The American explorer Hiram Bingham III is renowned for finding Peru’s mysterious “lost city of the Incas” Machu Picchu during an expedition in 1911. But, according to new research, that claim to fame may have been eclipsed by an unscrupulous German adventurer four decades prior.
Augusto R. Berns, a businessman who traded in wood and gold, may have found the site first - reaching it as early as 1867 - according to a multi-national team of experts. The group has been following the research of Paolo Greer, a retired Alaska oil pipeline foreman, who has investigated the claim for almost 30 years.
While Bingham may not have been the first westerner to find the ruins, his discovery was what revealed Machu Picchu to the world at large. He was led to the site by a local farmer and today tour guides carefully word how they describe Bingham’s feat to allow for the fact that local natives may have known where the citadel was located all along.
Bingham traveled as a researcher for Yale University but, according to the researchers, Berns’ motivation was profit. Records indicate the German set up a company in 1887 to loot the site and even purchased property near the ruins to facilitate the plan. Berns even obtained a letter of cooperation with the Peru’s government to undertake the scheme.
Investigators are now looking at how many items Berns may have taken from the site and where they are now.
The discovery comes as Peru is in the middle of a contentious battle to recover thousands of artifacts taken from Machu Picchu by Bingham during his numerous expeditions to the site in the 1910’s. The pieces are currently being held at Yale's Peabody Museum in New Haven, Conn.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
Who REALLY discovered Machu Picchu?
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There is simply no getting around the fact that Hiram Bingham is the scientific discover of Machu Picchu, that is, he encountered (found, if you prefer that word, or discovered, or hiked up into, whatever is your preference) the ruins during a 1911 expedition to Peru and over that and two subsequent expeditions, he excavated, photographed, studied, and publicized the ruins. In short, he made Machu Picchu famous. If it had not been for Bingham -- who, after all was in the Urubamba Valley looking for Inca ruins -- it might have remained ignored and vine shrouded for years or even decades more.
As for visitors prior to Bingham, it is apparent, based on research by many different people, chiefly Peruvian historians, that Machu Picchu was probably known in one way or another during the entire course of its several century existance. It's just that no one paid the ruins a great deal of attention. Like abandoned barns in Vermont, there and not there, known and not known.
Even after Bingham's discovery, his local guide, Melchor Arteaga, dismissed Machu Picchu as a pagan thing, nothing compared to the beautiful churches in Cuzco.
Not that it really matters, but there is no evidence that A.R. Berns, the "German adventurer and businessman" cited above, who was the subject of a nearly 200 hyper-ventilating media stories in June last, ever visited Machu Picchu. Even if he had, he said nothing about it, and thus belongs in that long line of people whose footprints at the ruins left not a trace.
Berns, however, is a character -- a picaresque entrepreneur, and probably swindler, about whom more should be known. In 1887 he had set up a stock company, "Huacas del Inca," with the purported goal of searching for Inca treasure. The company apparently collapsed the following year amidst charges that Berns had misappropriated company funds and launched no expeditions. Several credulous, excitable researchers in Peru concluded that "Huacas del Inca" must have meant Machu Picchu, spilled their imaginative tale to reporters and, via the wonders of the electronic media, the tale flashed around the world.
"Huacas del Inca" is nothing more than a generic phrase, meaning Tombs of the Inca, Sacred Places of the Inca, that one might find fetching for an endeavor designed to attract other people's money. It's about as specific as "Gold Mines of the Rockies" or "Treasure Galleons of the Carribean."
Several years earlier, in 1881, he had organized a similar enterprise, to develop a property in the Urubamba Valley at Torontoy, which he described as "the greatest gold and silver producing centre in the world." He was soliciting upwards of a couple hundred million dollars (in 2008 currency) from investors to develop the property. There is no evidence that he ever turned a spade at Torontoy or bagged a gold nugget, although in his prospectus he claimed gold was everywhere on the property -- adding for the benefit of investors not already gulled that one section of his property was called "'Llamajcansha,' which, in the ancient Indian language, means 'Gold Yard.'" Berns is having a bit of fun at the expense of his dupes -- assuming he ever got any -- Llamajcansha is probably Llamacancha, meaning llama yard, and is the place name of a couple towns in Peru.
Useful background information on this latest iteration of the Machu-Picchu discovery quarrel here: LastDaysOfTheIncas.com Posted there is the text of an article I wrote some 15 years ago, "Fights of Machu Picchu," about the controversy over who discovered the not so missing but completely underappreciated "Lost City of the Incas."
Daniel Buck
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