When Yale professor of history, Hiram Bingham, stumbled upon the jungle-covered ruins at Machu Picchu in July 1911, he was actually searching for the legendary lost city of Vilcabamba. Vilcabamba was a remote mountain refuge created for fleeing Inca nobility as the conquistadors made their way south into Cuzco. Bingham was looking for the last stronghold of a conquered people. What he found was something very different.
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