Lost City of the Incas (Phoenix Press) Read online

  Praise for Lost City of the Incas

  ‘Machu Picchu was to Hiram Bingham the crowning of all his purest dreams as an adult child’

  Che Guevara

  ‘A handsome edition complete with Hugh Thomson’s fine introduction and superb photographs; it is the classic adventure’

  Irish Times

  ‘Bingham catalogues his finds with admirable concision, and indulges his wide interests, revealing little-known facts about the Incas – their sophisticated system of roads and runners allowed fish to be caught in the Pacific and served fresh at the Inca’s Andean table. He captures the majesty of the architecture in its dramatic and wild surroundings and Hugh Thomson has illustrated the book beautifully from Bingham’s innumerable photographs’

  Literary Review

  ‘Anyone who has been to Machu Picchu must read Hiram Bingham’s classic tale of discovery, Lost City of the Incas’

  Wanderlust

  By Hugh Thomson

  THE WHITE ROCK

  An Exploration of the Inca Heartland

  ‘It is a measure of Hugh Thomson’s skill as a writer, historian and explorer that The White Rock is such a pleasure … a moving and meticulously researched account of the Inca people’s rise, conquest of a continent and tragic annihilation by the conquistadors of the 16th century’

  Justin Marozzi, Spectator

  ‘Engrossing … the sort of book that fires the armchair traveller with a desire to follow in its author’s footsteps, not just because it is passionate about its subject … but also because it tells of some quite heroic exploration by Thomson himself’

  Geoffrey Moorhouse, New York Times Book Review

  ‘In The White Rock, the whole continent becomes a plot with suspense and a cast of outrageous characters … This is Bruce Chatwin with cojones. More than that, it is a micro-allegory of the saga of fantasy, bravado, conquest, and the frustration that is the collective narrative of the Inca hunters’

  Andy Martin, Independent

  ‘The White Rock has a moral depth and intellectual integrity most similar work lacks’

  Rhode Island Providence Journal

  ‘It is Thomson’s generosity of spirit which stands out and makes this a great book … a work that is both accessible and academically rigorous’

  Isabel Cockayne, Eastern Daily Press

  COCHINEAL RED

  Travels Through Ancient Peru

  ‘A dizzying tour through five turbulent millennia. The cumulative effect is enthralling’

  Sara Wheeler, The Times

  ‘What makes Cochineal Red such a worthwhile book is that it is written by someone who is both an explorer and a scholar’

  Toby Green, Independent

  ‘Epic – in an increasingly homogeneous world, he has found, and describes to perfection, a mythical land’

  Publishing News

  ‘Conveys not only Thomson’s great knowledge of the ancient civilisations of the Andes, but also the thrill of the chase for such knowledge’

  Matthew Parris, Spectator

  ‘A fascinating, intelligently told tale, full of intriguing revelations, that penetrates deeper into the Andean past than previously attempted’

  Traveller Magazine

  ‘The picture of ancient Peru that bleeds through these pages is of a place so removed from our own world as to be the nearest we can get to encountering an absolutely alien mindset’

  Daily Telegraph

  ‘Reminds us that the world is not, after all, explored’

  Benedict Allen, Independent on Sunday, Books of the Year

  By Hiram Bingham

  Journal of an Expedition across

  Venezuela and Colombia

  Across South America

  Inca Land

  Machu Picchu, a Citadel of the Incas

  Lost City of the Incas

  By Hugh Thomson

  The White Rock: An Exploration of the Inca Heartland

  Cochineal Red: Travels Through Ancient Peru

  Machu Picchu and the Camera

  Nanda Devi: A Journey to the Last Sanctuary

  Tequila Oil: Getting Lost in Mexico

  50 Wonders of the World

  Hiram Bingham was born in Hawaii in 1875 and educated at Yale, where he later taught. His early expeditions to South America and climactic discovery of Machu Picchu were just the start of a long and colourful career: he went on to command air force troops in France during the First World War and to become a Senator; he was later impeached. Lost City of the Incas, written towards the end of his life in 1948, is a final distillation of the many articles and books on the Incas that he had published before. He died in 1956.

  Hugh Thomson has led several research expeditions to Peru to locate and study Inca ruins. He has written about Machu Picchu and the Incas in both The White Rock and Cochineal Red. See www.thewhiterock.co.uk.

