The ruin of Machu Picchu is one of the greatest testaments to pre-Columbian civilization and a symbol of the importance of the once thriving Inca Empire. It was honored last year as one of the new “Wonders of the World” and it had been recognized that Hiram Bingham found the site in 1911 hundreds of years after the Incas were vanquished. Yet a group of researchers believe that Bingham was not the one who “rediscovered” Machu Picchu:
Paolo Greer, a retired Alaska oil pipeline foreman, says otherwise. Thirty years of digging through files in the United States and Peru led him to maps and documents showing that a German businessman named Augusto R. 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 told The Associated Press.
Greer’s assessment was presented publicly yesterday in conjunction with a French archeologist and British historian. Their claim is that Burns was a greedy adventurer who set up shop in the area of Machu Picchu and plundered Incan artifacts for sale to European museums.
Peruvian officials have recently tried to reclaim thousands of pieces originally from Machu Picchu that were pilfered by Bingham and are currently owned by Yale University.
Sources- MSNBC, AFP, BBC News, The Latin Americanist, Reuters
Image- The Telegraph (“An 1874 map showing Machu Picchu”)
The idea that A.R. Berns looted Machu Picchu in the 19th century is not true. There is no evidence to support the suggestion that Berns even set foot in the archaeological ruin, let alone looted it.
ReplyDeleteBerns set up a stock company in Peru in 1887 (the 1867 date in some stories is an error) with the purported goal of searching for Inca treasure, but no evidence has been presented to date — other than unbridled speculation, which only Baron Von Munchausen considers evidence — that he ever even turned a spade. Berns seemed more interested in the treasures in his investors’ pockets.
Berns had launched another company a few years earlier, in 1881, soliciting investments in a gold and mining venture on a property in Peru that he claimed had more such precious metals that any other site in the world. Nothing came of that venture either.
A gold mine is a hole in the ground atop which stands a liar — attributed to Mark Twain.
On the larger question -- discovery -- Hiram Bingham is justifiably famed as the "scientific discoverer" of Machu Picchu, that is, he encountered, excavated, photographed, studied, and made known to the outside world the ruins known today as Machu Picchu.
The site was never completely unknown. Peruvian historians have found records of the ruins' existence going back to the 16th century. One might argue that it was never absolutely abandoned. So even if Berns visited the site in 1887 -- and there's no evidence that he did -- he's at the tail end of a long line that stretches back to the 1500s.
Dan Buck
Paolo Greer and I have had an exchange over at the Discovery News website. You can view the entire exchange at:
ReplyDeletehttp://blogs.discovery.com/news_archaeorama/2008/06/not-exactly-ind.html
In Greer's August 9 post, he now concedes that there is no evidence that A.R. Berns ever visited Machu Picchu.
His fallback position now seems to be that because Berns lived in Urubamba and was an
explorer and a huaquero, he must have been to Machu Picchu. That's sounds to me more like a hope -- there's a pony in here somewhere. Keep in mind the evidence we have for Berns activities in Urubamba is his 1881 prospectus for the imaginary gold and silver deposits and the imaginary Huacas del Inca mummy tunnel, the same prospectus that excited his potential investors
with the news that the Incas had a gold washing sluice there, called Llamajcansha, which Berns helpfully translated as "Gold Yard."
Llamajcansha means, in Quechua, "Llama yard."
Berns was selling his investors a load of llama dung.
By the way, per the 1876 Peruvian cenus there were at that time more than 17,000 people living in the Urubamba Province. I suggest we designate all of them discovers of Machu Picchu and call it a day.
Dan
=================================================
Discovery News
=================================================
“There is no, repeat no evidence that A.R. Berns knew of, visited, intended to loot, or looted Machu Picchu,” Dan Buck.
Already, Buck has written more words of invalidation about my articleon various web sites than were contained in the original story.
I agree with him that, “The fact that Berns set up a company called‘Huacas del Inca’ is not proof of anything,” and “There are inumerable Inca ruins in the Urubamba and La Convencion districts of Cuzco.”
