The jungle-shrouded Inca citadel of Machu Picchu may have been rediscovered — and looted — decades before the Yale academic credited with the find first got there, a researcher said on Thursday.
Most academics say Yale University’s Hiram Bingham III rediscovered the site in Peru’s verdant southeastern Andes during a 1911 expedition.
But Paolo Greer, a retired Alaska oil pipeline foreman, says otherwise. Thirty years of digging through files in the US and Peru led him to maps and documents showing that a German businessman named Augusto Berns got there first.
Berns purchased land across from Machu Picchu in 1867, and an 1887 document even shows he set up a company to plunder the site, Greer said.
Berns wrote that Machu Picchu “will undoubtedly contain objects of great value and form part of those treasures of the Incas,” Greer said.
Peruvian historian Mariana Mould de Pease backs Greer’s claim.
She said she found in Yale University archives a letter of understanding between Berns and Peru’s then-president to pillage the site, as long as the Peruvian government received 10 percent of the profits.
“He was a scammer,” Greer said of Berns. “He was trying to get money.”
Greer said he uncovered other documents showing that Berns, an engineer, had previously set up a gold mining company near Machu Picchu, even though the granite cliffs in the area hold little, if any gold.
David Ugarte Vega, head of the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of San Antonio Abad in Cuzco, who has studied Machu Picchu for more than 30 years, said Greer’s theory was plausible, but that more investigation was needed.
Even if Bingham — who was led to Machu Picchu by a local Quechua-speaking farmer — wasn’t the first explorer to rediscover the site, he did not leave empty-handed.
In 2006, Peru demanded that Yale University return the collection of artifacts Binghman took from Machu Picchu, a complex of stone buildings built by the Incas in the 1400s.
Yale last year agreed to return about 4,000 pieces that had been taken from the site.
The two sides agreed in principle to cosponsor a traveling expedition featuring the pieces and later a museum in Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital. But they have been unable to reach a final agreement on mummies, ceramics, bones and other artifacts.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS