day's drive from any of the other major attractions in the Southwest, but are well worth the long journey - they include several vast underground chambers, up to 250 feet high, filled with amazing formations of many colors and shapes.
Approaches: A long straight road is a common feature of the Southwest, and the caverns are reached by one such route; US 62/180 that links Carlsbad with El Paso.

The western stretches in Texas pass 100 miles of salt flats, sandy wasteland and grassy prairie before the forested Guadalupe Mountains come slowly into view, then, after a steeper and more winding section, the highway straightens out again, crossing more desert flats towards Carlsbad. The turn-off to the national park is marked by a collection of Western-style souvenir shops, restaurants and lodgings, known as White's City, including the last gas station for 130 miles westwards. From here a rather narrow and winding side road climbs for 7 miles through a shallow limestone gorge (Walnut Canyon) that has attractive rocky scenery with particularly abundant Chihuahuan Desert plants such as agaves and opuntia cacti. There is no campground in the park, and the only official site nearby is the rather pricy establishment at White's City, though free primitive camping is possible along several dirt tracks heading east from US 62/180, a few miles south of the park junction.


Map: Map of Carlsbad Caverns National Park.

Carlsbad Caverns Hotels: Apart from White's City which has a motel, the nearest place with hotels close to Carlsbad Caverns National Park is Carlsbad, 27 miles northeast of the cave entrance.


Features: The entrance to Carlsbad Cavern is on the plateau at the south side of Walnut Canyon, where a huge visitor complex has been constructed, with acres of parking and a network of service roads. Inside the main building are a museum, book store, auditorium, cafe, cinema-style counter for purchase of tour tickets, and elevators that provide a short cut into the caverns below. The fee to enter the caves is $6 per person (unchanged for many years), although entrance to the park is free. Other attractions in this section of the national park include the 9.5 mile, one-way Desert Loop Drive (no vehicles over 20 feet allowed) that continues westwards along the plateau top then returns via upper Walnut Canyon, and the one mile Chihuahuan Desert Nature Trail through similar scenery close to the cave entrance, while elsewhere in the park are several longer hiking trails and many secret backcountry caves, a few of which are open to the public, but of course almost all visitors come only for the trips underground in the main cavern.


The Cavern: The usual way to see the formations of Carlsbad Cavern is by one or both of two self-guiding walking tours - Big Room or Natural Entrance - which visit different parts of the chambers. Four other branches of the cave may be explored by ranger-led hikes, for an extra fee (Kings Palace, Left Hand Tunnel, Lower Cave and Hall of the White Giant)

Big Room - for this, the less strenuous option, visitors descend 754 feet over one minute in an elevator that starts from inside the visitor center to be greeted, rather incongruously, by a rest-area and lunch room, but a short walk along a wide passage leads to the main cave area - the Big Room, 3,800 feet long and 600 feet wide, where most of the largest formations are found. The 1.25 mile path follows a roughly circular (anti-clockwise) route down one side of the chambers and back along the other, and the cave is so large that the two parts of the trail are generally out of sight of each other. Around 20 of the most spectacular speleotherms have an official name - grandiose appellations such as Hall of the Giants, Temple of the Sun and Rock of Ages, and are subtly lit with electric lights to create a most enchanting spectacle; the lights are white, so all colors in the caves are natural. Some areas have shallow underground pools, also illuminated, whose reflections add another dimension to the delicate formations above. Rangers are stationed at frequent intervals to answer questions, and the tours are usually very busy, so this is hardly a wilderness experience, but still one of the highlights of the Southwest. Along the main trail are many closed gates guarding small paths leading to unseen passages, and there are frequent glimpses downwards to deeper levels, some not easily explorable including the Bottomless Pit, 370 feet deep. Most parts of the Big Room route are wheelchair-accessible, and all have a special non-slip surface.

