Turn Right at MacHu Picchu 12-Copy Floor Display - Mark Adams [129]
Regardless of what he implied in Lost City of the Incas, Hiram Bingham was definitely not the discoverer of Machu Picchu. He may have been the “scientific discoverer,” as a plaque inside the entrance to the ruins credits him, but I never came around to that name. The polio vaccine was a scientific discovery. Radium was a scientific discovery. John was right. If you tried to understand Machu Picchu in isolation, from a purely secular viewpoint, you were bound to miss something important.
The truth about Bingham, perhaps the only thing Paolo Greer and Eliane Karp-Toledo would have agreed on, is that he did something less romantic but ultimately much more important than discovering Machu Picchu. He saw the ruins, quickly determined their importance (if not their origin) and popularized them to a degree that they couldn’t be blown up with dynamite or knocked over in the search for buried gold, as Vitcos had been. Would Machu Picchu exist if Hiram Bingham had never seen it? Of course. Would it be the same Machu Picchu we know today? Almost certainly not.
Similarly, if he’d never published Lost City of the Incas, would Bingham have been accused of stealing credit for the discovery? No. Was he the original Indiana Jones? Not exactly. But if he hadn’t published Lost City of the Incas, would the character of Indiana Jones ever have existed? Probably not, at least not in the form we know.
Did Bingham steal artifacts from Peru? Yes. If he were alive today, would he want the artifacts at the Peabody Museum to be returned to Peru? Almost certainly, yes. It was hard to argue with that 1916 note he’d written to Gilbert Grosvenor: “The objects do not belong to us, but to the Peruvian government.”
A few months later, in a move that took most observers completely by surprise, Yale finally agreed with its most swashbuckling alumnus. A new memo of understanding was signed between the university and the government of Peru, and the most eye-catching pieces on display at the Peabody Museum were packed up to be returned to Cusco in time to be put on display for the hundredth anniversary of Bingham’s achievement. The rest of the collection was scheduled to follow not long after, to be housed in a research facility open to Yale scholars as well as Peruvians. Lawsuits were dropped on both sides and everyone pretended that things had turned out exactly as they’d hoped all along. Bingham would have been pleased, both as an explorer and as a politician.
Late in the afternoon of our last day on the Inca Trail, John, Efrain and I passed through the control booth and entered the Machu Picchu Historical Sanctuary. The final stretch of stone trail undulated up and down until it reached a long set of white stairs extending toward the sky. At their summit stood a set of tall stone pillars.
“We call this the gringo killer,” Efrain said.
I reached the top of the stairs, winded, and looked around. I was standing in the Sun Gate. Below me stretched a long stone path (upon which a certain Australian was quickly disappearing, GPS in hand), sets of terraces and, at the far end, the familiar green rhino horn of Huayna Picchu. Nestled in between, in the jewelry box of the surrounding mountains, was the still-breathtaking citadel of Machu Picchu.
FIFTY
The Sun Temple
At the Torreon, Machu Picchu
When Efrain and I paused at the Sun Gate to take a drink of water, a mistico in a plumed hat and a vest embroidered with astrological signs told us that the morning had been a major bummer. Hundreds of harmonically inclined people had assembled above the Torreon and counted down the minutes to sunrise. And then . . . nothing. The clouds never parted and no sunbeam shined.
The mistico wasn’t the only true believer left at Machu Picchu. John, Efrain and I arrived at the site