Lost City of the Incas (Phoenix Press) Read Online Free PDF Page A

windows of unusual size.’ Markham went on to note, in the tones of a concerned school-master, ‘this is the pith of the present instalment of information received from Mr Bingham. I trust that it is the forerunner of a fuller topographical description …’
    Bingham decided to give far more than just a ‘fuller topographical description’. After a further season’s excavation at Machu Picchu in 1912 had confirmed its importance, he launched a publicity offensive. He persuaded
National Geographic
both to sponsor his expeditions and to take the unusual step of devoting the entire April 1913 issue of their magazine to his discoveries, with the title ‘In the Wonderland of Peru’. Under the breathless heading ‘The Ruins of an Ancient Inca capital, Machu Picchu’, the magazine proclaimed:
    This wonderful city, which was built by the Incas probably 2,000 years ago, was discovered by Professor Hiram Bingham, of Yale University, and uncovered and excavated under his direction in 1912, under the auspices of the
National Geographic
and Yale University, and may prove to be the most important group of ruins discovered in South America since the conquest of Peru. The city is situated on a narrow, precipitous ridge, two thousand feet above the river and seven thousand feet above the sea … It contains about two hundred edifices built of white granite, including palaces, temples, shrines, baths, fountains and many stairways.
    Allowing for a little looseness with dates (Machu Picchu was built approximately 550 years ago, not 2,000), this was the Hollywood image that grabbed the public’s imagination. A dramatic triple fold-out poster was issued with the magazine, showing the city from the viewpoint that was to become so familiar, sprawled across a mountain ridge with Huayna Picchu ascending behind. Machu Picchu had begun its role as the pinup of twentieth-century archaeology.
    Bingham had achieved his fame. In a country which had previously been too busy discovering itself to pay much attention to the rest of the world, Bingham’s find made him both a pioneer and an instant celebrity at the same time. In the very year that Scott and Amundsen were racing for the South Pole, Americans were delighted to have a sensational discovery and an explorer hero of their own. The Hollywood persona of the adventurous archaeologist in search of lost tombs stems largely from him.
    The discovery of Machu Picchu also propelled Bingham up the academic hierarchy. The
National Geographic
article in 1913 had anticipated this by prematurely describing him as ‘Professor Hiram Bingham’: two years later came the actual appointment by Yale, for which he was impressively young at just under forty.
    Bingham fully justified his new fame and position with his work. He threw his intellectual energies into the Incas, using all his bibliographical skills to produce both popular and specialistbooks on the significance of Machu Picchu and the other sites he had found. The Yale summer vacation coincided neatly with the dry season in Peru, and he took advantage of this to return in July of 1914 and 1915 for further exploration. His initial success with Machu Picchu meant that these later expeditions were much larger and part-funded by
National Geographic
, who continued to publicize his discoveries.
    Even with fame, he was still restless. By the end of his final expedition, he had penetrated almost every cranny of the Vilcabamba and needed new challenges. He signed up with Colonel Pershing’s Expeditionary Force for the abortive attempt to chase Pancho Villa down into Mexico, after the Mexican revolutionary had ‘invaded’ Texas. Then, when America entered the First World War, he joined the fledgling Air Service although well past enlisting age. He took to it immediately and wrote back home:
    Flying in between the high clouds and fleecy clouds below was a wonderful experience. I could see the great white sea of clouds below me for miles and miles.