Word: picchu
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...northwest of the ancient Inca capital of Cuzco, a handful of Peruvians and Americans met last week to dedicate a bronze plaque to U.S. Archaeologist Hiram Bingham and the mysterious lost city he discovered 50 years ago. Some experts believe that parts of the city, which Bingham named Machu Picchu (Old Peak), are 60 centuries old, which would make it 1,000 years older than ancient Babylon. More recently, if its ruins are interpreted correctly, it was at once an impregnable fortress and a majestic royal capital of an exiled civilization...
Built on a saddle between two peaks, Machu Picchu is surrounded by a granite wall, can be entered only by one main gate. Inside is a maze of a thousand ruined houses, temples, palaces, and staircases, all hewn from white granite and dominated by a great granite sundial. In Quechua, language of the sun-worshipping Incas and their present-day descendants, the dial was known as Intihuatana-hitching post...
...local Indians until Bingham came upon "a great flight of beautifully constructed stone-faced terraces, perhaps a hundred of them, each hundreds of feet long and ten feet high." Bingham died five years ago, after spending much of his free time exploring and writing about Machu Picchu. and watching it become a growing tourist attraction. Hundreds of others have studied, scraped and photographed the lost city. There are still great gaps in their knowledge, and little agreement on the significance of what they know. Fittingly enough, the best known-and most romantic-history of Machu Picchu was compiled by Discoverer...
...session of the Senate Finance Committee which was considering a tariff bill of special interest to manufacturers. But politics was never his true province. An irrepressible adventurer, Honolulu-born Hiram Bingham led the first ascent of the Andes' Coropuna (21.700 ft.), discovered the famed Andean ruins of Machu Picchu. "Senators," he once said, "I understand not at all. I understand so much better the ethics and morals of explorers...
...Search. The erect old guide told how he came to find Machu Picchu. After searching old texts, studying old charts, he said, he had concluded that somewhere in the Andes was an Inca capital that the Spanish never reached. Thereupon, he had gone out from Cuzco with a group of eager young scientists, had struck down the might gorge of the Urubamba canyon. Finally, on a muleteer's grudging tip, Bingham crawled up the peak known as Machu Picchu. There, under trees and matted vines, lay the lost city...