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Speaker 1: It looked like said, like a chicken saute type thing.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: It's really small anyway, so I ate it, but it

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Speaker 1: was a bit weird. The guy next to me took

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Speaker 1: one bite and he vomited on straight away at the table,

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Speaker 1: at the table on top of people.

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Speaker 2: From The Australian. This is the weekend edition of The Front.

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Speaker 2: I'm Claire Harvey. In today's episode, We're off to the

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Speaker 2: Lost City of the Inkers Matchipitchew with Troy Branston. Troy

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Speaker 2: is a senior columnist for The Australian, but he's also

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Speaker 2: our in house renaissance man, a history buff author and

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Speaker 2: an adventurous traveler. He's our very own Stanley Tucci. This

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Speaker 2: trip to Darkest Peru wasn't just a holiday. Troy was

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Speaker 2: a guest of the Australian Museum and it's all in

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Speaker 2: aid of their exhibition that's live now, Golden Empires of Peru.

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Speaker 2: So Troy, had you heard of matchw Pitchu before he

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Speaker 2: went on this expedition.

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Speaker 1: For me, I'd always been really interested in it, and

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Speaker 1: I have this opportunity to go as a guest of

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Speaker 1: the Australian Museum to see Matchupitchu. Immediately, when I have

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Speaker 1: this opportunity, my mind went back to Indiana Jones and

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Speaker 1: the Raiders Lost Arc the opening scene where he's in

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Speaker 1: the Peruvian temple. He lifts up the golden fertility idol

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Speaker 1: replaces it with a bag of sand. He thinks it's okay,

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Speaker 1: and then the boulder comes after him. Because Matchi Pitcher

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Speaker 1: was only rediscovered about one hundred years ago, it has

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Speaker 1: that sort of lur of being a place of mystery

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Speaker 1: and magical wonder that people want to go and see

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Speaker 1: for themselves, like you are, Indiana Jones.

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Speaker 2: That boulder scene from Raiders of the Lost Dark is

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Speaker 2: of course referenced in almost every movie these days. I've

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Speaker 2: recently watched Paddington in Peru twice, which is the extent

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Speaker 2: of my research for this interview, which features Paddington making

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Speaker 2: his way to match You, Pitch You, and then a

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Speaker 2: giant boulder destroys the inco site.

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Speaker 1: Right, it is one of those things, you know, everybody knows,

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Speaker 1: that famous picture from above of seeing this sort of

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Speaker 1: city upon a mountaintop, wondering what it is, how it

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Speaker 1: got there, And of course when the Spanish conquisitors came

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Speaker 1: through Peru and South America in the early fifteen hundreds,

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Speaker 1: they destroyed a lot of these sites, but they never

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Speaker 1: found match You Pitchu, so it was untouched, and when

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Speaker 1: the Yale University, Academic High and Bingham rediscovered it in

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Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, it became a world sensation. And then for

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Speaker 1: the last one hundred years, people have been trying to

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Speaker 1: work out, firstly, how on earth did this place come

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Speaker 1: about and what was its purpose.

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Speaker 2: It's been said the key to understanding other cultures is

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Speaker 2: to listen to their music. Over the past couple of decades,

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Speaker 2: with shows like Parts Unknown and Netflix's Street Food, it

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Speaker 2: seems it's food that's the most powerful when it comes

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Speaker 2: to unlocking different cultures.

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Speaker 3: So it was in the spirit of.

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Speaker 2: Anthony Bourdin that Troy didn't shy away from one of

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Speaker 2: Peru's delicacies.

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Speaker 1: I did try guinea pig.

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Speaker 3: That most people consider a household pet.

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Speaker 1: I wouldn't recommend it. It tasted a bit like sort

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Speaker 1: of bland pork to me. But yeah, if you can

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Speaker 1: get that image of the very little guinea pig squeaking

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Speaker 1: away out of your mind, might really enjoy it.

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Speaker 2: I think you know, will have managed to come to

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Speaker 2: groups with eating some kind of cute creatures, but guinea

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Speaker 2: pig feels like a bridge too far.

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Speaker 1: Well, I think, unlike Australia, where tourists come and they

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Speaker 1: eat crocodile or emu or something like that, a lot

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Speaker 1: of Peruvians eat guinea pig. It's a big part of

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Speaker 1: their culture.

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Speaker 2: He one of your traveling companions didn't enjoy it as

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Speaker 2: much though.

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Speaker 1: Yes, another journalist I was on the trip with took

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Speaker 1: one bite and he brought it up straight away. Now,

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Speaker 1: I don't know whether that was the guinea pig. It

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Speaker 1: might have mean, it might have been something else. He

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Speaker 1: didn't finish it, But I'm proud to say that I

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Speaker 1: struggled through to say that I did eat guinea pig.

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Speaker 1: But as I say, Cloud wouldn't recommend.

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Speaker 3: Very manfully conquered the guinea Thank.

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Speaker 2: You, thank you.

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Speaker 1: That's my Indiana Jones prowress.

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Speaker 3: So let's talk about the Inkers.

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Speaker 2: This is a remarkable civilization, but they didn't have a

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Speaker 2: system of writing that we can recognize. They didn't invent

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Speaker 2: the wheel, and they didn't even use any kind of

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Speaker 2: draft animals. So how on earth did they build this civilization?