Natural Entrance - a gentle walk across the cactus desert leads to a huge opening in the plateau, where the path zig-zags down into the darkness below. This chasm is the place of egress for a colony of up to 300,000 Mexican free-tail bats that live in one of the branches of the cave below from April to September, and it is a memorable event at sunset to watch the colony emerge, which takes up to half an hour. The bats spend winter in the warmer lands of Mexico. An amphitheater has been constructed at the entrance, and organised evening sittings are provided in season (no photography permitted). Underground, the path is quite steep at first as it drops 750 feet, into a large, dimly-lit chamber that is initially devoid of formations. This passageway continues eastwards into the bat residence, but the path turns back west, descending again, gently at first then more steeply, into narrower tunnels where the first extensive collections of stalagmites and stalactites are found, including such named features as Devils Spring, Queen's Chamber, Kings Palace and the Boneyard. The surroundings become steadily more scenic, with small side-caves filled with intricate rock forms, before the path arrives at the elevator to the surface visitor center, and links with the Big Room route as above.
Kings Palace - four separate chambers accessed from a cave near the elevator. This is the deepest part of Carlsbad Cavern currently open to the public, 830 feet in one section, and may be visited as part of a ranger-led tour that lasts 90 minutes and is provided five times each day, between Memorial Day and Labor Day. Highlights include the Queens Draperies, a particularly large series of rippled sheet formations.


Left Hand Tunnel - lantern-lit passageways featuring fossils, cave pools and delicate speleotherms. The tour is held once each day and lasts about 2 hours.
Lower Cave - a vast lower level, branching off the Big Room about half way along the loop, filled with equally spectacular features as the main chamber. Accessed by metal ladders, and visited on a 3 hour tour starting 1 pm, Monday through Friday.


Hall of the White Giant - a more remote section of the cavern, containing a huge white stalagmite. The tour requires crawling through narrow passages and climbing metal ladders, costs $20 per person, lasts 4 hours, and is scheduled only once a week (on Saturdays).
Other Activities: Details of other areas of the park, including hiking trails and backcountry caves.


Source: http://www.americansouthwest.net

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The city of Angkor

The city of Angkor
country : Cambodia
place : Siem Reap, north of the Tonle Sap lake

One of the most popular tourist attractions in Cambodia is the ancient city of Angkor. The historic site is located approximately 200 miles north-west of the current capital city of Phnom Penh and is surrounded by jungle. The nearby town of Siem Riep has become a tourist destination on account of Angkor. The city of Angkor is filled with more than a thousand temples and other architectural accomplishments but the greatest sight is the temple of Angkor Wat.

Temples of Angkor Wat


Many of the temples of the area are Buddhist, but Angkor Wat is a Hindu temple dedicated to the God Vishnu. The temple is surrounded by a moat and encompasses an area of 1,500m by 1,300m (approximately 1 square mile). There are numerous smaller buildings that make up the Angkor Wat compound, and there is elaborate sculpture and carving on every surface. The bas-relief carvings show scenes from mythology, ancient battles, and other aspects of Khmer life. The 5 rounded towers give the temple a distinctive profile. Angkor Wat took 37 years to complete with a work force of more than 50,000 men. During the rule of the Khmer Rouge, most of the monks who lived in the temples were killed but the buildings themselves have remained for the most part, untouched.


Origins of Angkor Wat


The history of the region begins with the Funan civilization that arose in the first century A.D. The Angkor period began in 802 A.D when King Jayavarman II returned from exile in Java to reclaim his throne. He founded his capital as the city of Angkor. The city flourished and grew, but the temple of Angkor Wat was not built for another 200 years. It was Suryavarman II who had the Hindu temple constructed as his own burial shrine. Later ruler, Jayavarman VII continued building at Angkor and created countless monuments, shrines and temples within the city. So many years of construction has created a vast complex of sandstone buildings, often compared to the massive construction projects seen in ancient Egypt.


Abandoned, then Rediscovered


Angkor was abandoned in the mid 1400s when the Thai armies invaded. With few records surviving from that time, there are no solid facts as to the historical events that took place. It's believed that the capital was moved to Phnom Penh around 1434.
The ruins of Angkor Wat were rediscovered in 1860 by a French botanist, Henri Mouhot, who was exploring the Cambodian jungles. This lost civilization was of great interest to Western archaeologists and historians who flocked to the site to learn more about the Khmer. Before the ruins were found, even the locals thought the existence of the temple city was likely a myth. Some who had seen the city said that it had been built by the Gods themselves.


Today, Angkor Wat temple is considered the largest religious structure in the world, and has been named a world heritage site. Restoration is ongoing, though unexploded land mines left over from the civil war are hindering efforts.


source :http://www.suite101.com

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The big wall of China

The big wall of China
country : China
place : north-east of the country, along Inner Mongolia

The Great Wall of China was built over 2,000 years ago, by Qin Shi Huangdi, the first emperor of China during the Qin (Ch'in) Dynasty (221 B.C - 206 B.C.). In Chinese the wall is called "Wan-Li Qang-Qeng" which means 10,000-Li Long Wall (10,000 Li = about 5,000 km).