  LOST CITY

  OF THE INCAS

  The Story of Machu Picchu

  and its Builders

  HIRAM BINGHAM

  with an Introduction by Hugh Thomson

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title

  Praise

  About the Author

  By Hiram Bingham

  List of Illustrations

  Maps

  Introduction

  Bingham’s Photographs of Machu Picchu

  Acknowledgements

  Lost City of the Incas

  Preface

  PART ONE: THE BUILDERS

  1 The Incas and their Civilization

  2 The Origin of the Incas

  3 The Story of the Last Four Incas

  PART TWO: THE SEARCH

  4 My Introduction to the Land of the Incas

  5 The Search for Vitcos

  6 The Search for Vilcapampa

  PART THREE: MACHU PICCHU

  7 The Discovery

  8 Exploration of Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu

  9 Vilcapampa the Old

  10 Results of Excavations at Machu Picchu

  11 The Search for Inca Roads leading to Machu Picchu

  12 The Origin of the City now called Machu Picchu

  Acknowledgements to Original Edition

  Bibliography

  Further Reading

  Index

  Plates

  Copyright

  LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  YALE PERUVIAN EXPEDITION PHOTOGRAPHS (1911–1915)

  Hiram Bingham in front of his tent at Machu Picchu, 1912

  Plate Section 1

  Hiram Bingham, with mule, at the end of the 1911 expedition.

  Hiram Bingham with other members of the Yale expedition and Peruvian dignitaries at the end of the successful 1911 expedition.

  Poster issued with the National Geographic issue of April 1913.

  Excavation under Ñusta Isppana, ‘the White Rock’, 1912.

  ‘One of our bearers crossing the Pampaconas River.’

  ‘Saavedra and his Inca Pottery.’

  ‘Deep in the jungle of the Pampaconas River …’

  ‘Inca gable at Espíritu Pampa.’

  ‘Heald’s bridge across the Urubamba, 1912.’

  Plate Section 2

  View of Machu Picchu from the expedition’s camp at the start of the 1912 season.

  Same view of Machu Picchu, showing progress of clearance by August 17th.

  ‘The Sacred Plaza before Excavation.’

  ‘Defences of Machu Picchu.’

  Machu Picchu: the Industrial Sector, showing clearance in progress.

  The Sacred Plaza from the South.

  ‘The Intihuatana of the Inca builders at Machu Picchu.’

  George E
aton excavating near the West Wall of the Principal Temple, 1912.

  ‘The first burial cave at Machu Picchu containing a human skull.’

  ‘Dr Eaton and his Indian helpers during the excavation of a human skeleton.’

  Machu Picchu: the ‘stone mortars’.

  ‘The Ancient Road leading into Machu Picchu.’

  Expedition member photographing Machu Picchu, 1912.

  LINE DRAWINGS MADE BY THE YALE PERUVIAN EXPEDITIONS

  Machu Picchu: ‘the use of eye-bonders and roof-pegs’.

  Machu Picchu: ‘how the city gate might have been fastened’.

  Plan of Ñusta Isppana.

  Plan of Llactapata.

  Plan of Palcay.

  Bridge-building over the Urubamba.

  Machu Picchu: ‘Three-Door Group’.

  Machu Picchu: ‘Unusual Niches Group’.

  Machu Picchu: ‘Ingenuity Group and Private Garden Group’.

  Machu Picchu: ‘The Sacred Plaza’ and ‘Birds Eye view of Sacred

  Plaza and Snake Rock’.

  The central part of Machu Picchu.

  Trails around Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu.

  As well as the many prints from the Yale Peruvian Expeditions that are in private collections, full sets were placed at the Peabody Museum in Yale, the National Geographic Society and the Hispanic Society of America.

  Whenever possible, Bingham’s original captions for the Yale Peruvian Expedition photographs have been used. These are indicated by italics.

  MAPS

  The Inca Empire

  The Area Around Cuzco

  The Vilcabamba

  INTRODUCTION

  When Hiram Bingham arrived in the Peruvian Andes in July 1911, he was ready for what was to be the climactic achievement of his life: the exploration of the remote hinterland to the west of Cuzco, the old Inca capital. He had every advantage on his side, with his charisma, opportunism, knowledge of bibliographical sources and driving, restless energy. Above all he had what every explorer needs – luck and the ability to exploit it.

  Bingham had already done a preliminary reconnaissance a few years before, in 1909, when he had made the mistake of coming in the wet season. This time he would be on dry ground and he had prepared meticulously for it, both with a well-provisioned team and with the invaluable research he had been given by a Peruvian academic, Carlos Romero. This included recently discovered chronicles from the time of the Spanish Conquest, which pointed to the existence of hitherto unsuspected Inca ruins.

  Despite all this, he could never have expected quite what lay ahead. In the space of just a few short months he was to discover not only Machu Picchu, by any standards one of the greatest architectural achievements of pre-Columbian civilization, but also two other major sites: Vitcos, where the last Incas retreated after the Spanish had conquered the rest of their Empire and which was to become their capital in exile for a further thirty-five years; and another mysterious site down below in the jungle, whose significance evaded Bingham at the time, in an area he called the ‘Plain of Ghosts’.

