Thursday, July 24, 2008

Nerd Notes: On this day in 1911, the discovery of Machu Picchu

Who did it? Yale professor Hiram Bingham. Well, actually, he probably wasn't the first European to see this lost city of the Incas in Peru, but he was the first to conduct excavations, explore the site in detail, and also to publicize it.

Nerd kudos, Professor Bingham.

Goodness, I'd love to go see it myself someday!

Still, my favorite archaeology-discovery story is probably that eccentric Heinrich Schliemann and his mad quest for (and discovery of!) a historical Troy . . . or the 1922 discovery of King Tut's tomb by Howard Carter. You?

*Insert Indiana Jones-type fantasies of nerdness during the school year and high adventures in exotic locations during the summer holidays . . . Ahhhhhhhh . . .* (Yes, I'm back in the Library of Doom as I type, and I'm not too happy about it! Maybe I'll just go and buy a pith helmet.)

7 comments:

Pat Patterson said...

Considering how badly Schliemann botched the excavations at Troy and some of his more shady export practices he wouldn't have been my first choice as the model for the intrepid archaeologist or rather the intrepid grocer.

Anonymous said...

1. the uncovering of pompeii and herculaneum
2. the discovery of ancient pre-grecian palaces and towns on Crete

greatest potential future discovery
1. the burial place of genghis khan

Mad Minerva said...

Pompeei and Herc are awesome, ditto the excavations on Santorini and Crete!

As for Schliemann, we consider it botched, but back in his day, archaeology didn't even truly exist as we know it now as a careful, scientific pursuit. I give him kudos for having the sheer nerve to go looking for something that everyone at the time said was just a fantasy. His discovery of Troy totally changed the way people looked at Homer.

Mad Minerva said...

Oh, also for the future, Greg -- the tomb of that first emperor of China too. The location is known, but no excavations yet!

Pat Patterson said...

Schliemann was considered a grave robber even the 1860's so much so that in Istanbul you can still see the arrest warrants that the Ottoman's issued for his multiple violations of the agreements he signed with the Turkish authorities to excavate the site. And I do have to admit that in graduate school none of my professors, at SC, Cal or Augsberg, had any kind words for Schliemann except to turn bright red and start yelling about that thief.

Henry Calvert, an earlier owner of the site, was forced to rat Schliemann out to the Turks because Schliemann had dug right through the ash level, identified as Troy VII and which is now recognized as the Homeric Troy, until he found pottery and gold artifacts at Troy I-IV which were the earliest settlements on the site dating from the Bronze Age at least a thousand years earlier.

But most of the gold objects he found, smuggled out and exhibited as the relics of Priam and Hector, were from Troy I. Which was a Roman veteran's colony, like Chester in England, Turin in Italy and Baalbeck in Lebanon and all generally built in the 1st BC and the 1st AD to house and reward retired legionaires and provide a ready militia for the standing legions.

It appears that Schliemann, ignoring the logic of The Iliad, simply ignored the burnt level and the earlier surveys from 1822, for more profitable pursuits. Theodore Mommsen the most noted Roman historian of the 19th Century hated Schliemann with a passion that seemed quite contradictory to his professiorial status. The source of this hatred sprang simply from the letters of Mommsen's colleagues describing the mess Schliemann had left the site. And also that Schliemann had simply tossed all the material, unless it was gold or some other valuables, into nearby ditches that filled with water and reburied the excavated material each spring.

Not as dramatic but how about Charles Whittlesey, a US surveyor and part time archaeologist, he found the earthworks in the Ohio that are now credited to a advanced Amerind society dating back to at least 1,200 BC. Almost 400 years before Homer wrote down the poems of The Iliad and the Odyssey and essentially ended the oral tradition in the Mediterranean

Mad Minerva said...

If you are so invested in criticizing Schliemann, you don't have to write an enormous dissertation on the subject with the comments. You can simply say so pithily. I find enormous comments-that-are-really-lectures to be wearying. I don't want more lectures; that's what my seminars are for.

And none of my professors ever ranted about Schliemann, regardless of their personal views on the man. They did what they should have--explained the man's actions and their effect on subsequent work. If they did rant about him, they did so out of class, which is fine.

Whatever his flaws, and they were myriad, Homeric studies would not be the same without him, and his actions remade that field in a fundamental way. If you want a less offensive figure in Homeric studies, try Milman Parry, whose work also revolutionized Homer studies.

Pat Patterson said...

Fair point! I can see how the comment appears but I had hoped to just relate information that many outside the field of ancient history weren't aware of.