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Photograph of Machu Picchu,
the Lost City of the Incas, which was taken in the 1960s by American
photographer Chuck Clark. Machu Picchu was "discovered" in 1911 and made
famous by another American, Hiram Bingham, who was searching for
Vilcabamba (the last refuge of the Incas after the Spanish conquest) was told
about Machu Picchu by Melchor Arteaga, a local indigenous farmer who had known
about the site for many years. Incredibly, it was an eleven year-old
Quechua boy, Pablito Alvarez who led Bingham up the steep canyon from the
Urubamba River to the Machu Picchu ruins. Immediately after Bingham's
announcement of his discovery of "The Lost City of the Incas," others came
forward claiming to have discovered the city before him. In any case,
Bingham made Machu Picchu famous when he obtained funding from the National
Geographic Society who dedicated an entire edition of their magazine to the Inca
citadel and helped fund his archaeological expeditions in 1912 and 1915.
The year 2011 marks the hundredth anniversary of the "official" discovery of
Machu Picchu.
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