by Patrick Hunt
Machu Picchu before and after Hiram Bingham
Before considering Hiram Bingham’s role in bringing Machu Picchu to light, it is important to consider what exploration may have preceded his dramatic visit. Several earlier European explorers and locals may have seen a bit of Machu Picchu before Bingham in 1911. Charles Wiener in 1880 had certainly heard of a lost mountain city in this region. Augustin Lizárraga knew of or sought a site above the jungle around 1899 or 1900 and may have even camped among the ruins without realizing how much lay underneath him. Two local Quechua villagers named Alvarez and Recharte apparently explored its agricultural terraces and may have even reused a fraction of them for a few years before Bingham arrived. But it is Hiram Bingham who placed Machu Picchu solidly on the world’s consciousness with his rediscovery in 1911. He was in the company of a Quechua man named Arteaga who seemed to have camped across the river gorge from Machu Picchu in 1910 and therefore became Bingham’s guide through this dangerous mountain region.
If there were ever a born explorer, Hiram Bingham fills those shoes. Few realize that the fictional character of Indiana Jones, archaeologist-explorer-adventurer extraordinaire, was most likely derived or modeled after Hiram Bingham. His family stock was Mayflower New Englanders, with famous names like Jonathan Brewster (1795-1865), his maternal grandfather, or the minister Hiram Bingham I (1789-1869), his paternal grandfather and namesake. Born of missionary parents in Hawaii in 1875, young Hiram Bingham III clambered up misty jungled peaks in Hawaii very similar to Peru’s rain-clouded cliffs. One difference that perhaps stood out to the intrepid Bingham in 1911 was that, whereas native venomous snakes were unknown in Hawaii, in Peru he had to watch every step, not just slippery rocks but what crawled or slithered over them.
If there is an “exploring” gene somewhere yet undiscovered on the human genome map, Hiram Bingham must have possessed it. After a solid private school education and further privileged education at Yale, Harvard and Berkeley, Bingham appeared to be setting out on a worthy academic career. But first he needed some adventurous fieldwork to establish an academic reputation at Yale, where he was teaching as a junior faculty member. After taking part in the First Pan-American Scientific Congress in Santiago, Chile, in 1908, he decided to remain in South America to study the meandering routes of Simón Bolivar in his early-nineteenth-century independence journeys. He followed one leg of the long trip from Buenos Aires, Argentina, on his way to Lima, Peru. But he stopped somewhere in the middle, most likely Inca-rich Cuzco with its prolific Inca masonry, which still forms the foundations of this former capital city of a pre-Columbian empire. Cuzco was the once-proud navel of the Inca cosmos from which the four corners of the world spread out along its amazing road network. One road led west over the mountains to the Pacific coast; another led east to the green jungles; yet another went south to the Tiwanaku altiplano (a high plateau averaging over twelve thousand feet in elevation) and Lake Titicaca. The last road led north to what is now Ecuador and even Colombia. In Cuzco, after meeting with people like J. J. Nunez, who convinced him of the importance of the Inca, Bingham traded colonial history and the harsh thin Spanish overlay for the deeper undercurrent of older Inca lore. After hearing the story of the then lost city of Vilcabamba and seeing ruins in the region, Bingham heard rumors of another lost Inca city in the remote mountain jungles to the northeast and decided to search for it, abandoning all other research for the time being. He returned to the United States and Yale and then came back to Peru and assembled a team in 1911. This team included a police sergeant from Cuzco named Carrasco and intermediary guides, villagers who either knew of unmapped ruins or knew other distant villagers who would take him closer to the probable region.
