Tales of lost cities, hidden in inaccessible valleys or overgrown in impenetrable jungles, are a popular theme in adventure novels. But towns “that no white man had ever seen” were already very rare at the beginning of the last century. The great seafarers of the 16th century, for whom the New World was indeed entirely new and undiscovered, had a very different experience centuries earlier. Although it is true that improved communications, not least the admittedly still modest air transport, have helped discover even the most hidden places of our planet in the last century. Two of the most important discoveries of these forgotten places stand out. One was the centre of the Mayan civilisation at Chitzen-Itza, the other was Machu Picchu, high up in the mountains. Sometimes cartographers just made a few mistakes, leaving parts of the jungle landscape inaccessible to the white man for centuries, or some lost city remained hidden from modern civilisation until more recent times.
Almost all famous researchers have written about their discoveries in their books. When we read them today, we enter a world of adventure, hardship and danger with our eyes wide open. Their narratives may sometimes seem exaggerated, but they give us the true picture. Even older are the accounts of the Spanish chroniclers who arrived in the New World a few decades after Cortez had subdued the Aztecs and Pizzaro the Incas. We also find their writing problematic, since they were mostly priests who were primarily interested in Christianising the pagan Indians, and their culture was only of marginal importance to them.
The first man to settle the Americas came from Asia via the Bering Strait. In fact, it is not even that important whether or not it was possible to come to America by land. What is more important is that this happened somewhere around 15 000 years ago and that these newcomers gave rise to the Aztecs, the Toltecs, the Mayans, the Incas and other peoples. They all have the same roots, their languages are related, as are their social habits and customs, their clothing and weapons. It is impossible to pinpoint the exact timing of the peak of their cultures, but in the Mayan capital of Chitzen-Itzi, they built their grandest buildings around the time when they began to build their great cathedrals in England.
Chitzen-Itza
Mayan cities on the Yucatan peninsula, such as Holmul, Uaxactun, Palenque and San Jose, were primarily religious centres. Here, huge pyramidal buildings made of precisely worked large blocks of stone rose up in the middle of the jungle. Amateur archaeologist Edward Thompson saw them at the beginning of the 20th century and wrote:
” Chitzen-Itza are actually two cities. The oldest is covered by dense forest and can only be identified by the overgrown mounds from which trees grow. In the new part of town, the buildings stand almost untouched. Both parts cover an area of 12 square miles. In the new part, I discovered 12 large buildings that are perfectly preserved, as if they had been built thirty years ago. Most of them still have a heavy stone roof and can be moved into immediately. All the temples and palaces, which were probably occupied by kings, are in the centre of the city, while the rest of the city’s population probably lived in small rectangular buildings, the remains of which are still visible.”
So did Thompson, who came to the Yucatan as American consul in 1885. He was completely captivated by the landscape, by the people and, above all, by the tales of lost cities overgrown by the jungle. Fascinated, he bought the hacienda or land on which Chitzen-Itza stands in 1894 and spent the next thirty years there, studying and excavating the remains. His pioneering work was then taken up by the Carnegie Foundation, and his book Snake People tells the story of the beginnings of these excavations in a humane way. Like Schliemann, who discovered Troy and Mycenae, Thompson was an amateur archaeologist in the true sense of the word. His chronology is now outdated, just as some of his conclusions were wrong, but his love not only for the excavations but also for the traditions and cultural traditions of the Maya largely makes up for these mistakes.
Of all the stories about the ancient Maya, Thompson’s favourite was the story of the “Sacred Well”, which he explored from 1904 to 1910 and which is already mentioned in old Spanish chronicles.
“A wide path leads from the temples to a holy well two stone’s throw away. The Maya have a custom of still throwing living people into it in times of drought as offerings to the gods, believing that they will never die, even if they never see them again. They also throw other things into it, such as precious stones, and if the land has any gold, most of it will be in the holy well.
There are other legends that say that sometimes the most beautiful virgin is thrown into the well as a gift for the rain god Yum Chac. Sometimes they don’t tie her up and, if she is still alive after swimming for a few hours, they pull her dry with a rope and ask her what she saw.”
Chitzen-Itza has three natural wells and several smaller ones. In the Mayan language, chi means mouth and chen means well, and the Mayans chose this place as their most important site because of its water sources. The sacred well itself is a huge natural hole in the rock, about 45 metres wide at its widest point – almost the width of a small lake. From its edge to the surface of the water, which is greenish in colour, is almost 40 metres.
