Hiram Bingham would be pleased! He may not have discovered Machu Picchu — earlier travelers had happened upon the site, the plaza was planted in corn when he first laid eyes on it, and he was led for a first view of Machu Picchu on a hot afternoon on July 24, 1911 by Melchor Arteaga, a local farmer. Machu Picchu may not be “the last capital of the Incas” or any such thing (scholars are agreed it was a summer estate of the great Pachacuti). But Hiram Bingham nonetheless recognized what he had found, writing home to his wife Alfreda: “my new Inca City, Mach Picchu … is far more wonderful and interesting than Choquequirao. The stone is as fine as any in Cuzco! It is unknown and will make a fine story.” And so it did!  Hiram Bingham brought the site to the attention of the world, organizing an expedition back with his buddies from Yale in 1912 to clear and excavate Machu Picchu, filling a whole issue of National Geographic in 1913 with his Discovery — and writing a series of popular accounts, culminating with Lost City of the Incas in 1948. For that we owe him great thanks.  Hugh Thomson recounts the full story in the new introduction to the centenary edition, a must read for any traveler.

I bet Bingham would be pleased too at the fuss over the many boxes of tools, bones, ceramic, metal, bone and other objects hauled home to the Peabody Museum at Yale. After much diplomatic tussling, the first 17 boxes were returned to Cuszo with great fanfare on June 23, 2011 (see photo above with the Inca flag unfurled in the streets of Cuzco). Greeted by crowds and with President Alan Garcia was on hand, the objects were ceremoniously paraded from the airport to Koricancha. In February Yale and the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco signed an agreement for a joint center, which includes a museum and storage facility, housed at the recently renovated Casa Concha in the center of Cusco. The first section of the new museum in Cusco should be open to the public by the end of the year.

Lucy Salazar, the Yale anthropologist who co-curated the 2003 Machu Picchu exhibition at the Peabody, was on hand for the festivities. Salazar and fellow Yale researcher Richard Burger (now husband and wife) co-curated both the exhibition based on Bingham’s material and the excellent companion book.  Burger told Yale Alumni Magazine, “As an explorer, Bingham was the real thing — what he accomplished was remarkably courageous and risky. His strategy for analyzing the site was way ahead of his time,” says Burger. “Unfortunately, when it came to interpreting what he found, Bingham got most of it seriously wrong.”

For the thrill of adventure and still unbeatable descriptions, read Bingham’s Lost City of the Incas. And for the latest understanding of the this mysterious royal estate, we suggest Burger and Salazar’s beautifully illustrated Machu Picchu, Unveiling the Mystery of the Inca. As a bonus, it includes a reprint of Hiram Bingham’s original article, The Discovery of Machu Picchu, which appeared in the April 1913 Harper’s Monthly. Bingham, we note, gave full credit to his guide Melchor Arteaga, making plain that the site was known to the local people.

Essential Reading Machu Picchu & the Inca Trail

- Darrel Schoeling