June’s book review: Turn Right at Machu Picchu by Mark Adams
When reading a new book one often knows early on whether not the story will be worthwhile, “Turn Right at Machu Picchu” is one of those that quickly earns your confidence to continue turning the pages. Mark Adams steps into the active role of field investigation of a hallmark tourist destination that calls to historians, followers of UFOs, New Age reinterpretionists, and Bucketlist adventurers. He introduces the apparent controversy over a widely known famous personality, and then quickly goes about introducing a plan. The hook is set, the reader has become the baited fish.
Adams builds on rapid sucess in Chapter one by setting the context, filling in details about the discoverer of Machu Picchu, Hiram Bingham III, giving the background of his life experiences that would ultimately combine for Bingham making a major revelation in the field that millions of people will make pilmagagres to behold. Having already been to Machu Picchu several times myself, including just last year, and being rather more dedicated to the geography, geology, and nature of Peru and the Andes, at first I was circumspect picking up this book, thinking here is another version, another tale made to capitalize on the fame of a locality, suspecting the worst. I already have a strong background on the topic at hand that Mark Adams will be presenting– he has a critical audience to appease. He does so through skilled writing, dangling comparisons, and laying the dominos of fate that makes the reader want to see how he explains the directions in which they fall.
As a side note, I generally appreciate books that includes maps. Adams gives us two artist renditions of the geography around Cusco to Machu Picchu. Maybe this feels like reading Fellowship of the Ring in high school, but this attraction is better explained in that I enjoy making maps myself. A book with maps is a good start.
Adams shares that he was increasingly fixated on the controversy and origin of Machu Picchu, trying to squeeze the Google search results and not finding any juice. Therefore he hired a travel consultant, an in-country Peruvian adventure expert, who is painted as a Crocodile Dundee doppleganger. While meeting in a Cusco café they lay out a plan for field investigation. The timing of his trip and review of the subject happened during the opening of a museum in Cusco about Bingham and the discovery of Machu Picchu.
Machu Picchu myths abound with highly repeated hypotheses of explanation gaining credibility through the repetition, substituting actual scientific validation. Nothing in Mark Adams abridged summary of the Machu Picchu explanations, nor any materials that I have seen and read over the last 20 years provides any sense of satisfaction that the collective knowledge of the topic can explain its origin. All of the supposed names, functions, belief structure, apparent correlations, of the Machu Picchu ruins are mere suppositions with zero supporting conclusive evidence. Machu Picchu remains one of the great South American mysteries, and, due to the complete plundering and cultural collapse of the Incas caused by the Spanish, Machu Picchu’s origin will likely forever remain unexplained. Adams takes on this challenge, reaching the same stonewall of dissatisfaction with the known history.
Adams touches upon the supposed alignments of solstices and linear features of the ruins compared to locations of surrounding ruins, which are typically verbally conveyed as being “perfect” but this is a question of seeking perfect alignment as correlation and not reporting the physical measurements, such as the exact compass bearing of the wall or carving and the angle of the projected alignment. Many of these may prove less than exact matches. When dealing with a mere couple of degrees differences the errors quickly increase with the projection distance. Furthermore, given a cornucopia of peaks and ruins in the Cusco region many purely accidental alignments do not demonstrate intent by those that constructed the features.
The book chapter describing the surrounding site visits reads a bit slow with Adams’ own hiking experiences. I was somewhat lost in the geography while they dawdled about Vista Alegre and Espiritu Pampa. I was equally lost in the description of the famous carved squarish peg on the monolith rock platform called Intihuatana. Adams lists a few possible explanations, but this features are just as enigmatic as Machu Picchu itself. “Inti” is the Quechua word for the sun, and the Incas were sun worshipers. How this carved rock relates to those beliefs, if at all, is unknown. All purported explanations to date being not equally unreliable but nonetheless all of them incorrect. The disorientation I had while reading Adams’ book is in part from the short chapters being intermingled between giving the Bingham expedition history and alternating with Adams’ own trip recreating the routes followed by the Yale teams. Perhaps more maps with annotations were required beyond the written comparisons? The book does has more interesting reading section describing the twin of Machu Picchu, a remote ruin called Choquequirao.