When Thompson arrived at Chitzen-Itzi, the cobbled sacred path leading from the temples to the well was in a very poor state of repair, with the stone slabs cracked by tree roots. Nevertheless, it could be followed right up to the well, where the remains of a small building were still visible, where the last rites were once performed before the victims were swept into the well. Thompson wanted to investigate it to see if the stories about it were true.
What was initially supposed to be a diving descent, perhaps to bring to the surface some of the objects lying at the bottom of the well, turned out to be a complex undertaking. First, the thick layer of mud that had accumulated at the bottom had to be cleaned off, and this required cleaning equipment. Thompson went to Boston to order it and, incidentally, took a diving course there. The equipment was taken to the nearest port and then, with great difficulty and on jungle tracks, brought to Chitzen-Itza.
The Holy Fountain
The beginnings were not promising. The device only brought up mud, decaying vegetation and rotting tree trunks. Thompson’s Indian workers thought he had lost his mind, but because he paid them well, they worked tirelessly. Thompson was about to give up, too, when one day he found what looked like an ostrich egg in the debris left after the water had drained away. He cleaned the unknown thing and found that it smelled. He cut off a piece and burned it. He found that when it burned, it gave off a pleasant smell. He immediately remembered what the Spanish chronicler Don Diego had written in his message to the King of Spain: “After the woman had been lifted up, they lit fires around her and burnt the fragrant resin.”
Eventually, more beads of scented resin were pulled out of the well to dry, and then a well-preserved wooden knife was found, preserved almost intact by the mud for centuries. It was only a short time after this discovery that a black object attracted the attention of the Indian workers.
“One of my workers reached his hand deep into the mud as usual, shouted and quickly withdrew it. Then he pointed to the head of a small snake with white rings around its neck, looking menacingly out of the mud.” But the scare was unnecessary, because the snake was made of natural rubber. Soon after, a completely white skull was pulled out of the mud, followed by other skulls and many human bones. Most of the skeletons belonged to young women aged between 14 and 20, but only a few were adult and strong men.
When these skulls were compared with those found in modern Maya cemeteries, no differences were found. For months, human skeletons kept surfacing, and there were so many balls of fragrant resin that there was no longer any doubt that sacrifices had been made in this well. An old Indian told Thompson that “in the old days our fathers used to burn the fragrant pitch and, with the rising smoke, send their prayers to the god who dwelt in the sun”.
Other things came to light; arrow heads and axes, bronze chisels, bronze plates depicting images of deities, and small golden bells that were flattened before being thrown into the well, just as the jade ornaments were flattened. Thompson was convinced that these objects were ritually “murdered”, just as human sacrifices were ritually killed so that their souls could be accepted by the rain god Yum Chan. The modern Maya, at the time of Thompson’s excavations at Chitzen-Itza, also cut their dead to pieces before burial. Last but not least, the ancient Egyptians of the early dynasties deliberately broke all the pottery vases intended for the deceased pharaoh and then stored them in a special room under the pharaoh’s pyramid.
After months of tedious excavation of the mud from the holy well, they began to haul stones and rocks out daily. This was a sign that the well had been cleaned to the bottom. Now came the most exciting part of the excavation. Thompson assumed that the bottom of the well was uneven and that there were caves that the machine had failed to clean out. So it would be necessary to descend into the well and search them with diving equipment. He hired a professional diver, put a pontoon raft on the surface of the water, fitted it with air pumps, and then he and the diver put on a thick waterproof diving suit, tied a large bronze helmet on their heads and descended into the depths.
At the beginning of the dive, the sun’s rays changed colour from yellow to green, but as they descended deeper, they were first engulfed in a deep crimson darkness, then in complete blackness. At this depth, electric torches were almost useless. They landed in a deep cave dug by the machine.
On the floor, they could feel large smooth slabs, some of them carved. They were tied with chains and pulled onto a pontoon raft with pulleys. On one of them was carved a seated figure of a deity. The two divers worked in total darkness, feeling the ground. Thompson’s hands felt small objects made of stone and metal. He squeezed them into a sack tied to his side. Later, he saw that he had found jade objects, small rings and a few other gold objects on the surface. One day, they brought to the surface nearly 200 of these and similar objects. These included golden tiaras in the shape of snakes, symbolic figures, the golden top of a scepter and many bronze objects.