His several-week journey involved going over the high Anta Plateau and down into the Yucay Valley by mule team, and finally hiking along the Urubamba gorge past Ollantaytambo. Bingham’s team at last set up camp on July 23 at a place called Mandor Pampa, where the Urubamba River twists and turns almost a full circle through high granite peaks. Here a local farmer named Melchor Arteaga was curious about Bingham’s search and either offered assistance for pay or was sought out because it was known he was farming in man-made ruined terraces on a high jungle plateau nearby that he called Machu Picchu. He translated this from his Quechua tongue as “Old Mountain,” and above its ridge was a much higher jagged peak he called Huayna Picchu, or “New Mountain.” Bingham wanted to explore the high unseen ruins early the next day but, in his own words:The morning of July 24th dawned in a cold drizzle. Arteaga shivered and seemed inclined to stay in his hut. I offered to pay him well if he showed me the ruins. He demurred and said it was too hard a climb for such a wet day. But when he found I was willing to pay him a sol, three or four times the ordinary daily wage, he finally agreed to go. When asked just where the ruins were, he pointed straight up to the top of the mountain. No one supposed that they would be particularly interesting, and no one cared to go with me.
Reading Bingham’s words today about this discovery, they seem condescending about Arteaga and at least Eurocentric. Perhaps there is a hint that Bingham fashioned himself after nostalgic perceptions of his hardy New England ancestors who seemed to believe they were innately superior to any natives. Arteaga probably knew best how slippery the nearly vertical climb—about two thousand feet up—would be and how the unmarked trail they would have to create would be crossed by many venomous snakes. After crawling across a rotting rope bridge over the frothing Urubamba, there is no doubt Bingham climbed for hours ever upward through the jungle before finally setting eyes on the astonishing stone masonry ruins of Machu Picchu under a cover of jungle vines atop the ridge. That he was the first English speaker to describe his personal discovery in great detail is probably not debatable. There are other controversies, however, that have surfaced since 1916, in keeping with rising nationalism and debates about cultural patrimony and illicit antiquities.
Controversy over Machu Picchu’s collected remains
What happened to the antiquities Hiram Bingham excavated from Machu Picchu’s royal tombs and other places at its archaeological site, digging, collecting and cataloging from 1912 to around 1916? Although there has been a battle over the antiquities since the early twentieth century, it has been mostly a private dispute between the Peruvian government and Yale University, which has long claimed the so-called Bingham Collection, as the institutional sponsor of his research at Machu Picchu. Yale has held for decades that Bingham had permission to remove objects—now a debated issue—and to keep a permanent collection at the university after having possibly returned some requested materials.
But times change, as demonstrated by international legal action taken against American museums like the Metropolitan, the Getty and Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, all of which acquired collections of materials in the 1980s and 1990s, materials that Italy, Greece and Turkey, among other countries, claim to have been illicitly excavated and sold illegally without proper documentation or provenance.
In 2001, Alejandro Toledo was duly elected president of Peru, the first indigenous person and Quechua speaker to do so, after generations of Spanish colonialism. Toledo held part of his inauguration at Machu Picchu with somber dignity, a proud reminder of his Inca heritage, which the Spanish-dominated culture had suppressed for centuries. Toledo had started out as a shoeshine boy and eventually won scholarships to schools in the United States, including a degree program in economics at Stanford University. He was heralded for a time as the future of Peru, although the inescapable charges of nepotism so common in Latin America also tainted his administration.
While the issue of repatriating Peruvian material had quietly dragged on for decades between Peru and Yale University, with both sides claiming legal rights of ownership, when Yale staged an exhibition in 2003-5 of some of the contested Machu Picchu material, Peruvians took it very badly. To them it was a diplomatic slap in the face by a global superpower against a developing nation. All hell broke loose.
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sp; One article in the Times (London) in February 2006 reported:A battle between Yale University and Peru over treasures from Machu Picchu, the city of the Incas, has highlighted a worrying issue for museum curators: how many prized treasures in their collections are plundered goods that should be restored to the rightful owners? . . . The quarrel between Peru and Yale’s Peabody Museum is similar, even if Hiram Bingham—the swashbuckling explorer, aviator and professor who discovered Machu Picchu in 1911—won a “special dispensation” from the government to take Inca artefacts out of Peru. For decades, the mainly ceramic treasures sat in boxes at Yale as Peru called for their return. Three years ago, the Peabody staged an Inca exhibition that included artifacts Bingham had brought home. The Peruvians were furious . . . Peru threatened to sue Yale and make public its campaign unless the artefacts were returned, but the university insisted it had a proper title to several hundred items and had already returned others.
