Hiram Bingham

Hiram Bingham (born Nov. 19, 1875, Honolulu, Hawaii—died June 6, 1956, Washington, D.C., U.S.) was an American archaeologist and politician who in 1911 initiated the scientific study of Machu Picchu, an ancient Inca site in a remote part of the Peruvian Andes. Bingham may have been preceded by the German adventurer Augusto Berns, who, some scholars believe, visited the site in 1867. Whether or not he was preceded by Berns, however, Bingham and his work were the key catalysts for the archaeological investigation of sites in the Andes and other parts of South America.

As a boy, Bingham learned mountaineering from his father, a well-known Pacific missionary. This skill vastly aided his Inca research. In 1906, seeking to enhance his ability to teach Latin American history, he traveled the Andean route taken in 1819 by Simón Bolívar from Venezuela to Colombia. In 1908 he followed the old Spanish trade route through the Andes from Buenos Aires, Argentina, to Lima, Peru.

Bingham was a member of the history faculty at Yale University from 1909 until 1924. In July 1911 he directed a Yale archaeological expedition whose main objective was to find Vilcabamba (Vilcapampa), which was the “lost city of the Incas,” the secret mountain stronghold used during the 16th-century rebellion against Spanish rule. Prospects for locating it were poor: not even the Spanish conquistadores had discovered it. Clues from early chronicles of the Incas were scanty. It was believed to be situated somewhere near Cuzco, Peru, where the problems of crossing the Andes were formidable. The expedition owed its success largely to Bingham’s steadfastness and courage. He visited several Inca sites, sometimes risking his life to do so.

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After arriving in Cuzco, Bingham was urged by the prefect of Apurímac, J.J. Nuñez, to search the vicinity of the Urubamba River valley for the fabled ruins of Choquequirau (“Cradle of Gold”), and Bingham suspected that site might be Vilcabamba. On July 24 Bingham was led by a Quechua-speaking resident, Melchor Arteaga, to the ruins of Machu Picchu. There he found well-preserved stonework remains and was particularly struck by the similarity of one of the structures to the Temple of the Sun at Cuzco. In 1912 Bingham led the expedition that excavated Machu Picchu, and he returned there in 1915. He became convinced that Machu Picchu was Vilcabamba, and it wasn’t until the mid-20th century that his claim was seriously disputed. Bingham’s additional work in the region revealed the important sites of Vitcos and Espíritu Pampa, a larger ruin that was thoroughly excavated in 1964 by the American archaeologist Gene Savoy, who demonstrated it to be a more likely site for Vilcabamba. Bingham’s publications on South America include Inca Land (1922), Machu Picchu, a Citadel of the Incas (1930), and Lost City of the Incas (1948).

Bingham entered politics and was elected lieutenant governor of Connecticut (1922–24). After winning the governorship in 1924, he almost immediately resigned to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate. He was reelected to a full term in 1926, after which he devoted himself to business interests. In 1951 he was appointed to the Civil Service Loyalty Review Board by President Harry S. Truman and helped investigate controversial cases of suspected subversion in the State Department.