Offerings to the Deity
Who were the Maya sacrificed to? Like the Sumerians and Egyptians, they depended on agriculture and knew that the fertility of their land depended on elements they could neither understand nor influence. Long periods of drought, successive years of poor harvests, all of these could lead to famine and forced migration. Chitzen-Itza was thus repeatedly abandoned and repopulated. Sometimes unknown diseases killed thousands of inhabitants and no one could explain why this happened.
They were convinced that God was responsible for everything and that he had to be comforted with gifts. They believed in a god of war who helped them defeat the enemy, a god of rain who soaked the earth, and a god of fire who caused forest fires. Above all, the Maya worshipped a master god, the god of civilisation, knowledge and religion. He was called Kukulcan and was usually represented by a feathered serpent.
At Chitzen-Itza, a stone serpent was depicted on each corner of a large terraced pyramid, repeated on each terrace up to the top of the pyramid, where the temple was located. On each side of the pyramid, which has nine terraces, there is also a wide staircase with 104 steps. The Maya sacrificed their captives to the gods at the top of the pyramid in a horrific way. They cut out their hearts with stone knives, offered them to the gods while still warm and beating, and threw the corpse down the steps of the pyramid. Architecturally, the pyramid is an exceptionally fine example of craftsman construction. The stone blocks fit tightly together and, as the Maya had no draught animals, not even donkeys, they had to be lifted higher and higher with their bare hands.
Near the pyramid is a ceremonial courtyard, surrounded on both sides by a mound, where games were held to pass a rubber ball through stone rings embedded in the walls. Some of the buildings in Chitzen-Itza are richly carved and in some places wall paintings can be seen. At the Tiger Temple, a decorative frieze of jaguars is interwoven with ornaments. Inside this temple, a military scene can be seen in which the Maya attack an enemy city. Their swords were simple and made of wood, with sharp pieces of flint embedded in them.
The Maya knew the calendar, and its accuracy is staggering, so much so that scientists were at first not even sure they had arrived at such precise calculations themselves. Astronomers observing the night sky at the Chitzen-Itze observatory in the first millennium AD made an unusually accurate snapshot of our universe and supposedly predicted the end of the world in December 2012. This is where they got it wrong, or the archaeologists did, because for the Maya, December 2012 just meant the end of a counting period. When the Spanish conquistadors reached Chitzen-Itza at the end of the 16th century, the town had already been abandoned, but the buildings were intact. Everything remained as it was.
The gates of hell
But Thompson has created another sensation. One of his most dramatic discoveries was a series of graves, dug one beneath the other, in the centre of a small pyramid, of which only a mound of trees and bushes remained. On top of it were the remains of a small temple. He struck the stone pavement of the temple with an iron rod and it rang hollow. The pavement was lifted and a large shaft was revealed, which had to be cleaned first. At the end of it were a few bones that had been badly gnawed by the rats.
Thompson banged the iron bar on the ground again and again it rang hollowly. The stone pavement was lifted and another shaft full of skeletal remains was revealed. But it was still in the top part of the pyramid. He suspected that there were still a few graves below. Every time he lifted the stone pavement, he found a new shaft with human skeletons. In all, there were five shafts with graves, one on top of the other. In some of them were bronze bells, polished crystal beads and other things.
The last grave was in the flat floor plan of the pyramid, so he assumed that there were no more graves. But he was wrong. The floor rang hollow again and they came to a flight of steps carved into the living rock, leading down. With difficulty, they cleared away the earth and ashes and reached the end of the tunnel, which ended in a rock. They were sure that there was nothing further. Thompson decided to remove the rock, hoping to find some more bronze bells behind it. He pulled it towards him with all his strength and it gave way in an instant. A black hole appeared, and cool, moist air blew out of it. The candles they had been holding went out and they were left in total darkness. The Indian who had helped dig them out gasped, “This is the door to hell.” And he gnashed his teeth.
