When the Spain conquered Mexico and discovered gold in made Spain the richest country in the world. Not content to take the riches of Mexico, they sent their conquistadors south to another  kingdom that had many riches. The Inca empire controlled the western side of the South America  or the Andes Mountain Range with its headquarters in Peru. The Spanish interested in the riches of the Incas attacked first and captured the emperor – the Incas gave the Pizarro’s rooms full of gold and silver which wetted the brothers imaginations. Similar to most conquerors they were not satisfied and wanted more. After a few years of fighting, and aligning with the natives who felt injustice from the Incas and some Incas who wanted power themselves, the Spanish prevailed in controlling Peru. The Inca empire from an engineering point of view was light years ahead of European knowledge and not understanding it, meant their cities were left to the jungle which overran the cities. 400 years later, people began to look for the lost cities and the rumor of hidden gold. Into the mix comes a modern day Indiana Jones – Hiram Bingham. In the book Cradle of Gold written by Christopher Heaney, published by St. Marin’s Press, NY, 2010 examines how he discovered some of the lost cities of Peru.

Hiram Bingham was raised in believing the natives of any society did not have the capabilities of Europeans or in the early 1900’s those that went to the Ivy League Institutions on the east coast of the US. The schools include Yale, where Mr. Bingham went to and included many children of wealthy families. The choice was business or university research – Mr. Bingham was fascinated by South America and wanted to build up the department at Yale. He would travel the routes of Incas and then lecture about his travels during school year and also try to promote the countries to the future business people. The book is a detective story about the routes of the Incas – going to search for any lost civilization and finding the most famous – the beautiful Machu Picchu. Now days it is visited by 800,000 people a year and most come by train or bus; in Mr. Bingham’s day it was by mule and climbing the cliffs. The Incas carved off the top of the mountain to build a city and along the way terraced the mountain side as the early morning mountain mist gave water to the crops. The sun would come up and warm the earth during the day. The Incas also created vast irrigation systems to move the water from the rivers to the fertile planes (some you may have heard about from the question did man do this or aliens? It turns out many native communities were advance of European communities. The Incas worshipped the sun and many of their communities take advantage of the sun – it seems odd that with no more cheap energy we have to do the same thing as the Incas.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, the analogy is Mr. Bingham brought passion, detective skills, and some money to investigate his theories. He also brought time to investigate all locations. Others could have, but he did. Everyone comes up with a theory of making money on the stock market and it is important to investigate but it seems investing in profitable companies which pay a dividend will allow you more time to follow your passions.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.