Ruth M. Wright

Lost Inca Trail: Prehistoric Civil Engineering

When the young Yale history-professor Hiram Bingham came upon Machu Picchu in 1911, he was impressed with the quality of engineering that had gone into the site some four centuries before by early Americans. Bingham went back to Machu Picchu in 1912 as director of a Yale/National Geographic Society expedition to clear and document the ruins. Binghams description of his explorations filled the entire April 1913 issue of National Geographic Magazine and brought Machu Picchu to the worlds attention; Bingham opined that, The Inca were good engineers. He could also have stated that the Inca civil engineers were good road builders because by the time Conquistador Pizarro arrived, the Inca were operating and maintaining some 14,000 miles of road system that stretched from Ecuador to Chile and from the Pacific Ocean to high Andean settlements after crossing mountain passes with 18,000-foot elevations. Bingham described the main Inca Trail leading into Machu Picchu. It was a masterpiece of prehistoric Inca road building.