Cradle of Gold: The Story of Hiram Bingham, a Real-Life Indiana Jones, and the Search for Machu Picchu »

Christopher Heaney worked as a journalist in Peru on a Fulbright fellowship. He has written articles on Hiram Bingham for the New Republic and The New York Times. A graduate of Yale University, he is currently a doctoral candidate in Latin American History at the University of Texas, Austin.

"In 1911, a young Peruvian boy led American explorer and Yale historian Hiram Bingham into the ancient Inca citadel of Machu Picchu, Hidden amidst the breathtaking heights of the Andes, this settlement of temples, tombs, and palaces was the Incas' greatest achievement - and a breakthrough discovery for the field of archeology. Tall, handsome, and sure of his destiny, Bingham believed that Machu Picchu was the Incas' final refuge, where they fled the Spanish Conquistadors. Bingham revealed the lost and forgotten city to the Western world, and his dispatches from the jungle cast him as the swashbuckling hero romanticized today. But his excavation of the site raised old specters of conquest and plunder, and met with an indigenous nationalism that changed the course of Peruvian history. Though Bingham successfully realized his dream of bringing Machu Picchu's treasure of skulls, bones, and artifacts back to the United States, conflict between Yale University and Peru persists to the present day over a simple question: Who owns Inca history?" In this textured and sweeping narrative, Christopher Heaney crafts a masterful tale of archeology and adventure - taking the reader into the heart of Peru's past to relive the dramatic story of the final years of the Inca empire, the exhilarating recovery or - their final cities, and the thought-provoking fight over their future. Drawing on original research from untapped archives, Heaney vividly portrays both a stunning landscape and the complex history of a fascinating region that continues to inspire awe and controversy today.

Library Journal

On an archaeological trip to Peru on July 24, 1911, Hiram Bingham, an American explorer and history professor at Yale, happened upon the ruins of the Inca city of Machu Picchu. Although the site was already known to the local native people, Bingham made the Machu Picchu ruins famous and received acclaim as their "discoverer." Heaney presents a well-researched and very readable biography of Bingham from his childhood in Hawaii as the son of missionaries, through his education and careers as historian, educator, explorer, and finally politician. He probes the depths of Bingham's work and character, examining setbacks, scandals, and achievements and skillfully unraveling Bingham's role in the controversy that still exists today between the government of Peru and Yale University over the ownership of the Machu Picchu burials and artifacts. Heaney shows Bingham as a complex and ambitious man inculcated with the racial attitudes of his time, but he also convincingly shows that despite his shortcomings, Bingham made a significant contribution to the study of South American archaeology and Inca history. The book's title is something of a misnomer, as Bingham found no gold at Machu Picchu, and the name "cradle of gold" is used in the text to refer to a different Incan archaeological site that Bingham visited. VERDICT Recommended for history and archaeology enthusiasts interested in a detailed account of the life of an archaeological icon.—Elizabeth Salt, Otterbein Coll. Lib., Westerville, OH

Map
• Preface: Beneath the Hat
• The Last City of the Incas: the Sixteenth-Century Conquest
• THE EXPLORER
• The Black Temple
• Ivory Tower
• The Compass
• The George Washington of the Andes/Into the Andes
• The Navel of the World
• Choqquequirau, The Cradle of Gold
• Manco Inca
• THE SEARCH
• Best Laid Plans
• Dead Man’s Gulch
• The Discoverers of Machu Picchu
• Yurak Rumi/The White Temple
• The Plain of Ghosts
• Titu Cusi
• THE TREASURE
• The Deal
• The Resurrectionists
• The Debate
• The Prize
• Tupac Amaru
• WAR
• Between the Poles
• Bonesmen
• Roads to Ruins
• The Trial of Hiram Bingham
• Airborne
• The Return