After subjugating and uniting China from seven Warring States, the emperor connected and extended four old fortification walls along the north of China that originated about 700 B.C. (over 2500 years ago). Armies were stationed along the wall as a first line of defense against the invading nomadic Hsiung Nu tribes north of China (the Huns). Signal fires from the Wall provided early warning of an attack.


The Great Wall is one of the largest building construction projects ever completed. It stretches across the mountains of northern China, winding north and northwest of Beijing. It is constructed of masonry, rocks and packed-earth. It was over 5,000 km (=10,000 Li) long. Its thickness ranged from about 4.5 to 9 meters (15 to 30 feet) and was up to 7.5 meters (25 feet) tall.
During the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), the Great Wall was enlarged to 6,400 kilometers (4,000 miles) and renovated over a 200 year period, with watch-towers and cannons added.
The Great Wall can be seen from Earth orbit, but, contrary to legend, is not visible from the moon, according to astronauts Neil Armstrong, Jim Lovell, and Jim Irwin. 


source: http://www.enchantedlearning.com

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The Nabatean city of Petra

The Nabatean city of Petra
country : Jordania
place : south-west of the country, near Israel

A legend, a marvel, a Wonder-with-a-capital-W; Petra is one of the world�s truly unique sites.  The capital of the Nabatean trading empire, this city must have been one of the ancient world�s richest cities. 
Most of us have seen the famous photo of the rose-pink Khazneh (Treasury) fa�ade as glimpsed from the narrow entry passage called the Siq�..if not, please rent Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade!  What the film doesn�t tell you is that this is only the first of hundreds of carved facades you will encounter inside the ancient city center.
The greater part of ancient Petra is still unexcavated, which gives us decades worth of exciting discoveries still in store.  What has already been revealed is enough to make you wonder how you�re ever going to describe it to friends and family once you get home.

�Queen of the Caravan Cities,� Petra in its most famous incarnation was the capital city of a Nabatean Empire which stretched from the Saudi deserts through Damascus.  Many of the ancient world�s trade routes included a mandatory stop in Petra.  The Nabateans, who probably descended from tribal nomads of Arabia, were hydrology geniuses.  Their remarkable skills in locating, trapping and storing water in a desert clime gave them a monopoly over the one item absolutely essential to caravan trade.  Laden camels can safely move about three days between drink-stops, so the society that managed to own the franchise on all the water stops in the desert could�and did�set their own terms when it came time to tank up the camels.  Some archaeologists hypothesize that the Nabateans may have laid claim to roughly 1/3 of all the caravan�s trade goods in return for providing water, supplies and safe passage for the caravans.    If this estimate is even half right, you�re still talking some serious customs fees.

Petra was the crowning glory of this wealthy people.  Using the caravan wealth, and drawing on artistic influences from throughout the ancient world, the Nabateans literally carved out an impressive home base from the rosy sandstone mountains which surround the ancient city center.  Grand facades ornamented burial caves, triclinia and temples.  The free-standing buildings which have more recently been excavated show the same sort of multi-cultural richness in design and execution.  On the site of the Great Temple, for instance, archaeologists have discovered a number of large, elegantly-carved elephant-head column capitals.  A Nabatean home excavated by a Swiss team revealed a very high standard of living-floors completely covered with imported marble, walls covered with intricate frescoes of architectural design, a private family bath complex with cold, warm and hot rooms, and massive private storage wells for water and olive oil.

The sandstone mountains from which and on which Petra was carved are themselves worth a trip.  The whorls and bands of colors are a feast for the eyes, sort of like a modernist painting.  Some of the local tourist guides claim that there are more than 200 colors in the sandstone, and it�s an easy figure to believe.  Local artisans have capitalized on this wealth of raw materials, and will be happy to produce a Petra sand bottle for you complete with your name, an intricate camel caravan or other colorful design.  (One of the most interesting experiences when traveling around Jordan is to run into a road construction project�the marvelous colors revealed when the bulldozers go to work is definitely a photo opportunity!)


