In 1913, explorer Hiram Bingham opened the eyes of the world to the Inca's lost city. Now his journals have been re-published. Eileen Battersby reports
Carved from white granite and situated on a high ridge between two Andean mountain peaks overlooking the Urubamba valley in Peru lies Machu Picchu, the Lost City of the Incas. Believed to have been built by the first great Inca emperor, Pachacuti, and sustained by his son Topa Inca, it appears to have served as a royal estate and had a ceremonial significance, particularly in rituals celebrating the Inca's worship of the Sun. It is a magical place surrounded by magnificent scenery and is deservedly called the Sacred Valley and testifies to the Inca belief that natural landscape features such as mountain peaks, stones and brooks were shrines; the dwellings of spirits and gods.
Almost alone of most great ancient races, the Incas left no written record; they never acquired the art of writing. Instead, they left their legacy in stone; in a remarkable series of buildings, temples and palaces, houses, walls and staircases. And, as may be expected, considering the Inca devotion to the sun, Machu Picchu is graced by beautiful windows opening on to the sky.
At its height in the mid-15th century, the Inca empire, through a series of conquests, controlled most of western South America, extending from south-western Colombia, through highland Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, north-west Argentina and the northern half of Chile. The empire could also "claim" the loyalty of some 10 million people. However, its mighty power was to prove short-lived. In 1532, the Spaniard Francisco Pizarro and a small band of Conquistadors invaded Peru and with the empire weakened by civil war, the Spanish captured the fifth Inca emperor, Atahuallpa. A fabulous ransom was paid, but the emperor was put to death and the empire taken.
It is a great story. Following the Spanish conquest, Machu Picchu, a four-day walk from the Inca capital of Cuzco, was abandoned. As the majestic ruins with their lack of administrative buildings and storage silos suggest, this was never an economic centre, nor a military base. Set out along the eastern contours of the hill slope, there are plaza areas and various points from which the movements of the sun could be observed. In its inherent graciousness lie clues to its ceremonial and leisure purpose.
After the empire's decline, the descendants of fallen Inca emperors did not need to maintain royal estates. The last Inca died in 1571.
How do present-day Peruvian Indians, accounting for 50 per cent of Peru's population, view these distant peoples? The glorious architecture left untouched by the Spanish fell victim to nature and time, as jungle growth gradually concealed this planned, ritual city created by gifted stone-masons, where the chosen women, "virgins of the sun", would have lived, along with retainers. Also based here would have been craftsmen engaged in pottery and metalwork and one of the great Inca arts, weaving. Dated at between 500 and 1,000 years old, the city lay silent for more than 300 years, known only to local farmers, until the arrival in 1911 of Yale academic Hiram Bingham, a larger-than-life character who saw himself as an explorer.
For all his learning and fascination with history, he had a spirit of adventure that went beyond books. He also had something to prove. Hiram Bingham III had been born in 1875 in Hawaaii into a former missionary family. His grandfather had converted the islands to Christianity. But status and respect had faltered by the time the young Hiram found himself growing up in genteel poverty in the Honolulu suburbs.
His ambitions, combined with a powerful need to flee the religious fundamentalism of his parents, took him to Yale, where he did well. South America appealed to his romanticism and also his practicality; he was aware that in terms of academic research it was yet unplotted territory. Although European colonisers had long shown an interest in South America, North Americans had been far less curious.
Tentative plans to write a biography on Simón Bolívar, the Venezuelan revolutionary leader who liberated much of South America from Spanish rule, drew Bingham, but true to his personality he changed plans and instead decided he would go to South America and follow Bolívar's route across the continent.
In 1906, aged 31, he set off. The experience in South America proved so thrilling, it gave him a feel for exploration. It also gave him a subject. On his return, he took up a new post, as lecturer in South American history at Yale. It was the first such lectureship at any US Ivy League college - South America had not previously featured on any major US college programme. His career began to take shape, as research soon took him back to South America and he had also become interested in politics.
What would become a passion with the Inca civilisation happened by chance.
On his way to a battlefield that had featured in Bolívar's Wars of Independence, Bingham was roped into a treasure hunt of sorts. It involved the by-then already known, if rarely visited Inca site of Choquequirao (sic). Bingham, a natural opportunist, went along for the trip although, as he would later admit, he had never heard of the ruins. But for him, and the archaeological world, it was the beginning.
Bingham decided to investigate the world of the Incas. His proposals attracted no interested sponsors, so he turned to his wealthier Yale colleagues; some funded him, others went with him. About the time Robert Lloyd Praeger was leading like-minded professional and gentlemen scholars on the research that would become the Clare Island Survey, Bingham, another visionary, albeit one with a flair for showmanship, was setting off on the project of a lifetime. The expedition was well-organised and while, as writer Hugh Thomson points out, the Picchu valley was still little visited in Bingham's time, it was not quite the "timeless vision of pastoral" and more the home of a former mining community forced into farming.