Having visited Machu Picchu three times myself it is certain to say that Adams does not present a complete inventory of Machu Picchu characteristics (nor does he claim to), but rather touches upon some highlights that are popular among the tourism guides. One omission in his description that struck me was while on his ascent of Huayna Picchu, which is the picturesque vertical-sided peak that overlooks the ruins from the north. The ascent takes stone steps that are noticeable narrow, a point that I shared with my wife that the Inca’s had small feet. Near the summit the standard trail snakes through a gap between boulders, making a tight cave passage, something not mentioned in the book, but squeezing through this feature makes summiting an act of revelation. Perhaps they scrambled up a different line missing the dramatic conclusion?
Missing in the book is the geological context of the ruins, what the rock type its made of (a Permian coarse-grained pluton), which to a large degree made suitable material for masonry- it was the rock composition coinciding with a saddle making stable ground that had more to do in building the ruins than any of the astronomical and solar alignments you could shake a sextant at. The entire region’s mountain slopes are too unstable to build upon while the valley floor is too narrow and floods too frequently- a high ridge therefore provides a building site that lasts longer- and one with the right rock material so much the better. These two factors combine to mean more about the site location than just about any other factor out there. On page 187 Adams writes “Machu Picchu sits atop not one but two fault lines.” This is essentially the only geology in the book. I never saw a fault at Machu Picchu; one unreliable interpreted short WNW-striking fault is marked on the government geology map, which is very typical of Peruvian geological maps to record erroneous faults.
The book covers ideas such as the one on Machu Picchu to Cusco region being for the Incas their Cosmos, and full of Apus, sacred spots. The Inca Empire’s capital was Cusco, in no way was Machu Picchu more meaningful for the Incas- just how quickly they forgot about it during the first signs of Spanish invasion says something. The naming of Vilcabamba, Vitcos, Espiritu Pampa, Inca trail, etc., etc., can likewise be done for many other geographical areas of Peru and have equal inspiration and intense landscape imagery- just look to the summits of the Cordillera Blanca and flanking hill slopes that had many pre-Inca cultures inhabiting it. Atahualpa even had enough of a paradigm trap that was Cusco, preferring to reside in Cajamarca in northern Peru. Culturally the Inca Empire was in many ways the Walmart of American indigenous organization- they had a cookie cutter system with strict ways, stomping out all of the competition. Other pre-Inca cultures had interesting ideas too. While exploring the Peruvian Andes one must not dwell only on Cusco-Machu Picchu and the Incas, doing so excludes >90% of the human history in the region. There are plenty of stellar alignments to ponder at the Nazca lines, and perhaps more complex ritual worship practices at Chavin de Huantar. A fair amount of Peruvian effort goes into decrying or lamenting what was lost when the Spaniards stomped on the Incas, but little injustice is perceived in the Incas taking out older tribes and city states during expanding its Empire.
It is my opinion that Peru owes a great deal of the popularity of Machu Picchu to Bingham, that without his effort it may still be languishing in obscurity today. The current Peruvian minimizing of his contribution reflects a deep ingrained cultural apprehension and acknowledgment that advancements of the country across all sectors has and remains dependent on foreigners identifying the value of what sits beneath their own noses- this fact they take with resentment and simultaneous resignation as being powerless to change their destiny.
Adams takes a comprehensive post-context placement of Bingham as not being the discoverer, or the grave robber, or really in many ways a scientist, and credits him just enough for thrusting forward the popularity of Machu Picchu, but filling in the background on others that contributed on this front, including The National Geographic Soceity. A book that begins painting controversy between Bingham and Peru, and in many ways reality, navigates political correctness to check the boxes with as many acknowledgements as possible, and then appropriately concludes saying that Machu Picchu will forever remain a mystery and mean different things to different people. Reading this book may just help you move closer to understanding the possibilities, and inspire you to venture into the realm of the Incas and see for yourself just as Adams did.
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South America seems to refuse to show its inexhaustible creative force.
