Machu Picchu Research Paper

It is well known that Hiram Bingham is the first “discoverer” of Machu Picchu, yet there are many facts about him that people do not know. Bingham had achieved many successes during his lifetime. For example, he served in the military, graduated from both Yale and Harvard, and had seven children all of which being boys. In the early 1900’s it was very sought after to have a male as a child.
Hiram Bingham was born on November 19, 1875 in Honolulu, Hawaii and later died on June 6, 1956 in Washington, D.C. Throughout his legacy he had accomplishments, just a few however, are key events that have gone down in history. One of these events being his discovery of Machu Picchu, a fortress city of the Inca that was thought to be lost through the ages. The Inca were one of three main primitive groups of Native Americans in the central Americas: The Aztecs, The Maya, and The Incas. Hiram Bingham’s crowning moment would be when he put together a Yale Peruvian Expedition with the goal of finding the Inca’s last capital city (Buckley, 34). Then in 1911, the expedition was put into work and they did end up finding and identifying both
Peru, even now, is still attempting to have some of the artifacts returned that were “collected” from Machu Picchu. Some might believe that if the artifacts are returned it will benefit the country and inspire more tourism to the country; however, many believe that Peru simply wants the artifacts back because the artifacts were “stolen” in 1911. As many great scholars would attest, many, if not all, archaeologists from before the mid 1900’s always collected artifacts and did not set a specific date or contract in place so that they can still keep the artifacts for display in other countries aside from just taking them out