For the Maya, hell, which they called metnal, was not a fiery hell, but a cold place where lost souls wandered in the cold and mud. Hell was actually a cave 15 metres deep. The next day, Thompson was let in. He had a knife in his teeth to ward off any splinters. At the bottom he found a beautiful alabaster vase full of jade beads. Next to it were vases, a polished jade ball and oval pearls, part of a necklace. However, he did not find any skeletons in the last cave. He was convinced that this was the tomb of the great priest, and that the graves above were those of his servants.
Thompson’s last years in Chitzen-Itza were full of tragedy and disappointment. Local revolutionaries burned down his house and destroyed much of his documentation. When he managed to rebuild his home, problems with the Mexican authorities began. Almost unbelievable rumours circulated about the value of the objects he had found in Chitzen-Itza and the holy well. Some said that the finds were worth half a million dollars, and this information fell on deaf ears with Mexican officials. His plantation was forcibly bought by the Mexican State, lawsuits followed one after another, and there was no end in sight to the litigation. Thompson returned to America and died there in 1935.
Machu Picchu
There is another civilisation that can compare with the Maya civilisation. But this one was much further south and reached to the shores of the Pacific. The Inca civilisation was not without its mysteries. Most of its history was written down by Spanish chroniclers who did not know about a secret. Somewhere out there in the mountains and impenetrable jungle was the hidden and undiscovered Incan city of Machu Picchu.
Machu Picchu, which was not its original name, is an Inca city perched on a high cliff, surrounded by gorges and jungle. The man who discovered it was Hiram Bingham, leader of an expedition to Peru, a member of the American Mountaineering Society and a professor of Latin American history at Yale University. All these titles indicate that he was able to combine the teaching of history with the adventurous spirit and skill of a mountaineer. Although he gave credit to the other members of the expedition, the honour of the discovery belongs to him, as he immortalised these events in his book The Lost City of the Incas.
But it is also worth looking at the old chronicles that helped Bingham in his discovery. When Francisco Pizarro entered Peru in 1531, it was ruled by Inca rulers. The first was Manco Capac, who lived around the year 1000, and the last, named Tupac Amaru, was executed by the Spanish in 1572. What we know of Inca history, and especially of the last four Inca rulers, comes from the writings of 16th and early 17th century Spanish chroniclers who arrived in Peru after the Spanish had already conquered it.
The Incas themselves had no writing, but one of the Inca rulers, Titu Cusi, dictated a story about the life of his ancestors to a mestizo. He wrote the story down in rough Spanish, which was later corrected by the Augustinian Marcos Garcia. The second source on the history of Peru comes from the pen of a native, Inca de la Vega, who came from Peru to Spain when he was only ten years old and who, in his later years, began to write an Inca history. Later, some other Spaniards wrote it, so there are quite a few sources.
One of the Inca rulers, named Manco, who was put on the throne by the Spanish after they took over the country, rebelled against the Spanish, gathered an army and went to battle, but in the end had to admit defeat and then took refuge with his followers in the Urubamba valley. His three sons went with him and one of them was Titu Cusi, then six years old. The peaceful Urubamba Valley was Manco’s first line of defence. But the Spaniards followed him, and after losing a few battles, he took refuge in Ollantaytambo, the last major Inca town in the valley before the high mountains began. But he was careless and was captured by a small Spanish force at a feast. He later managed to escape. He took refuge in the mountains, but the Spaniards did not dare to go there over the passes, which were snow-covered for part of the year.
The old chronicles say that he took refuge in a hilltop fortress, called by several names in the chronicles: the Vitcos, the Uiticos and the Pitcos. Some sources speak of another Inca stronghold called Vilcabamba. All these places are said to be in a dry mountainous area where water is plentiful. Corn and potatoes could be grown here and it was possible to live comfortably in peace. From here, the Incas also attacked Spanish caravans on their way from Cuzco to Lima. The only way they could do this was to cross the Apurimac River in rafts. These attacks were mostly successful, although the Spaniards were better armed, and the invaders suffered several defeats.
Titu Cusi always received the Spanish envoys and negotiators in Vitcos, but he himself retreated to the inaccessible Vilcabamba valley. The Spanish never learned of this base of operations. After the death of Titu Cusi, the last Inca ruler, Tupac Amaru, decided to go to Cuzco to negotiate with the Spanish. But they captured him and executed him and his wife and entourage in a horrible manner. The accounts of the Spanish chroniclers end here and the Inca kingdom disappeared from the history books for a long time.