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Speaker 1: Yeah? This is one of the lost cities of the

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Speaker 1: Inca civilization, a very advanced civilization in many ways, and

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Speaker 1: Peru's matic picture is a really good example of that

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Speaker 1: because it's built on several fault lines, it's two and

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Speaker 1: a half thousand meters above sea level. It's constructed with

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Speaker 1: this series of interlocking rocks, so there was a quarry

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Speaker 1: on one side of the mountain, so they'd have to

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Speaker 1: break the rocks massive stones and put them in place

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Speaker 1: through a kind of interlinking system so that the seismic

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Speaker 1: activity could be absorbed by these rocks moving back and

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Speaker 1: forth but not collapsing. There's a series of Roman style aqueducts,

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Speaker 1: and of course they grew crops, and they actually genetically

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Speaker 1: modified some of their crops for different altitudes so they

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Speaker 1: could grow these crops for a self sustaining community. So

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Speaker 1: there are still archaeologists and scientists examining this site today

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Speaker 1: and still learning new things.

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Speaker 2: You mentioned the fertility symbol in rates of the lost ark.

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Speaker 3: Fertility.

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Speaker 2: Sexuality was a big part of their artistic expression, wasn't it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. They believed in fertility of the land

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Speaker 1: and often they would represent that through sexual imagery. So

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Speaker 1: for example, the water is fertilizing the soil to enable

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Speaker 1: crops to grow, and that might be represented by some

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Speaker 1: kind of sexual imagery of what looks like a male

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Speaker 1: or a female. The other thing is that they really

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Speaker 1: believed in three terrestrial existences, so the moon and the

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Speaker 1: stars above the land we live on, but also the

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Speaker 1: underworld and those who are undead, so to speak, and

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Speaker 1: the relationship between all three is quite fascinating. And there's

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Speaker 1: a number of objects in the museum which might be

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Speaker 1: confronting for a lot of people because of this sexual imagery,

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Speaker 1: but it's not often sexually based. It's based on fertility

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Speaker 1: and agriculture and spirituality.

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Speaker 2: Gold is a big feature of the exhibition, But were

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Speaker 2: the inc Is interested in gold for its kind of

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Speaker 2: monetary value?

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Speaker 1: No, not really. I mean they would often use gold

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Speaker 1: and silver for things like funery processions and even what

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Speaker 1: they term is as ritual combat. So there was actually

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Speaker 1: human sacrifice, and often it would be defeated warrior for example,

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Speaker 1: from an opposing tribe would offer themselves up for sacrifice

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Speaker 1: and it would be a great honor for them to

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Speaker 1: be sacrificed in a highly ritualistic, elaborate ceremony that would

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Speaker 1: then be watched by the two tribes. So these kind

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Speaker 1: of things and the knives that they used for ritual

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Speaker 1: sacrifice are on display at the museum, and there come

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Speaker 1: from a number of different cultures, not only the Incas.

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Speaker 3: Coming up how Peru is reclaiming its stolen treasures.

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Speaker 2: Being like so many explorers kind of looted it, you know,

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Speaker 2: not only human remains, but also anything that wasn't kind

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Speaker 2: of nailed down back to Yale. Many of those treasures

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Speaker 2: only returned to Peru in the past couple of decades.

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Speaker 2: It's analogous to other debates that are going on, like

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Speaker 2: the elderin marbles, the return of indigenous people's remains to

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Speaker 2: places like Australia. What's your perspective on the fact that

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Speaker 2: Peru has been able to reclaim some of the stuff

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Speaker 2: that was stolen from it.

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Speaker 1: On the one hand, these museums think that they're protecting

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Speaker 1: these objects, they're bringing them to a wide audience, but

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Speaker 1: you know, they often have ended up in those countries

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Speaker 1: because they've been stolen, and sometimes they've been stolen with

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Speaker 1: the approval of the authorities through corruption. You know, they're

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Speaker 1: paying a customs official at a port to allow some

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Speaker 1: kind of object to leave the country. So this is

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Speaker 1: a complex debate. The Peruvians, when I talk to them,

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Speaker 1: are pretty happy with where their things are and that

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Speaker 1: they have been able to own their own history. Many

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Speaker 1: of the objects that are in this exhibition in Sydney

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Speaker 1: come from the Museo Laco in Lima. That's a privately

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Speaker 1: owned museum. The family has been collecting these things for

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Speaker 1: one hundred years. So I did actually ask the director

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Speaker 1: of the museum about this, and she said, no, we

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Speaker 1: have access to our own things that are in other museums,

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Speaker 1: and things have been returned and they are, as I say,

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Speaker 1: learning things themselves around the world.

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Speaker 2: Do you feel as though this is one of those

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Speaker 2: sites that is actually returning some sort of benefit to

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Speaker 2: the people of Peru by having its treasures to the

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Speaker 2: world for example?

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Speaker 1: Absolutely, I mean people seeing this exhibition that they hope

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Speaker 1: will think, well, I want to go there and see

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Speaker 1: it myself. Tourism is a big part of the Peruvian economy.

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Speaker 1: They're showcasing their history, their culture, their traditions to the world.

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Speaker 2: Troy is a senior journalist with The Australian and he

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Speaker 2: went to Peru as a guest the Australian Museum. His

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Speaker 2: story is in our review section, the home of all

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Speaker 2: the best journalism about the arts, culture and entertainment. Pick

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Speaker 2: feely joy of a purely analog experience, or check out

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