Source: WTL digitized slide photo© taken on site in Machu Picchu.
Comments: It is often said that the Yale University anthropologist Hiram Bingham (1875-1956) "discovered" Machu Picchu in 1911. It is, of course, more accurate to say that this distinguished American scholar made this now famous site known to the world outside Peru. As a result of his excavation and exploration he took hundreds of objects back to Yale, where scholars did research on them until 2007. However, as a result of a successful Peruvian international law suit against Yale in which the Peruvian government alleged that Bingham had taken the objects out of Peru illegally, the university agreed in 2007 to return them to their rightful owner, Peru and to the people of Peru. For an on-line article about the return of the disputed 380 objects, see this article from by NPR in 2011: "Finders Not Keepers: Yale Returns Artifcacts to Peru."