Hiram Bingham’s discovery of ancient Inca cities relied mainly on the stories he heard from others. This and local traditions were all he had when he led an expedition to Peru in 1911. He was an experienced mountaineer himself, having climbed his first mountain with his father when he was only four years old. As a young man, he followed in General Simon Bolivar’s footsteps across the Andes from Venezuela to Colombia, eager to lecture students on the history of South America and to write about him.
Later, as a delegate to the First Pan-American Scientific Congress in 1908, he travelled through the Andes, following the old Spanish trade route from Buenos Aires to Lima. From Cuzco onwards, he climbed the Andes on the back of a mule, and for the first time came into contact with the land of the Incas, which completely captivated him. The stories of its history and the sight of a magnificent unexplored landscape convinced him that he must return there once more with an expedition. He hoped to reach the highest mountain in America, Mt. Coropun and collect a wealth of geological and biological data, but above all to find the last major refuge of the Incas. He was not even an archaeologist when he thought of this.
Urubamba Gorge
On this Yale University research expedition, he was accompanied by a geographer, a naturalist, a surgeon, a topographer, an engineer and a personal assistant. He was by no means the first explorer to venture into these regions. In 1834, the Count de Sartiges made an adventurous journey to the Andes, followed in 1861 by the Italian Raimondi. Both men left written accounts and Raimondi left a map, which Bingham always carried with him, along with more recent maps.
The Bingham expedition left Cuzco with its magnificent Incan temples and headed for the Urubamba Valley. A cold rain was falling at the time and a thick fog enveloped the green mountains. The expedition slowly made its way along the valley past Ollantaytambo until it reached Tirontoya, the end of the cultivated fields, and descended into the great gorge of Urubamba.
Fifteen years before Bingham’s arrival, a trail had been carved into the canyon rim to follow the river. Before that, it was not even possible to get through the canyon. The Urubamba River had carved a path through the granite cliffs and rushed on in rapids and over chasms that were too dangerous to cross. There used to be a goat trail near the river, along which the Indians slowly made their way, holding on to rocks and ledges. Before the trail was carved, the only two ways to reach the end of the canyon from Cuzco were over two high passes, which were impassable in winter. But these passes were forgotten by that time and the landscape between them was inaccessible for almost 400 years.
There are many places in Peru – some in very remote areas – that scholars have considered to be the lost Inca cities of Vitcos and Vilcabamba. Bingham has explored some of them, including Choqquequirqau, a mountain fortress that controls the upper Apurimac Valley. Here he came to an open space called Mandor Pampa and met Melchor Arteaga, who told him that there were many old ruins in the vicinity, especially on the top of the mountain that rises in front of them. These places only became accessible when a road was built along the gorge, and the top of the mountain was only accessible by passes known only to the Indians, or by the arduous climb up the side of the mountain.
So the next day, Bingham, Arteaga and another Peruvian soldier headed up the slope. It was almost a real climbing tour. They climbed on all fours, grabbing onto branches and finding footing. In some places, they could only grasp the wet grass. Arteaga complained that the place was full of snakes and the heat and humidity unbearable.
Finally, around midday, they arrived at the hut, completely exhausted. They were met by two Indians, Alvarez and Richarte, who had chosen this remote place as their home for reasons they did not understand. As they climbed higher, the two Indians led them to a series of terraces full of fertile soil. Now it was understandable why they had settled here. These were terraces that had been built by the Incas. When the Indians found them years ago, they were covered with trees and thickets. They removed some of this vegetation and then began to grow maize, sweet and white potatoes, sugar cane, tomatoes, beans and blackberries on the cleared land.
They said that there are two ways to reach the terraces. The first one had already been used by Bingham and his companions, but the second was much more difficult as it involved climbing a steep rocky ridge. Therefore, they also only went to the valley once a month. Otherwise, these terraces were nothing special, it was only their age that was special.
Bingham was tired from the long climb, so he spent some time looking around and admiring the beautiful view. Huge green precipices reached down to the white rapids of the Urubamba River, which meandered in the depths. Directly in front of him, on the north side of the valley, a large granite cliff rose into the air. Across it, one could see cloud and snow-capped mountain peaks rising at least a thousand metres high. Finally, he pulled himself to his feet and followed the two Indians as they climbed even higher, scrambling over fallen trees and pushing through bamboo bushes.