It is also true that these and other tidbits, in themselves, aren’t much proof that Berns was in Machu Picchu, especially if taken out of contextto pretend that such comments, alone, were my argument.
In fact, if readers were to ignore my article completely and depend solely upon Buck’s ongoing harangue, no connection between Machu Picchu and Berns would be apparent.
Or they could read my article for themselves.
Among other things, I wrote that for many years between 1867 and 1881 Berns lived at what is now Aguas Calientes, about two miles from Machu Picchu. During that period, he explored the region, using local guides whose families had been in the area for generations. He purposely searched for ruins.
Berns was in the business of looting Inca tombs and almost certainly made the effort to do so in Machu Picchu, virtually on his doorstep.
Since then, millions of tourists have taken the Machu Picchu shuttle from the site of Berns’ camp to the ruins, just a few minutes away.
There’s no reason to bring in Sherlock Holmes on this one.
Actually, I included enough evidence, including maps, in my account to allow the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. Anyone who wants to read and truly appreciate this research can find my article, “Machu Picchu before Bingham”, at the URL above.
Well, almost anyone.
My two quotes from the Discovery interview above were not contradictory.
I am sure that Berns did make an effort to find something in Machu Picchu, since the German was in the business and what are now the most famous ruins in Peru, if not in the Americas, was a short hike from his camp.
Several reporters were especially eager to know what “treasures” Berns took out, exactly. They wanted something sensational to print. I was asked to detail such golden plunder and I would not.
If Berns kept a list of his spoils, he has not shown it to me.
Thanks to Buck for typing out my interview. Even when the batteries in my hearing aid are fresh, I still miss a word or two.
However, the interview says what I said it did, no matter how “clearly” Buck heard otherwise.
Ms. Lorenzi’s recording above is only two and a half minutes long. It was done when she happened to ring me from Florence, Italy, to a busy internet café in Lima, Peru. In it I did not present the detail I explained in my article, or in the interviews that followed.
These are posted on Kim MacQuarrie’s blog.
Buona fortuna,
Paolo Greer
Posted by: Paolo Greer | August 09, 2008 at 06:49 PM========================================================
This morning I rec'd from Duke University Library a photocopy of the 48-page prospectus for Berns 1887 Huacas de Inca stock company. It's Indiana Jones mumbo-jumbo, with nary a clue as to any specific archaeological site. The basic premise is that there are ruins out in the hinterlands of Urubamba and La Convencion with unimaginable treasures waiting to be plundered: "las riquisimas y valiosisimas obras de arte que antes de 400 anos adoraban los templos y edificios publicos y reales de la metroploli Imperio Incasico," etc., etc.
ReplyDeleteMost of the prospectus is devoted to a potted summary of Berns's remarkable achievements, which included several $100 million construction projects (more than $2 billion today), none of which seem to have laid a single brick. My favorite was a $100 million mining project in Arizona. Berns tells his investors, "Arizona es un pais donde se ocupan mas de 500,000 personas en mineria, pues su principal industria es mineria." The total Arizona population in 1880 was 40,440.
The prospectus goes on to say that Berns's Arizona enterprise went so swimmingly that his backers allowed him to go to Peru, but not before bestowing on him stock worth $12 million (nearly a quarter billion dollars in today's currency). And so on.
There is no mention, however, of Berns's 1881 enterprise, the Torontoy gold and silver mine fraud.
The 1887 prospectus compares the Huacas del Inca organizers to Columbus, Galileo, and Robert Fulton. Re the last-mentioned there might be a connection, hot air.
Dan
Salkantay trek is the alternative to the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu was recently named among the 25 best Treks in the World, by National Geographic Adventure Travel Magazine.
ReplyDeletethe Salkantay Trek is an ancient and remote footpath located in the same region as the Inca Trail where massive snowcapped mountains collide with lush tropical rain forests.
ReplyDeletehi,
ReplyDeletePeru