The diplomatic brouhaha is not yet fully resolved in mid 2006 to the satisfaction of both parties, although Yale has promised to negotiate the return of part of the collection and install them in a museum in Peru. The university will likely keep its word as a demonstration of institutional integrity in the face of world scrutiny, rather than face the charges of vestigial cultural imperialism. Peru, on the other hand, is unwilling to negotiate away its title to the entire collection and lays the onus on Yale for acting in a cavalier way with Peruvian patrimony. Such is the legacy of Machu Picchu that even its remote buried artifacts excavated by an early explorer continue to inspire the imagination and marvel of subsequent generations. Judging by the market in illegal antiquities—not even counting the mostly legal conflict between Peru and Yale—such an Inca or pre-Columbian legacy may also inspire the greed of dealers and collectors.
In 1988 I was with several other archaeologists during an early morning at a Peruvian site, which I will leave unnamed for reasons of safety. One of the first things we noticed when we arrived and were greeted by the site custodians—local Quechuas employed by the Instituto Nacional de Cultura to guard it—were the bulging pockets and dirty hands of these guards, fingernails encrusted with soil. After a short time on-site, certain artifacts, apparently dug up during the night, came out of the guards’ pockets and were offered to us for sale. This was not really a surprise, but we had to be careful. We knew if we had bought the objects, the incentive for sales would only stimulate more illegal trafficking and loss to the site, exacerbating the situation.
Such is the huge demand for pre-Columbian artifacts in Europe and North America that what these guards might sell on-site for a few pesos could easily garner hundreds or thousands of dollars in a slick gallery in New York or London. But the outcome is always the same—loss to the archaeological site and the inexorable caveat emptor: let the buyer beware. Roger Atwood’s recent book, Stealing History (2004), lays bare the trail of greed and blood over South American antiquities, among others, that collectors prefer to ignore. The exorbitant prices commanded for them in a European capital city are understandable given the many hands of middlemen through which illicit objects pass, and it should be no surprise that this is accompanied by often sordid stories of organized crime cartels using antiquities for money laundering. Few collectors or dealers of objects acquired after 1970 (when specific international laws were enacted regarding artifacts from some countries fearful of losing their cultural patrimony to outside collectors) can guarantee the provenance of these objects because their methods of acquisition are likely unverifiable. Often legal documents between parties or datable bills for transport of antiquities are missing because they never existed and others were fabricated to fill the gap. The mystique of objects from Inca culture and the very name of Machu Picchu may continue to inspire because the place is so spectacular. In my estimation, Machu Picchu is far more inspiring for those who have walked its terraces than for those who have never seen it firsthand and can only imagine it.
Conclusion: A Personal Machu Picchu
My own experiences in Machu Picchu were not in any way pioneering. The primary research I conducted there was to scientifically confirm the granitoid quarry of the site itself as the immediate “valley” between the Intiwatana and the Great Stairway, and also to augment Inca stoneworking research already begun by Agurto Calvo and Protzen. But my time at Machu Picchu was nonetheless unmistakably part of a personal mile-stone “high,” just as the site has made indelible impressions on everyone who has been there since Hiram Bingham himself.
I remember my own personal discovery of the site of Machu Picchu for the first time after a night slightly downriver, in Aguas Calientes, sleeping in a cot shared with centipedes. The hot springs there—also appreciated by the Inca ruling class—were so blissful that I didn’t make much fuss about the critters nestled at the foot of my sleeping bag. The long climb up to Machu Picchu from the Urubamba valley floor must be appreciated firsthand to understand how Hiram Bingham would not have been able to see any ruins from thousands of feet down below, covered as they were by dense high jungle foliage. The towering peaks create a deeply vertical topography that is even more majestic from Machu Picchu itself. At the end of a long day exploring and studying Machu Picchu and conducting stoneworking research, I remember a certain incident as if it happened yesterday, although it was almost two decades ago.