Then, suddenly, he found himself in the middle of buildings made of beautifully worked stone. First he came to a semicircular building that reminded him of the famous Temple of the Sun in Cuzco. He had never seen such beautifully worked stone, hewn granite and squares of stone fitting so closely together that not the slightest gap could be seen between them. What place had he come to and why did no one know anything about him? But this was only the first surprise.
The two Indians suggested that he climb higher with them, and so he came to a great granite staircase leading to two great buildings of white stone, the walls of which were made of Cyclopean squares, larger than a grown man and weighing up to fifteen tons. These were two temples, but they had only three walls, as the fourth side was open. There was no sign that they had a roof. To the south of the temples was an open ceremonial courtyard with three large windows looking across the gorge towards the rising sun.
Bingham recalled the Peruvian chronicler Salcamayhu, who in 1620 described the landmarks of the country and wrote that the first Inca ruler, Manco I, who lived around the year 1000, ordered a three-windowed brick wall to be built on the site of his birthplace. At first he thought he had found the birthplace of the first Inca ruler, but only later did he realise that it could only have been the home of the last.
He was impressed, but had no time for admiration. They all returned to the valley and continued their journey the next day. He did not know that he had discovered Machu Picchu or Vilcabamba. But he knew that this would not be his last visit to this place, because he had a hunch that there must be much more under the vegetation, the trees, the bindweed, the grass and the bushes. But first he had to find Vilcabamba, because that was the main purpose of the expedition.
This is Vitcos
To continue his journey, he had to cross a 500-metre suspension bridge over a precipice over a raging river, the drumming of which drowned out human conversation. But Bingham was not satisfied with reaching Chgoqquequirqau, which had already been described in 16th-century chronicles. He was convinced that this was not Vitcos, the last capital of the Incas. “The capital must be far away, where one can see the mountain peaks covered with snow,” he read in the old Spanish chronicles.
So he continued along the narrow new road along the Urubamba River. The ground they walked on was oily and slippery, so that sometimes they had to crawl on all fours to avoid slipping. Here and there they came across old footprints that showed that people had walked here in the past. At the back of the gorge, they also found the remains of terraces rising up the slopes. Later, they came across abandoned small towns and fortresses, but none of them matched the description of Vitcos. Bingham sometimes came across small Indian villages and asked the locals if they knew of any large Inca ruins nearby. He would carry with him extracts from old chronicles, which he would then read to the locals and observe their reactions. Sometimes they would show him some overgrown ruins, but he knew immediately that this was not what he was looking for.
In the small town of Santa Ana, where canoeing was already possible on the river, stood the hacienda of a Colombian who had lived in Peru for many years. He invited all the members of the expedition to his home and listened with interest to what Bingham told him. He, too, knew nothing about the Inca ruins, but was convinced that if they had existed, they had long since been swallowed up by the jungle. He advised them to return home and not to waste time looking for something that did not exist.
Bingham was disappointed, but refused to give up. Using an old map drawn decades earlier by Raimondi, who had managed to make his way to the Vilcabamba Valley, he set out to follow his trail. He was convinced that the Vilcabamba valley was the Vitcos valley, through which the last Inca, Tupac Amaru, had tried to escape from the Spaniards. But Raimondi made no mention of any Inca ruins in this valley, so Bingham pushed on more or less on blind luck.
Finally, they arrived in the Vilcabamba Valley, surrounded by high mountains covered with jungle vegetation. In the village of Lucma, they came across a local official, Mongrove, who knew the area very well, and Bingham offered him a silver Peruvian dollar for every Inca ruin he would show them. The old official agreed, even though he had never heard of a place called Vitcos, nor recognised any of the places mentioned in the centuries-old chronicles. What was more, he was convinced that he had met an expedition of fools, wasting money and time looking for some ruins that had long since been swallowed up by the jungle.
Bingham and his companions soon left Lucma, forded the river and saw before them a pointed mountain more than a thousand feet high, the top of which was partly covered with stunted trees and bushes on its sharp slopes. Mongrove told them that there were ruins at the top and that the mountain was called Rosapata, a contraction of the Inca word pata (top) and the Spanish word for rose. Bingham was not particularly interested in this until someone mentioned to him that the village at the foot of the mountain was called Puquiura. This was the place where the Inca ruler Titu Cusi received Spanish envoys and where two monks built a church. If all this is true, then Vitcos cannot be very far away either, because according to the stories, the two monks walked from here to the Inca’s larger temple, which was not far from Vitcos.