It is thought that the Nabateans moved into Petra sometime during the 4th Century BC, gradually taking over the Edomite settlements which had occupied hilltops inside Petra and on adjacent mountains.  Until the end of the 1st Century AD Petra was the capital of the independent Nabatean Empire, an empire with trade and marriage ties throughout the Mediterranean world.  Nabateans don�t figure largely in texts on ancient history because they weren�t particularly keen on warfare, preferring to pay indemnities to retain their independence.  In 106 AD, Trajan annexed Petra to the Roman empire as the Province of Arabia, and thereafter a Roman governor was appointed to oversee affairs of the city and the province.  In 395 Petra became a Byzantine city with the division of the Roman Empire.  Besides carving crosses inside many of the ancient tombs to create instant churches, the Byzantine denizens also built several more elaborate churches and cathedrals.  The Petra Cathedral in the city center has a wonderful mosaic floor, and documents found in a workshop adjacent to the cathedral site are giving archaeologists new insights into the daily lives and domestic affairs of the Byzantine Nabateans.   But by the middle of the 7th Century, when the Islamic conquest swept out of Arabia, the ancient site of Petra had become a haunted, haunting site occupied by nomadic herders.  Shifting trade routes and a greater reliance on maritime trade had led to the site�s abandonment. 


 Between the 7th and 19th centuries, Petra remained a city of legend �lost� to Western cultures.  It was not truly lost, of course.  The Bedouin herders and local farmers knew it was there.  So too did the Crusaders, who planted a castle and a fortress on two of the peaks surrounding the ancient city center.  Determined pilgrims of Judaism, Christianity and Islam all made occasional pilgrimage to the peak of Petra�s tallest mountain, Jabal Harun (Aaron�s Mount, or the Biblical Mount Hor), which was believed to be the burial place of Aaron, brother of Moses.  But as histories tended to focus on the ancient civilizations famed for conquests, literary works and philosophical discourses, memories of the peaceable Nabateans, who left few written records,  faded to little more than the odd references in Greek, Roman and Egyptian rolls of trade and travel.

In 1812 Johann Burckhardt, an eccentric Swiss explorer, set out to �re-discover� the ruins of Petra.  Realizing that the local tribes were suspicious of outsiders seeking to find buried treasure, he invented a pretext of wishing to visit the area to pray at the tomb of Aaron.  A local guide was appointed to conduct Burckhardt through the hidden passageway and across the ancient city center to the top of Jabal Harun.  Along the way, the guide cheerfully pointed to the dramatic carved facades and crumbling free-standing buildings, giving the folkloric names for different sights along the way.  These names survive today.  The �Khazneh� (Treasury), because local legend held that the urn atop the fa�ade was filled with the gold Moses brought out of Egypt.    (This explains why the urn is pockmarked with bullet holes left by Bedouin hoping to break the urn and release the treasure.)   The �Qasr al Bint� temple (Palace of the Princess) because the large building must surely have been the home of Pharaoh�s daughter. 


Shortly after Burckhardt�s �pilgrimage,� a steady trickle of 19th century explorers wandered through Petra.  Some of them, most famously David Roberts of the Royal Academy, captured their visions of the place in sketches and paintings.  The organized touring parties and archaeologists were not far behind, drawn by the majestic facades and colorful local inhabitants.  By the first decade of the 20th Century, serious archaeological work had begun on the site.


Agatha Christie and her archaeologist husband Max Mallowan made the journey to Petra in the early 1930�s.  Her two-day overland trip from Jerusalem is wonderfully described in the Hercule Poirot mystery Appointment with Death.  In those days, visitors could elect to camp in tents or lodge in furnished caves at the center of the ruins, where the Basin Restaurant and an archaeological expedition house now stand. 


Petra continued to be a lodestone for the more adventurous traveler, for the archaeologist and for the artist, but until the 1960�s facilities to accommodate visitors were very basic.  In 1963 the Jordanian government opened the Petra Rest House, with 12 rooms, to house visitors beside the entrance to the site.  Today�s Petra Guest House, managed by the Crowne Plaza chain, has grown up around these original rooms, and the Nabatean tomb at the location is now the Cave Bar, a popular-but-noisy night spot.  In 1982 a second hotel, the Petra Forum, was opened beside the Rest House.  This brought the available hotel rooms to around 100, and several enterprising citizens opened backpacker hotels in the town of Wadi Musa, the modern city outside the antiquities site.  Still, facilities to accommodate overnight visitors were limited and basic.  This is probably the reason why many Jordan touring programs�even today�offer only a one-night or two-night stay in Petra or, even worse, a one-day trip from Amman.