Admittedly, Bingham was a man with a tendency towards theatrics - but he could, and did, tell a good story. He was to write several accounts of his trips and subsequent visits to Machu Picchu; the entire April 1913 issue of National Geographic, complete with spectacular photographs, was devoted to the finds. But his definitive, formal account of his expedition, Lost City of the Incas, written in 1948 - some 37 years after that July day in 1911 when he first glimpsed the site and stood amazed, is a rich, lively book. Now re-issued in a handsome edition complete with Hugh Thomson's fine introduction and superb photographs, it is the classic adventure.
Comsidering the amount of time that had passed between Bingham seeing it and recalling it, his narrative remains fresh. "I know of no place in the world which can compare with it. Not only has it great snow peaks looming above the clouds more than two miles overhead and gigantic precipices of many-coloured granite rising sheer for thousands of feet above the foaming, glistening, roaring rapids, it has also, in striking contrast, orchids and tree ferns, the delectable beauty of luxurious vegetation, and the mysterious witchery of the jungle. Above all, there is the fascination of finding here and there under swaying vines, or perched on top of a beetling crag, the rugged masonry of a bygone race."
His sense of drama is well-served by detailed descriptions and his approach, that of giving the impression he and his guides were merely walking through a landscape when, "Suddenly I found myself confronted with the walls of ruined houses built of the finest quality of Inca stone work. It was hard to see them for they were partly covered with trees and moss, the growth of centuries. Without any warning, under a huge overhanging ledge the boy showed me a cave beautifully lined with the finest cut-stone. It had evidently been a royal mausoleum."
Bingham was struck by its resemblance to the famous Temple of the Sun in Cuzco, remarking that the new find might also be a temple designated for similar worship. The guide, a little boy apparently unaware of the significance of the site, continues the tour: "we came to a great stairway of large granite blocks . . . We found ourselves standing in front of the ruins of two of the finest and most interesting structures in ancient America".
It is as if Bingham is present, describing the experiences of that July day, now more than 90 years ago. Prefacing his account with informative sections dealing with specific areas such as architecture, irrigation, agriculture, domestic animals, civil engineering, customs, language and pottery, he cleverly - and generously - provides sufficient background knowledge to enable us to appreciate the enormity of the Inca achievement. Only then does Bingham allow himself the freedom of the tourist, albeit a scholarly one.
Another of his qualities is his daring; he was unafraid of speculation. Some of his theories have been disproved, as has his contention that it was the birthplace of the Incas, rather than their last great statement.
In 1908, three years before he stood in a clearing that would reveal possibly the greatest man-made treasure of the New World, Bingham had made his first approach to National Geographic.
It went badly. Both of his submitted articles were rejected. However, the following year, on the publication of his book, The Journal of an Expedition Across Venezuela and Colombia, he was approached by the magazine and asked to write a 4,500-word article based on his travels. The earlier rejection still bothered Bingham who declined ill humouredly.
Following his 1911 visit and subsequent discoveries, Bingham again made contact only to be told by the editor Gilbert Grosvenor: "we find there is considerable feeling that the work is archaeologic and not sufficiently geographic". Bingham was not prepared to accept this and pressed his cause further. It worked. The National Geographic Society finally agreed to support Bingham's return to Machu Picchu and announced in the April 1912 issue that it had subscribed $10,000 "to the Peruvian expedition of 1912, to which the friends of Yale University have made an equal grant". It was the society's first archaeological grant.
Bingham returned to Peru, spending several months clearing forest and jungle growth. Excavations were also carried out. It must be conceded Bingham and his colleagues did not practice subtle techniques; crow bars proving a favoured excavation tool.
In the course of this work, however, the remains of 173 individuals, contained within ceremonial burials, dating from Inca settlement were uncovered. In the Wonderland of Peru, Bingham's straightforward expedition report, filled the entire April 1913 National Geographic issue; 186 pages, including eight drawings, two maps and 234 photographs.
The eyes of the world were opened. Bingham's fame almost satisfied him, he went on to discover another lost Inca city, Vitcos, and in time sat in the US senate. His career was turbulent; he made mistakes and lost his seat. In old age, he would again recall his adventures. Bingham died in 1956 at the age of 86.
Today Machu Picchu, still beautiful, still mysterious, and a World Heritage site, is under threat from tourist development. Bingham's book offers it to us as it was before that began. Machu Picchu's greatness lies more in its endorsement of the genius of the Inca architects and stone masons than as a reminder of a long vanquished political power.
There is also an interesting reverse parallel to the winter solstice at Newgrange; a window in the Temple of the Sun at Machu Picchu is aligned with a sacred rock outcrop that was used to observe the movements of the sun. Light forms a striking line there each Summer solstice.
Just as each December, the ancient Incas would have found themselves lamenting the sun's departure to the Northern hemisphere, centuries earlier, and a world away, the tomb builders of the Boyne valley would have been welcoming its return.