Speaker 1: It looked like said, like a chicken saute type thing.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: It's really small anyway, so I ate it, but it
Speaker 1: was a bit weird. The guy next to me took
Speaker 1: one bite and he vomited on straight away at the table,
Speaker 1: at the table on top of people.
Speaker 2: From The Australian. This is the weekend edition of The Front.
Speaker 2: I'm Claire Harvey. In today's episode, We're off to the
Speaker 2: Lost City of the Inkers Matchipitchew with Troy Branston. Troy
Speaker 2: is a senior columnist for The Australian, but he's also
Speaker 2: our in house renaissance man, a history buff author and
Speaker 2: an adventurous traveler. He's our very own Stanley Tucci. This
Speaker 2: trip to Darkest Peru wasn't just a holiday. Troy was
Speaker 2: a guest of the Australian Museum and it's all in
Speaker 2: aid of their exhibition that's live now, Golden Empires of Peru.
Speaker 2: So Troy, had you heard of matchw Pitchu before he
Speaker 2: went on this expedition.
Speaker 1: For me, I'd always been really interested in it, and
Speaker 1: I have this opportunity to go as a guest of
Speaker 1: the Australian Museum to see Matchupitchu. Immediately, when I have
Speaker 1: this opportunity, my mind went back to Indiana Jones and
Speaker 1: the Raiders Lost Arc the opening scene where he's in
Speaker 1: the Peruvian temple. He lifts up the golden fertility idol
Speaker 1: replaces it with a bag of sand. He thinks it's okay,
Speaker 1: and then the boulder comes after him. Because Matchi Pitcher
Speaker 1: was only rediscovered about one hundred years ago, it has
Speaker 1: that sort of lur of being a place of mystery
Speaker 1: and magical wonder that people want to go and see
Speaker 1: for themselves, like you are, Indiana Jones.
Speaker 2: That boulder scene from Raiders of the Lost Dark is
Speaker 2: of course referenced in almost every movie these days. I've
Speaker 2: recently watched Paddington in Peru twice, which is the extent
Speaker 2: of my research for this interview, which features Paddington making
Speaker 2: his way to match You, Pitch You, and then a
Speaker 2: giant boulder destroys the inco site.
Speaker 1: Right, it is one of those things, you know, everybody knows,
Speaker 1: that famous picture from above of seeing this sort of
Speaker 1: city upon a mountaintop, wondering what it is, how it
Speaker 1: got there, And of course when the Spanish conquisitors came
Speaker 1: through Peru and South America in the early fifteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: they destroyed a lot of these sites, but they never
Speaker 1: found match You Pitchu, so it was untouched, and when
Speaker 1: the Yale University, Academic High and Bingham rediscovered it in
Speaker 1: nineteen eleven, it became a world sensation. And then for
Speaker 1: the last one hundred years, people have been trying to
Speaker 1: work out, firstly, how on earth did this place come
Speaker 1: about and what was its purpose.
Speaker 2: It's been said the key to understanding other cultures is
Speaker 2: to listen to their music. Over the past couple of decades,
Speaker 2: with shows like Parts Unknown and Netflix's Street Food, it
Speaker 2: seems it's food that's the most powerful when it comes
Speaker 2: to unlocking different cultures.
Speaker 3: So it was in the spirit of.
Speaker 2: Anthony Bourdin that Troy didn't shy away from one of
Speaker 2: Peru's delicacies.
Speaker 1: I did try guinea pig.
Speaker 3: That most people consider a household pet.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't recommend it. It tasted a bit like sort
Speaker 1: of bland pork to me. But yeah, if you can
Speaker 1: get that image of the very little guinea pig squeaking
Speaker 1: away out of your mind, might really enjoy it.
Speaker 2: I think you know, will have managed to come to
Speaker 2: groups with eating some kind of cute creatures, but guinea
Speaker 2: pig feels like a bridge too far.
Speaker 1: Well, I think, unlike Australia, where tourists come and they
Speaker 1: eat crocodile or emu or something like that, a lot
Speaker 1: of Peruvians eat guinea pig. It's a big part of
Speaker 1: their culture.
Speaker 2: He one of your traveling companions didn't enjoy it as
Speaker 2: much though.
Speaker 1: Yes, another journalist I was on the trip with took
Speaker 1: one bite and he brought it up straight away. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't know whether that was the guinea pig. It
Speaker 1: might have mean, it might have been something else. He
Speaker 1: didn't finish it, But I'm proud to say that I
Speaker 1: struggled through to say that I did eat guinea pig.
Speaker 1: But as I say, Cloud wouldn't recommend.
Speaker 3: Very manfully conquered the guinea Thank.
Speaker 2: You, thank you.
Speaker 1: That's my Indiana Jones prowress.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about the Inkers.
Speaker 2: This is a remarkable civilization, but they didn't have a
Speaker 2: system of writing that we can recognize. They didn't invent
Speaker 2: the wheel, and they didn't even use any kind of
Speaker 2: draft animals. So how on earth did they build this civilization?