Times have changed, though, both inside and outside Petra.  Outside the site there are something like 2,000 hotel rooms available�everything from backpacker-budget to first class hotels.  Many of the hotels are clustered around the Petra entry gate, and a string of hotels also line the scenic road to the nearby village of Taybet.  Within the town of Wadi Musa budget travelers will find many small hotels offering basic accommodations and (usually) basic prices to match. 


That�s all good news, because the inside of Petra has changed just as dramatically.  Every year excavations proceed.   Archaeologists from Jordan, the US, the UK, Finland, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Japan, France and probably other countries we�ve forgotten to mention have projects in different parts of Petra and the surrounding countryside.  Amazing things are uncovered every year, and still experts estimate that little more than 30% of the site has been properly investigated.  So plan on staying awhile�.there are marvels around every corner. 


A personal testimonial�I (Wendy�see the �about us� page) first arrived in Petra in the summer of 1992.  It was tremendous, fascinating, revelatory�the experience that set my life on a new course.  But the Petra I saw in 1992 is nothing like the Petra you�ll see today, and most of the difference is on the plus side of the column.  Take the Siq, for instance.  The level of the Siq floor is now some 3-4 meters lower than it was in those days, because excavators have worked their way down to the Roman paving stones.  Along the way, they uncovered wonderful �murals� carved into the walls, niches to hold Nabatean god-symbols, and an amazing complex of water channels and rain-capture channels which helped nourish the gardens and fountains of the Nabatean capital.


Another very noticeable change is in the very center of the site, the hillsides lying on either side of the Roman Colonnaded Street which ran through the heart of Petra.  When I first saw them, these were simply hillsides.  Nowadays you�ll explore temples, the Cathedral, and the extensive Great Temple complex with its temples, garden and pool complex, Odeon and other intriguing features. 


When planning your stay, you should also remember that the strategic importance of Petra (plenty of water, easily defended, good arable land) was not a Nabatean invention.  Petra and the surrounding area have been inhabited for over 9,000 years.  A ring of pre-pottery Neolithic sites surround Petra, including the famed Baidha site identified as one of the world�s earliest agricultural settlements.  You don�t have to be a specialist to appreciate the village.  You�ll be surprised to note its many similarities to 17th-18th Century Bedouin villages.


In the Iron Age Petra was a part of the Edomite Kingdom.  An Edomite village (6th Century BC) atop Um al Biyara was excavated in the early 1960�s by Crystal Bennett, a British archaeologist.  No evidence of an 8th Century BC settlement was found, but local legend persists in identifying this as the town of Sela, whose inhabitants Moses� wandering Israelites fought, defeated and tossed off the hilltop when they failed to offer hospitality.  (The more probable location for this massacre was the hilltop above the modern village of Boseira, an hour's drive north of Petra along the King's Highway.)


As the capital city of a vast trading empire, Petra was surrounded by suburbs, customs points, watering stations, garrisons and other accoutrements of Life in the Big City.  There are carved facades, temples, cisterns and other remnants of civilization throughout the town of Wadi Musa and the neighboring countryside.  It�s impossible to plant a garden in Wadi Musa without finding coins, beads or shards of the wafer-thin Nabatean pottery.


Several years ago, the public works department engaged in a massive series of projects to lay new pipelines for fresh and waste water throughout the town.  The Department of Antiquities appointed Dr. Khairia Amro, an experienced archaeologist, to follow the bulldozers and graders around.  As she can tell you, it quickly became apparent that the entire region is riddled with walls, roadways, ancient waterworks, temples and artifacts of every era.  The countryside around Petra offers plenty of opportunities for daily voyages of discovery, at least for the traveler who is not on a tight schedule.


No discussion of Petra would be complete without mention of the modern inhabitants of the area.  Whether they�re descendents of the Nabateans or not (imagine lively scholarly argument on this subject), they have retained the Nabatean trait of welcoming travelers from around the world.  While farming and herding are still commonplace, the residents of Wadi Musa, Um Sehun, Amareen village and Taybet are essentially a company town, devoted to the single industry of tourism.


