Lost City of the Incas (Phoenix Press) Read Free Page B

more excited by some bones which he had found earlier in a glacial deposit near Cuzco. He hoped they might prove to be those of an early man of ground-breaking antiquity and had arranged for photos of the bones to be sent back to the States. This was the discovery that he thought might make him famous, although in the event the bones proved to be relatively recent. He had also focused on his search for Vitcos, the ‘last Inca capital’, which he knew must lie ahead. There was no mention of any Inca ruin in the vicinity of Machu Picchu in any of the early Chronicles, and it seems as if the Spanish were completely unaware of it, so Bingham had no frame of reference in which to place his discovery. To quote the old explorers’ adage, ‘You only ever find what you are looking for.’
    Thus he did not make much of it to his companions or even revisit it, despite having spent just a few hours there, considerably less than the average modern tourist. He arranged for other members of the expedition to do more site clearance in the weeks that followed, while he himself only returned a full year later, on another expedition.
    Bingham may also have realized he was not the first to visit the ruins. As he wrote in his journal, he had seen the name ‘Agustín Lizárraga’ scrawled in charcoal on one of the walls, with a date, 1902. When he descended from Machu Picchu, he asked Melchor Arteaga about this and noted: ‘Agustín Lizárraga is discoverer of Machu Picchu and lives at San Miguel bridge.’ This bridge lay just downstream from the expedition’s camp. Passing by there the next day, Bingham met Lizárraga’sbrother, Ángel, who gave him further information. It must have been apparent that the existence of the ruins was generally known in the valley, even if no one realized their interest or importance. Some of the central plaza was being cultivated by local farmers.
    However, as Bingham slowly began to realize, no one had publicized Machu Picchu. The archaeological authorities in Cuzco, let alone in Lima or the States, were ignorant of it. So while he was not the first person to have been to the ruins, he was the first to realize their importance and make them known to the world. To use the helpful euphemism devised by later Machu Picchu authorities, he was their ‘scientific discoverer’.
    By the time he was next able to write to his wife Alfreda, he told her: ‘my new Inca city, Machu 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.’
    The process of turning it into the ‘fine story’ that
Lost City of the Incas
became took many years. In 1913 Bingham wrote an initial account for the
National Geographic
magazine covering both the ground-breaking expedition of 1911 and also that of 1912, when he returned to clear and excavate Machu Picchu. At the time he was still a lecturer at Yale and so it is a relatively academic and precise account. Then in 1922 he produced a populist travel-book version,
Inca Land
, and in 1930 a specialist account of the excavations at the site,
Machu Picchu, a Citadel of the Incas
. Finally, in 1948, he revised these works to produce
Lost City of the Incas
.
    So by the time he wrote of the ‘Discovery’ (as he came to capitalize it) in this book, he had told the tale many times before and knew precisely how to present it to maximum effect. The original terse phrases he had jotted down in his notebook – ‘Houses, streets, stairs. Finely cut stone.’ – were now expanded into a theatrical sequence of architectural wonder, in which each new building was applauded at its entrance.
    In the early
National Geographic
account, he had kept to a more prosaic description:
    Presently we found ourselves in the midst of a tropical forest, beneath the shade of whose trees we could make out a maze of ancient walls, the ruins of buildings made of blocks of granite, some of which were beautifully fitted