But when the expedition arrived in the village at the foot of the mountain, it found no buildings older than 100 years. They then crossed a tributary of the Vilcabamba River and followed Mongrov up the mountain. First they came to the scattered remains of some kind of fortress building on the lower saddle of the mountain, built by the Incas, but this was clearly not Vitcos. They continued on towards the summit, and Bingham remembered an old description of Vitcos from a chronicle: “The ascent to the summit, surrounded by sharp cliffs and jungle, is very dangerous and almost impossible.”
When they reached the top, they saw that the description was absolutely correct. On the approach side, a wall had been built, so masterfully made that it was like a smooth wall that could not be climbed. At the top of the mountain were the ruins of 13 or 14 buildings, surrounded by an enclosure. These were all remnants of Inca building craftsmanship, but the buildings were so damaged that it was impossible to determine their purpose.
What surprised Bingham most was the ruins of a large building with 30 doors but no windows. There were several rooms along the corridors. This could have been the last Inca refuge. Had he found Vitcos? He needed some more evidence for this claim. So now he wondered where Yurak Rumi, the large white rock overlooking the stream, was supposed to be nearby. Then, as the evening fire burned, an Indian who had accompanied him remembered: “Oh, of course. There’s a white rock in the creek in the valley nearby. I’ll show it to you tomorrow.”
But again they were disappointed. The Indian led them to a white rock with a carved seat. Nearby was a cave where the Incas could store their mummies. But the well of which the old chronicles spoke was nowhere to be found. This was definitely not an Inca temple, and Bingham and his colleagues slowly began to lose hope in the success of the expedition and to share the pessimism of their guide, Mongrov, who had spent his whole life in the area and had never heard of the Inca capital.
That same afternoon, after following a small stream through the forest, they came to a clearing where a large white rock glistened in the evening sun, and the remains of an Inca temple were under the trees. At one end of the rock was a small puddle, with water flowing into it. It was 8 August 1911.
“We have finally found the place where, in the time of Titu Cusi, the Inca priests faced east to greet the rising sun. I can imagine a priest dressed in ceremonial robes standing on top of a white rock, his cheek irradiated by the pink sunlight, waiting for the great moment when the sun deity will appear over the eastern mountains and accept the worship of the Inca priest. He will raise his hands to the sun and cry: ‘O sun, you who are peace and security, shine on us, protect us from sickness and give us health. O sun! You who allowed Cuzco and Tampa to come into being, may your Inca children always be victorious, for you created us for this purpose.”
Vilcabamba or Machu Picchu
So he found Vitcos, and there was a temple of the sun with a stream nearby. But where was Vilcabamba, the capital of Titu Cusi, which no Spaniard had ever seen? The old Spanish chronicles said it was three days away from Vitcos. But in which direction? Bingham took a closer look at Vitcos before continuing his journey. Near the thirty-door building was a row of roughly built buildings, in which he found a few things of European origin; rusty nails from horses’ hooves, ornaments from saddles, a buckle, a piece of scissors and similar bric-a-brac. These could have been the spoils of the Incas attacking Spanish troops who strayed into these remote places. Or they may have belonged to Spanish deserters who had had enough of the drudgery of serving in the army and defected to the Incas.
During their search for Vilcabamba, the explorers descended into the humid Pampaconasa Valley, where primitive and completely naked Indians lived in the jungle. Here, in the forests of the upper Amazon, the last Inca ruler, Tupac Amaru, surrendered to the Spaniards, was taken to Cuzco and killed. There is some evidence that there was a severe famine among the Incas at that time, and perhaps Tupac Amaru surrendered to the Spaniards rather than starve.
Binghama set out for the Pampaconas Valley, encouraged by reports of the Inca city of Espiritu Pampa. With the help of his friend Farmar Saavedra, the expedition finally found Inca ruins on the banks of a tributary of the Pampaconas River. But it was hard to believe that the Incas could have lived long in this humid valley, as there was no suitable food. Even the Indians fed mainly on the monkeys they managed to catch. The remains were probably only a temporary refuge for some Incas.
