Embellishment and Controversy

Bingham proved to be a better storyteller than explorer, heartily embellishing the tale of Machu Picchu’s discovery.

For instance, his telling of the story would have his readers believe that he had explicitly been searching for Machu Picchu, discovering it thanks to a great effort on his part. He described a harrowing journey that required trekking through thick jungle brush and ended with the discovery of the long-sought after ruins, which he described as being shrouded in dense vegetation.

But Bingham’s flair for embellishment was later revealed when his son, Alfred, found letters that Bingham had written to his wife shortly after the discovery in 1911.

In them, Bingham contradicts much of what he would later publish, telling her that the path to Machu Picchu was in fact a modern road system (which were common in the Inca Empire) not far from a populated farming region– a stark contrast from the difficult journey to a remote and isolated location, as he described it to the world.

Alfred also uncovered photos that further refuted his father’s famous account, which clearly show that the ruins were clear and open, not covered in vegetation as Bingham had said.

Clouded in Mystery

The cloud of mystery behind the site is one of the main reasons that it has survived in this preserved state for so many years.

Most of what we know about the Inca culture owes to the Spanish conquerors of the period who documented and wrote about their findings. However, there were no writings addressing Machu Picchu, for the simple reason that the Spanish were not aware of its existence.

Today, what we know about Machu Picchu has been aggregated from the events of the époque and combined with experts’ interpretations of the different functions of the structures that make up the site.