There are several interesting consequences.  The most noticeable is a sort of cosmopolitan laissez-faire atmosphere.  These people accept and even understand foreign visitors and their (odd) customs.  While firmly living themselves in a very traditional, very tribal society, they nonetheless manage to share with their guests hospitality and a genuine warmth without either being judgmental or abandoning their own beliefs and customs.


Another is an amazing facility for languages.  Inside Petra, you may well fall in love with the charming Bedouin children selling rocks and well-aged forgeries of ancient coins.  Watch these kids in action and you�ll hear them chattering away to visitors in English, French, German, Italian, Hebrew, Russian, Spanish�..formidable, or formidable, depending on the group they�re talking to.


In this security-conscious age, it�s also worthwhile to mention a third ramification.  People around Petra depend on tourism, and are fiercely determined to see it continue.  As a result, you have a watchful and resourceful security force, dedicated to keeping things quiet and safe.  When you stack this homegrown "neighborhood watch" guard force atop Jordan�s already admirable public security measures, you have a comfortable wall of protection.

Source: http://www.petramoon.com

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The pyramids and the sphinx

The pyramids and the sphinx
country : Egypt
place : Giseh, south-west of Cairo

The Sphinx was carved over 4,500 years ago. It was for the Pharaoh Khafre. It had his head, the body of a lion. The Sphinx was carved out of a huge big stone. It is guarding Khafre's pyramid. The Sphinx was covered by sand which preserved it all these years. 


Its body is extremely soft rock and its head is very strong rock but some people used the head for gunshot practice. No one knows for sure what it was decorated with in the days of the Ancient Egyptians but it must have been very beautiful then.

Pyramids
The Pyramids were constructed to hide the tombs of the Pharaohs. The first pyramids were step pyramids to help the pharaoh climb the steps and join the sun god Ra in the sky. After that (about 4,500 years ago) came the biggest pyramids of all, the pyramids of kings Khufu and Khafre. Until about a hundred years ago these pyramids were the tallest structures in the world! No earthquake could destroy them. They were each built of more than 2 million blocks of stone, which each weighed about as much as a small elephant. The limestone coverings were stripped by later peoples for building use. In the pyramids were a lot of false doors to trick grave robbers but they didn't work!


Source: http://kiaoranz.tripod.com

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The Tadj Mahall

The Tadj Mahall
country : India
place : Agra, south-west of Delhi

Taj Mahal of India - "the epitome of love", "a monument of immeasurable beauty". The beauty of this magnificent monument is such that it is beyond the scope of words. The thoughts that come into the mind while watching the Taj Mahal of Agra is not just its phenomenal beauty, but the immense love which was the reason behind its construction. Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan got this monument constructed in the memory of his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal, with whom he fell in love at the first sight. The very first sight of the Taj Mahal, the epitome of love and romance leaves one mesmerized.

Standing majestically on the banks of River Yamuna, the Taj Mahal is synonymous with love and romance. It is believed that the name "Taj Mahal" was derived from the name of Shah Jahan wife Mumtaz Mahal and means "Crown Palace". The purity of the white marble, the exquisite ornamentation, precious gemstones used and its picturesque location, all make Taj Mahal travel gain a place amongst the most popular ones. However, unless and until, one knows the love story behind the Tajmahal of India, it will come up as just a beautiful building. But, the love behind this outstanding monument is what has given a life to this monument.


Source: http://www.tajmahal.org.uk/

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The inca city of Machu Picchu

The inca city of Machu Picchu
country : Peru
place : near Cuzco

When Peruvian locals led Hiram Bingham to Machu Picchu in 1911, it was a discovery which would make the Yale professor famous, highly respected and richer.
Bingham went on to become a governor of Connecticut and member of the US senate, and his book on Machu Picchu became a bestseller. Such was his prominence in early 20th century archaeology, that some have speculated that Bingham was the inspiration for the character of Indiana Jones.
But Bingham's claim to be the first to discover Peru's lost city of the Incas is looking more than a little doubtful. Detailed investigations by a US historian have revealed that Machu Picchu was, in fact, discovered over 40 years earlier by a German businessman.
Little is known about Augusto R Berns, an obscure entrepreneur now largely lost to history, but documents unearthed in US and Peruvian archives by the American historian Paolo Greer, reveal that Berns discovered Peru's most famous archaeological site in the late 1860s before setting up a company specifically to loot Machu Picchu and its immediate surroundings.