The expedition was over, Vilcabamba was not found, but something else was found. And that was what Bihgham wanted to explore in the years to come. But how wrong he was. He had found Vilcabamba, only he didn’t know it. Vilcabamba was Machu Picchu.
The following year, 1912, Bihgham and his expedition were back on the heights above the Urubambo Gorge in the place that would become known as Machu Picchu. There was little doubt that this was not Vilcabamba, the refuge of the last Inca ruler, his last refuge, built in the middle of the 15th century and never discovered by the Spanish.
Removing the trees and vegetation under which the site lay was very tiring, but what they found was beyond all expectations. The ruins were winding along a narrow ridge below the summit of Machu Picchu, in fact the city was built on a mountain saddle called Picchu, between the two rocks of Wayne and Machu. The 100-hectare town is guarded on three sides by the rapids of the Urubamba, which foam in a deep gorge, and on the fourth side by a narrow mountainside.
Machu Picchu had only 200 houses, of which 150 were used as dwellings. 600 people lived in them permanently, and their job was to maintain the city until the arrival of the Inca ruler. When the Inca ruler and his entourage arrived, the city must have had a population of 2 000. Thus, only a handful of people could defend it against a much more powerful invader.
On Machu Picchu itself and on nearby peaks, remnants of signalling devices could be found, which could be used to send and receive messages from distant peaks. Vilcabamba, or Machu Picchu, was built on terraced slopes, and the terraces where the Incas grew their crops were linked to the city by over 100 staircases. Water was plentiful, 400,000 litres of it could be pumped in every day, and it came from springs just a kilometre and a half from the city. It was piped into the city through stone canals that filled a series of stone reservoirs. There were also some water springs in the town itself. There were also many gardens belonging to houses arranged in groups.
Architecturally, Machu Picchu was a faithful replica of Cuzco. The most beautiful buildings were discovered in the western part of the city. After climbing steep terraces, they reached the highest peak of the city, where a small temple stands and from which the sunrise could be watched. South of the top of the city, but just below it, was an area called the sun platform, flanked by temples. The granite blocks of which the temples are built are indeed huge and exquisitely carved, fitting closely together. The walls are sloping inwards, giving the building greater stability, and the doorways are narrower at the top and wider at the bottom.
The Incas had no pulleys for lifting, so individual buildings must have taken decades or more to construct. The “sun tower” was very important in the sacred part, but not everyone was allowed to go there, and it was also the highest point in the city. In the centre of the platform there was also a sundial, which could be used to determine the exact arrival of summer and the solstice. From here, the Inca ruler could observe the surroundings.
Machu Picchu was built around 1450 and abandoned a century later, during the Spanish conquest. It is likely that most of the inhabitants died as a result of the smallpox epidemic brought to the country by the Spanish, and the few inhabitants who did not fall ill emigrated.
Researchers have also discovered several burial sites in deep caves. The Inca buried their dead in a sitting position, with their knees pressed tightly against their chins. They were also given pottery, bone tools and a few bronze objects to take with them on their journey to the other world. The most interesting cemetery was just outside the town, in a cave containing fifty skeletons, only four of them male. These are believed to be ‘virgins of the sun’ – priestesses associated with the temples where the sun was worshipped.
A woman was buried in the only single grave, and her grave was covered by a large stone pebble. The grave contained many bronze objects and sewing needles, as well as a bronze concave mirror, clasps and other objects. Bingham was convinced that this was the grave of the Great Priestess or Mme Cune, of whom some chronicles say that she used the sun’s rays to light a tuft of wool on the altar with the bronze mirror during ceremonies.
It was almost unbelievable that the city could remain hidden for 400 years after the Spanish arrived in Peru. But not only did no one know about Vitcos and Machu Picchu until Bihgham’s discovery, the whole area was not plotted on any maps. His expedition found itself in the area between the Apurimac and Urubamba rivers and saw mountains and gorges that were not even plotted on maps. The following year, the expedition’s chief cartographer solved the riddle when he discovered that the two rivers were fifty kilometres further apart than the maps had shown.
Bingham continued his excavations in 1914 and 1915, before using his popularity to enter politics and become a US Senator. He failed to achieve scientific fame, however, because his books presented theses and assumptions that were contrary to the established scientific findings of the time. Nevertheless, his adventure stories were the basis for the later Indiana Jones films.
