• History

What Hiram Bingham Got Wrong About Machu Picchu

3 minute read
Hiram Bingham 1911
Yale graduate and American explorer Hiram Bingham (1875-1956) who discovered the Machu Picchu in Peru, July 24, 1911.Apic—Getty Images
By Lily Rothman

Until the archeologist Hiram Bingham came across it on this day, July 24, in 1911, most of the world thought the ancient Incan city of Machu Picchu was lost, as was their capital Vilcabamba. As TIME reported in 1948, when Bingham returned to Peru to celebrate the opening of a road to the site, which would bear his name, he began by studying old charts and texts, until he was sure that there was an Incan capital city somewhere in the Andes that had never been found by the Spanish invaders. He got a key tip from a local muleteer and, upon climbing Machu Picchu peak, found the lost city hidden under vines.

Of course, the very fact that the muleteer had the tip to offer means that Machu Picchu was never completely lost in the first place. It was just ignored by all but the locals who lived their lives around the site. Shortly after Bingham’s death, when a plaque was dedicated to him at the site, the magazine had cause to revisit the tale:

Some experts believe that parts of the city, which Bingham named Machu Picchu (Old Peak), are 60 centuries old, which would make it 1,000 years older than ancient Babylon. More recently, if its ruins are interpreted correctly, it was at once an impregnable fortress and a majestic royal capital of an exiled civilization.

Built on a saddle between two peaks, Machu Picchu is surrounded by a granite wall, can be entered only by one main gate. Inside is a maze of a thousand ruined houses, temples, palaces, and staircases, all hewn from white granite and dominated by a great granite sundial. In Quechua, language of the sun-worshipping Incas and their present-day descendants, the dial was known as Intihuatana—hitching post of the sun.

By Bingham’s own reckoning, the city was actual a pre-Incan fortress that eventually became a Quechua city, where the first Incan king was born. When the Spanish arrived, Bingham said, the Incas who could fled to Machu Picchu, but the empire only lasted a few more decades before the last of their kings was killed in the 16th century.

Though Machu Picchu never lost its appeal to tourists, it did turn out that Bingham’s account of what had happened there wasn’t exactly true. Modern experts argue that Machu Picchu was a mere country retreat for aristocracy—and not a major center of Incan life at all.

Read more from 1948, here in the TIME Vault: Explorer’s Return

Machu Picchu, 1945

The Inca Ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, 1945
The Inca Ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, 1945.Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
The Inca Ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, 1945
Caption from LIFE. Square pegs along inside of roof of Machu Picchu temple were possibly used to tie on the roof beams.Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
The Inca Ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, 1945
Caption from LIFE. The village pictured above was discovered in 1941 and given the name Winay Wayna, the name of a local red flower meaning Eternal Youth. Near the ruins of Machu Picchu along the Urubamba River, it housed 500 people of the supervising class, in two living levels (left and upper right) between which were about 20 terraces on which potatoes were grown.Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
The Inca Ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, 1945
Caption from LIFE. Magnificent cave entrance into the so-called "Princess Tower" is fitted with highly polished masonry. Fine workmanship indicates it was for royalty.Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
The Inca Ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, 1945
Caption from LIFE. Bath at Machu Picchu is at lower left. The "tub" is about a foot deep. The water ran down shallow channel which can be seen cutting under wall at extreme lower left.Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
The Inca Ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, 1945
Trapezoidal entry doors at Incan ruins of Machu Picchu, 1945.Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
The Inca Ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, 1945
The Inca Ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, 1945.Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
The Inca Ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, 1945
Caption from LIFE. Princess tower at right looks straight down on the Urubamba River. The stairway at left is cut into the solid rock, all hard granite. This is at town of Machu Picchu.Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
The Inca Ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, 1945
The staircase leading up the Machu Picchu, 1945.Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
The Inca Ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, 1945
Caption from LIFE. Intihwatana or "sun-fixing place," is a sundial. Mountaintop (upper right) shows faint remains of village.Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
The Inca Ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, 1945
A view showing the temple with the altar. Partway up the hill is the sundial.Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
The Inca Ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, 1945
A view showing the Temple construction at Machu Picchu, 1945.Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
The Inca Ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru, 1945
The train arriving in the village of Machu Picchu, where the railroad ends, 1945.Frank Scherschel—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images

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Write to Lily Rothman at lily.rothman@time.com