  In later years he returned to excavate at Machu Picchu. He also undertook what he described in an article as ‘Further Explorations’, discovering a myriad of other minor sites and the Inca Trail, a magnificent stone track that threads high above the Urubamba river to arrive at Machu Picchu in a way that modern visitors still find heart-stopping.

  However, it was in 1911, over the space of just a few months, that Hiram Bingham made the momentous discoveries that form the kernel of this book and make it a classic in the literature of exploration. It is impossible to read Lost City of the Incas without sharing in Bingham’s enthusiasm and curiosity about what he had found. He was a natural story-teller, with an extraordinary story to tell.

  Like many, I first read it when I went to Machu Picchu and was immediately struck by the vivacity and freshness with which Bingham writes. Over the years since, I’ve come to realize that it is an even more intriguing and complex work than might at first appear. Much of this is due to Bingham’s own character.

  Bingham was a man who needed to become famous. Born in 1875, he had grown up in Hawaii, the son of a missionary family who had once been celebrated and prosperous but had subsequently descended into genteel poverty. As Hiram Bingham III, he was conscious both of his ancestor’s fame (the first Hiram Bingham had almost single-handedly converted the islands to Christianity) and of the family’s current fall from grace.

  In Lost City of the Incas, he fondly remembers climbing ‘a number of mountains in the suburbs of Honolulu’ as a boy and often notes occasional and unexpected similarities between the Peruvian Vilcabamba and the green islands of Hawaii. The impression given is of a youth lived under open skies.

  But in reality his childhood was a constrained one. He was cramped by a constant need for academic success and by the fierce religious fundamentalism of his parents, from which Bingham tried to escape. Peru provided a freedom he had never had when young. As Che Guevara put it in an astute essay: ‘Machu Picchu was to Bingham the crowning of all his purest dreams as an adult child.’

  He managed to fund his own way through Andover and then Yale, often by coaching fellow students, and decided to remain in teaching once he had graduated. At six foot four, he had the rangy build of a natural tennis player and he was eased up the political ladder of appointments by his charm and good looks, although his approach was at times too broad-brush for him ever to settle entirely comfortably into academic life (Bingham was never a great man for footnotes).

  In 1900, when he was twenty-five, he married Alfreda Mitchell, the daughter of a wealthy family, and his financial worries were eased. Despite this new security and the acquisition of a thirty-room mansion in New Haven, the early years of his marriage were characterized by a restless urge to travel.

  He was drawn early to the idea of South America, both because of its inherent romanticism and because in academic terms it was virgin territory. It was not yet a legitimate subject at the Ivy League universities and so Bingham could seize, as he put it, ‘the opportunity it presents to work in claims not already staked out’. While Humboldt’s books on South America in the early nineteenth century had instigated a wave of curiosity in Europe, and brought many travellers in his wake (particularly from France), North American interest in the southern continent had awoken more slowly. Only with the impressive histories of the Conquest of Mexico and Peru written later in the century by a Boston lawyer, William Prescott, had the process slowly begun.

  Bingham managed to create a post for himself as Curator of the Harvard Library’s non-existent ‘South American Collection’, a collection that Bingham then set about creating. He quickly accumulated a card catalogue of some 25,000 items. When a consignment of Simón Bolívar’s papers came his way, his first thought was to write a biography of the nineteenth-century Libertador and his struggle for Independence. Then he decided, characteristically, that it would be more interesting to go to South America and follow the arduous route Bolívar had once taken across the continent, so as to gauge how difficult it must have been for him and his men.

  This was his first expedition, in 1906, when he was just thirty-one, and it gave him a taste for exploration, despite or perhaps because of the hardships he encountered. He took a rifle with him, which he needed both for protection and to shoot game (he was later to issue a Winchester and a Colt to each member of his Peruvian teams). He published an account of it in his first book, Journal of an Expedition across Venezuela and Colombia.

  Upon returning to the States, he became a Lecturer in South American history at his alma mater, Yale, a post that had been created especially for him and the first such post in any North American university. Bingham continued to press the case for more attention to be paid to his new subject in articles such as ‘The Possibilities of South American History and Politics as a Field for Research’.

  He was soon to head back to South America to do research himself, this time for a more ambitio
us expedition from Buenos Aires across the continent to Lima. With typical opportunism, Bingham had managed to get appointed as the American delegate to a political conference in Chile, and he used this as a springboard for the trip. He was already becoming interested in politics and the resulting book, Across South America, concentrated on the business opportunities America was missing by not investing more in the region, particularly compared to Britain.