KEY POINTS:
When the handsome American explorer Hiram Bingham set out from the
Peruvian city of Cuzco by mule train in early July 1911, he had high hopes of discovering some lost Inca ruins.
Lavishly funded by the National Geographic Society and wealthy friends
at Yale University, within days Bingham had stumbled upon Machu Picchu, the "lost city of the Incas". The city of stone terraces, carved out the
Andean peaks, had been abandoned four centuries earlier and Bingham's
discovery guaranteed him a place in the pantheon of the world's greatest explorers.
That legacy is now being challenged as historians turn up documents and
maps suggesting the city had been lost and found several times before the photogenic Bingham's unforgettable account of discovering successive
treasures of the city on a forested ridge.
Something of a mountaineer and historian, Bingham later became the
model for the bullwhip-cracking fictional hero Indiana Jones.
The story goes that, within a couple of days of leaving Cuzco, Bingham
came across a local man who told him about some Inca ruins.
Half-heartedly, Bingham set out on a humid day and, after crossing
plunging rapids on a spindly bridge of logs fastened to boulders and
hacking his way through jungle, he became the first Westerner to set eyes on the fabled Machu Picchu.
Soon he was carting thousands of artefacts, mummies, stone carvings
and other relics of the ancient Inca civilisation back to Yale.
The Peruvians have long acknowledged that Bingham was the "scientific
discoverer" of Machu Picchu and that he cleared, photographed, and studied the ruins, making them known to the outside world through the pages of National Geographic. However, academic politeness is being put to one side. Peru claims that the mummies and other artefacts were only ever loaned to Yale and is preparing legal action to recover treasures that Bingham removed.
In recent months, evidence has emerged that German engineer Augusto
Berns may have discovered Machu Picchu 40 years earlier. In fact, almost from the moment National Geographic trumpeted Bingham's discovery,
others rushed forward claiming to have beaten him to it.
The most damaging evidence to undercut Bingham's legacy has come from a
cartographer, Pablo Greer, in the magazine South American Explorer. He
discovered that Berns spent years hunting for Inca sites with local guides.
One Peruvian historian claims to have found evidence in Yale University's archives of a Government document allowing Berns to plunder
treasure from the region.
A dispute that seemed headed for an amicable settlement has now flared
into a full-scale row with both Yale and the Peruvian Government seizing on the latest revelations about the approval given to Berns to loot the site in order to bolster their claims.
- INDEPENDENT