Berns had set up a railway sleeper production business in Peru, and stumbled on the unknown ruins of Machu Picchu after purchasing nearby land to fell trees for timber. He explored the mountain citadel ruins between 1867 and 1870.
In archives in Peru, documents written by Berns and discovered by Greer reveal how the German found several sealed underground structures. Berns predicted that they would "undoubtedly contain objects of great value" � the "treasures of the Incas".
His company, the aptly-named Companhia Anonima Explotadora de las Huacas del Inca (the Inca Sites Exploitation Company) had the backing of some of the most important people in Peru, including the country's president at the time, Andres Avelino Caceres.
In 1887 the Peruvian government consented to the looting of Machu Picchu, even making an agreement with Berns allowing him to export the material as long as he gave the government a 10 per cent cut. One of Berns' business partners in the venture appears to have been the director of Peru's national library. The vice- president of Berns' company was a pathology professor at a university in Lima, a collector of antiquities who eventually sold his collection to a museum in Berlin.
Machu Picchu was originally built in the 15th-century by the Inca emperor, Pachacuti, who was almost certainly buried there when he died in 1471.
The city had an important temple to the sun and Pachacuti's tomb and the temple are likely to have been adorned with substantial amounts of gold.
While most of that gold was probably removed in 1532 in a futile attempt to ransom the last reigning Inca emperor, Atahualpa, who had been captured by the Spanish conquistadors, it is conceivable that Berns found substantial quantities of high status ceramics not required for the ransom.
The revelations come at a time when Peruvian demands are increasing for the return of Hiram Bingham's Machu Picchu material, thousands of items of ceramic and bone currently in Yale University.
Greer, who has launched an international search for the lost Inca treasures, located a list of 57 of Berns' American, British and other contacts and potential contacts who may have bought antiquities that Berns found in Machu Picchu. But so far no list of finds has been discovered and the investigation will extend to the US and Europe to try to track down lost treasures in private collections. Greer's findings will be published in the next issue of South American Explorer magazine.
New light shed on who found (and looted) lost Inca city Machu Picchu


Machu Picchu, the �lost city of the Incas�, may have been found and looted up to 40 years before the arrival of the explorer credited with its rediscovery, research suggests.
The first westerner to visit the mountaintop fortress, built in about 1450 at the height of the Inca empire and abandoned a century later after the Spanish conquest, is usually considered to have been Hiram Bingham, an American academic from Yale University who reached it in 1911. A new study, however, has suggested that by the time Bingham located Machu Picchu it had already been despoiled, withthe complicity of the Peruvian Government.
Documents and maps identified by Paolo Greer, an independent American researcher and explorer, have provided hints that the site was known to Augusto R. Berns, a German adventurer, as far back as the late 1860s. Berns looted the tombs and treasures, giving a 10 per cent share of the profits to the Peruvian authorities, Mr Greer believes.
When Bingham reached Machu Picchu in 1911, he removed thousands of artifacts, including mummies, ceramics and bones. Many were recently returned to Peru by Yale after a long-running dispute.
If Mr Greer's theory is correct, however, these items may only have been what Berns left behind several decades previously. Many of the lost city's richer treasures would already have been removed and sold, and their whereabouts remain unknown.
Alex Chepstow-Lusty, of the French Institute for Andean Studies, an Inca specialist who has examined Mr Greer's findings, said it seemed highly likely that Berns did reach Machu Picchu first. �We know from Berns's papers that he had permission to exploit an Inca huaca, or sacred place,� Dr Chepstow-Lusty said. �It does look very much as if that huaca was Machu Picchu.�
Mr Greer, who has been researching Machu Picchu since the 1970s, found an 1887 pamphlet written by Berns to promote a company that would exploit an Inca huaca. In it, Berns wrote: �During my stay in those provinces for four years ... I was able to discover the existence of significant rustic buildings and underground structures that had been closed with stones, some of them carved, which will undoubtedly contain objects of great value, and form part of those treasures of the Incas.�
Mr Greer said: �This is in fact the earliest known description of Machu Picchu.� He also found three maps which support the idea that Berns was working near the site.
Even Bingham may have been aware that Berns beat him to the city. In his book Inca Land, Bingham wrote: �With the possible exception of one mining prospector, no one in Cuzco had seen the ruins of Machu Picchu or appreciated their importance.�


Source: Independent.co.uk by David Keys.

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