Treasure Seekers: Lost Cities of the Inca

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Peru.

For centuries home of the high

civilizations of the Andes.

Here the Sun Kings of the Inca

ruled over a vast empire,

which stretched for 2,000 miles along

the mountain spine of South America.

In 1532, that empire was destroyed

with tragic ease by the Spanish.

As their world crumbled around them,

Inca nobles retreated into the remote

recesses of the mountains.

There they struggled to keep alive

their culture in its final refuge.

The last city of the Incas

Vilcabamba.

This is the story of two men

lured by the silent call of that

last Inca hiding place.

One to rediscover it

the other to destroy it forever.

Machu Picchu.

For centuries, this spectacular

Inca citadel lay forgotten,

hidden by the plunging ravines

and coiling mists of the mountain

cloud forest.

The year is 1948.

Machu Picchu is visited by

a retired American senator

a man, who in his youth,

revealed it to the world.

He has done many things in

his remarkable life,

but Hiram Bingham knows

he will be remembered for one:

this astonishing archeological

discovery.

Hiram Bingham is a sort of

accidental archeologist.

He's been scorned by better trained

excavators,

but he really doesn't care

he's used to coping with bad press.

Back in Washington he'd been elected

a Republican senator

in the Roaring Twenties.

His flamboyant style was perfectly

in tune with the times.

A bribery scandal, an affair with

the wife of another Congressman,

divorce, accusations that he'd

embezzled his first wife's fortune

had all left him unscathed.

In 1929, he landed a Zeppelin

on Capitol Hill as a publicity stunt.

Hiram loved headlines.

He was a very, very colorful

character

a man of enormous energy,

tremendous ambition.

He was capable of doing almost

anything, and he had an attitude

that led him to believe he could

accomplish whatever he set out to do.

Perhaps Hiram's adventurous life was

the perfect reaction to his upbringing.

Born to pioneering Christian

missionaries in the Hawaiian Islands,

Hiram was raised for a life of

Puritan austerity.

In the world of his childhood,

any extravagance,

lack of discipline, even dancing

were strictly forbidden.

Not surprisingly,

Hiram was eager to escape.

Resourceful and intelligent,

he saved and studied to get into

school on the mainland.

Before long, he was headed for Yale.

Hiram threw himself into

Yale college life.

Gone were the puritanical days

of his Hawaiian childhood.

Suddenly, a new world of temptations

was beckoning.

Intellectual excitement, adventure,

and girls.

Dear Mother, what can I do?

I know it will hurt you

to think that I dance,

but people here in the East do not

understand why

anyone should not dance,

unless one is sick or lame.

I can see nothing wrong with it

unless carried to excess.

Although reserved, Hiram was

determined to enjoy himself.

Thanks to his charm,

he was soon moving freely in this

atmosphere of wealth and privilege.

Before long, he met Alfreda Mitchell,

heiress to the Tiffany fortune.

Alfreda was irresistible, wealthy,

and from the high society

Hiram was now determined to be

a part of.

In 1900,

two years after they first met,

Hiram and Freda were married at the

Mitchell's grand estate in New London.

Hiram took to wealth like a duck to

water but there was a down side.

There was obviously an economic

asymmetry.

The wife brought with her a set

of expectations

about the style in which

she should live,

and her side of the family was

apparently very active

in making sure that those

expectations were met.

He liked the money and status,

but hadn't banked on the pressures

from his in laws.

Used to his independence,

Hiram soon began to feel like a bird

in a gilded cage.

He had every prospect of a

professorship at Yale,

but before long university life, too,

started to feel suffocating.

Feeling hemmed in by academia,

in laws,

and the pressures of domesticity,

Hiram soon started looking for

an escape.

He decided field research for

a book about Simon Bolivar

would be his ticket to

some adventure.

In 1906, he said good bye to Alfreda

and headed off for South America.

I feel the Bingham blood stirring

in my veins

as I start for little known regions,

as nearly all my Bingham ancestors for

ten generations have done before me.

Freda wasn't happy about the long

separation imposed by his travels.

Hiram wrote soothing letters as if

he wasn't either.

Dearly beloved, I love you with a

love that increases

from day to day.

Let us not complain about

our long separation

but rejoice in the opportunity to

accomplish a good piece of work.

But thousands of miles away,

Hiram was ecstatic.

He may have missed Alfreda,

but at last he met his true calling

adventurer.

It was through the actual process of

travel that he began to realize that

exploration rather than documentary

research was what really drew him.

Bingham abandoned his

academic research

to write a book about his travels.

When he reached Peru,

Bingham came face to face with

the Inca world for the first time.

He was entranced.

Here was the remains of a civilization

as vast and sophisticated as

ancient Egypt,

and yet little was known about it.

Its descendants still populated

the Andes.

The ancient sites

which littered Peru spoke to him

of a magnificent bygone world,

but he had no idea how to interpret

what they said.

He had to find a method on the spot.

Fortunately, I had with me that

extremely useful handbook,

"Hints to the Travelers," published

by the Royal Geographic Society.

In one of the chapters I found out

what should be done

when one is confronted by

a prehistoric site:

take careful measurements,

plenty of photographs, and describe

as accurately as possible all finds.

He was soon eagerly examining Inca

sites all over Peru.

One episode of Inca history fascinated

him above all others Vilcabamba,

last stronghold of the Inca kings.

Sixteenth century chronicles recounted

how a core group of Inca nobles

and priests

had escaped the carnage of conquest

and fled into the impenetrable

high jungles

to the north of the Inca capital,

Cuzco.

And there, at a place called

Vilcabamba,

they'd constructed an Inca court

in exile.

A palace, a temple, a final

refuge of their world.

They had taken their sacred relics

of gold with them.

Many had been lured by the accounts

of Vilcabamba and gone in search of it.

None had ever succeeded in

finding it.

Perhaps the relics and the gold

were still there,

hidden in the jungle,

waiting to be discovered.

Hiram was spellbound.

It was a treasure seeker's dream.

Suddenly, Hiram saw a fantastic

adventure opening up before him:

he would discover Vilcabamba,

lost city of the Incas,

and unearth its hidden treasures.

Hiram returned to the U.S.

and threw himself into fundraising

and his researches on Vilcabamba.

He pored over maps and chronicles

of the Conquest.

Based on these, Hiram made

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