Speaker 1: Yeah? This is one of the lost cities of the
Speaker 1: Inca civilization, a very advanced civilization in many ways, and
Speaker 1: Peru's matic picture is a really good example of that
Speaker 1: because it's built on several fault lines, it's two and
Speaker 1: a half thousand meters above sea level. It's constructed with
Speaker 1: this series of interlocking rocks, so there was a quarry
Speaker 1: on one side of the mountain, so they'd have to
Speaker 1: break the rocks massive stones and put them in place
Speaker 1: through a kind of interlinking system so that the seismic
Speaker 1: activity could be absorbed by these rocks moving back and
Speaker 1: forth but not collapsing. There's a series of Roman style aqueducts,
Speaker 1: and of course they grew crops, and they actually genetically
Speaker 1: modified some of their crops for different altitudes so they
Speaker 1: could grow these crops for a self sustaining community. So
Speaker 1: there are still archaeologists and scientists examining this site today
Speaker 1: and still learning new things.
Speaker 2: You mentioned the fertility symbol in rates of the lost ark.
Speaker 3: Fertility.
Speaker 2: Sexuality was a big part of their artistic expression, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. They believed in fertility of the land
Speaker 1: and often they would represent that through sexual imagery. So
Speaker 1: for example, the water is fertilizing the soil to enable
Speaker 1: crops to grow, and that might be represented by some
Speaker 1: kind of sexual imagery of what looks like a male
Speaker 1: or a female. The other thing is that they really
Speaker 1: believed in three terrestrial existences, so the moon and the
Speaker 1: stars above the land we live on, but also the
Speaker 1: underworld and those who are undead, so to speak, and
Speaker 1: the relationship between all three is quite fascinating. And there's
Speaker 1: a number of objects in the museum which might be
Speaker 1: confronting for a lot of people because of this sexual imagery,
Speaker 1: but it's not often sexually based. It's based on fertility
Speaker 1: and agriculture and spirituality.
Speaker 2: Gold is a big feature of the exhibition, But were
Speaker 2: the inc Is interested in gold for its kind of
Speaker 2: monetary value?
Speaker 1: No, not really. I mean they would often use gold
Speaker 1: and silver for things like funery processions and even what
Speaker 1: they term is as ritual combat. So there was actually
Speaker 1: human sacrifice, and often it would be defeated warrior for example,
Speaker 1: from an opposing tribe would offer themselves up for sacrifice
Speaker 1: and it would be a great honor for them to
Speaker 1: be sacrificed in a highly ritualistic, elaborate ceremony that would
Speaker 1: then be watched by the two tribes. So these kind
Speaker 1: of things and the knives that they used for ritual
Speaker 1: sacrifice are on display at the museum, and there come
Speaker 1: from a number of different cultures, not only the Incas.
Speaker 3: Coming up how Peru is reclaiming its stolen treasures.
Speaker 2: Being like so many explorers kind of looted it, you know,
Speaker 2: not only human remains, but also anything that wasn't kind
Speaker 2: of nailed down back to Yale. Many of those treasures
Speaker 2: only returned to Peru in the past couple of decades.
Speaker 2: It's analogous to other debates that are going on, like
Speaker 2: the elderin marbles, the return of indigenous people's remains to
Speaker 2: places like Australia. What's your perspective on the fact that
Speaker 2: Peru has been able to reclaim some of the stuff
Speaker 2: that was stolen from it.
Speaker 1: On the one hand, these museums think that they're protecting
Speaker 1: these objects, they're bringing them to a wide audience, but
Speaker 1: you know, they often have ended up in those countries
Speaker 1: because they've been stolen, and sometimes they've been stolen with
Speaker 1: the approval of the authorities through corruption. You know, they're
Speaker 1: paying a customs official at a port to allow some
Speaker 1: kind of object to leave the country. So this is
Speaker 1: a complex debate. The Peruvians, when I talk to them,
Speaker 1: are pretty happy with where their things are and that
Speaker 1: they have been able to own their own history. Many
Speaker 1: of the objects that are in this exhibition in Sydney
Speaker 1: come from the Museo Laco in Lima. That's a privately
Speaker 1: owned museum. The family has been collecting these things for
Speaker 1: one hundred years. So I did actually ask the director
Speaker 1: of the museum about this, and she said, no, we
Speaker 1: have access to our own things that are in other museums,
Speaker 1: and things have been returned and they are, as I say,
Speaker 1: learning things themselves around the world.
Speaker 2: Do you feel as though this is one of those
Speaker 2: sites that is actually returning some sort of benefit to
Speaker 2: the people of Peru by having its treasures to the
Speaker 2: world for example?
Speaker 1: Absolutely, I mean people seeing this exhibition that they hope
Speaker 1: will think, well, I want to go there and see
Speaker 1: it myself. Tourism is a big part of the Peruvian economy.
Speaker 1: They're showcasing their history, their culture, their traditions to the world.
Speaker 2: Troy is a senior journalist with The Australian and he
Speaker 2: went to Peru as a guest the Australian Museum. His
Speaker 2: story is in our review section, the home of all
Speaker 2: the best journalism about the arts, culture and entertainment. Pick
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