The old Inca rulers had high priest relatives called amautas who were an amalgam of amazing skills. They were somehow a combination of poets, composers, astronomers, architects and mathematicians and achieved other intellectual and creative hall-marks in that great culture. Amautas not only helped determine the seasons by reckoning with the Intiwatana, the “Hitching Post of the Sun,” marking alignment of solstices and other calendrical events to determine when to plant crops, but they also master-minded the rituals of planting and wrote and performed group planting hymns for their people. I happen to love music, and I always carry a recorder flute with me on journeys. While en route over the Anta highland plateau on our way to the Urubamba valley, we encountered a local festival where all vehicles including ours were stopped by locals to pay a toll for “electrificacion” or some other purpose. We obliged them with a donation, then we pulled over, got out of the vehicle and enjoyed the festival. We ate cuyi asado—roast guinea pig tasting a bit like tangy chicken—and drank fresh chicha corn beer made by toothless Quechua women spitting corn into a huge vat for quick fermenting. I had already tried the chicha frutillada and the chicha morada (fruit and corn beer) but passed on the chicha encantada (the enchanted hallucinogenic beer).
During this mountain festival, a group of itinerant Quechua musicians assembled and played armadillo guitars and long wooden qena flutes as well as zambona panpipes. Clearly enjoying themselves, they were both loosely grouped and familiar with the informal music, taking turns on musical solos. I approached the band, listening with pleasure and nodding enthusiastically to the contagious rhythms. Finally with a grin, I took my recorder flute out of my pocket and waved it shyly at them. Immediately and without pausing, several Quechua musicians beckoned me to join them in the music. I was afraid of making a fool of myself but did not want to be rude or cause insult, so I clambered up on the crude rickety platform and tried to hide myself—difficult because I was at least a foot and a half taller—and began quietly at first to find a common tonal center. I was fairly sure Quechua music was pentatonic—a scale of five notes like the black keys on a piano—and this proved true. I found the right pentatonic “mode” and could play along fairly easily and even found the syncopated melody delightful. The other players grinned at me, nodding to the music, and afterward one flautist offered to buy my flute for what would have been an extravagant sum for him. I gently shook my head no, and, not wishing to be outdone by such a display of courtesy, I offered my flute to the man as a gift instead, which I would have regretted had he accepted. To my relief, he didn’t accept; it was just an elaborate show of respect. A few days later in Machu Picchu I was grateful I still had my record
er flute because of what happened there.
It was late afternoon at Machu Picchu and my research notebooks were closed and put away in my archaeologist’s tough backpack. A light mist was descending through wisps of clouds that hung on the peaks. The site was deserted. I looked for a place to sit and reflect by myself for a few moments. After a few minutes, I found a perfect spot north of the Torreón sun temple. Here I could look out over the deep jungle from a natural amphitheater refashioned into terraces. The jungle disappeared below me into a valley so deep the almost circular fold of the Urubamba River that wrapped around and protected Machu Picchu on three sides could not even be seen. Across the sheer valley, at least a mile distant, cliff walls of granite met the eye. Although I was not sure of it at the time, part of Machu Picchu at this very location has curved descending terraces that create a bowl-like shape, like a megaphone cone enhancing sound qualities—I wondered if its dramatic setting had been intended for performance. I had long studied ancient amphitheaters across many continents, especially Greek and Roman amphitheaters in Europe, the Near East and North Africa. Amazing acoustic qualities are found in nearly every one, a deliberate feature of the ancient architects. Designed echo and reverberation are uncanny in such places. Almost intuitively I pulled out my flute for a few minutes of relaxing play, not really thinking about acoustics, instead being mesmerized by the sheer setting of cliffs looming above and plummeting below. But after playing only a few notes, I was stunned to find an almost perfect echo of my flute melody returning back to me, apparently bouncing off the huge facing vertical granite wall a mile away with only the shortest delay. I could hardly believe it, because there was no decay of sound as one might expect. The echo was almost as loud as the note directly played. The flute notes hung in the air for a few seconds that seemed unreal, apparently also reverberating from the cliffs behind and around me as well.