author
Augustus Le Plongeon
1826–1908
An early photographer of Maya ruins, he helped create some of the first systematic visual records of sites like Chichén Itzá and Uxmal. His work left a valuable historical archive, even though many of his grand theories about ancient civilizations were later rejected.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Born on Jersey in the Channel Islands, Augustus Le Plongeon was a 19th-century photographer, antiquarian, and explorer best known for his work in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. With his wife, Alice Dixon Le Plongeon, he spent years documenting Maya sites, producing photographs that remain important records of monuments and carvings.
He is often remembered for being among the first people to systematically excavate and photograph places such as Chichén Itzá and Uxmal. That careful visual documentation gave later researchers a window into ruins and sculptures as they appeared in the late 1800s.
At the same time, many of his ideas about the Maya and their connections to Atlantis, Egypt, and other ancient cultures were not accepted by scholars and were later disproven. Even so, his photographs and fieldwork continue to matter because they preserved details of sites and objects that might otherwise have been lost.