How could ruins that looked so spectacular, Bingham wondered, not have an equally spectacular history? Bingham, of course, was neither an Inca specialist, nor an archaeologist, nor was he an anthropologist. As Machu Picchu’s fame continued to grow, however, so, too, did the pressure upon Bingham to devise a theory to explain the ruins’ significance. Eventually—and perhaps partially in response to that pressure—Bingham devised a set of theories that were almost as spectacular as the ruins of Machu Picchu themselves.
Far from being an isolated, little-known citadel located on the edge of the Inca Empire, Bingham claimed, Machu Picchu had actually been the original epicenter of that empire. What Paris was to France and Rome was to Italy, Bingham boldly implied, Machu Picchu was to the Inca Empire. Based upon the flimsiest of evidence, Bingham eventually proposed that the city he had discovered had actually been the first city the Incas had inhabited; thus, according to Bingham, Machu Picchu was the cradle of the entire Inca civilization. Further, based upon what later turned out to be one of his team member’s erroneous examination of bones recovered from numerous burials at the site, Bingham theorized that Machu Picchu had been occupied exclusively by female “Virgins of the Sun.” After Manco Inca’s failed siege of Cuzco, Bingham asserted, Manco had retreated to the ruins of Machu Picchu, the site that, Bingham now believed, was Vilcabamba. Even after Tupac Amaru had been executed, Bingham said, the history of Machu Picchu had still not ended. One of the ironies of Inca history, Bingham explained, was that the citadel that had given birth to the Inca Empire had in the end witnessed that same empire’s last breath.
In its last state it [Machu Picchu] became the home and refuge of the Virgins of the Sun, priestesses of the most humane cult of aboriginal America. Here, concealed in a canyon of remarkable grandeur, protected by art and nature, these consecrated women gradually passed away, leaving no known descendants, nor any records other than the masonry walls and artifacts to be described in another volume. Whoever they were, whatever name be finally assigned to this site by future historians, of this I feel sure—that few romances can ever surpass that of the granite citadel on top of the beetling precipices of Machu Picchu, the crown of Inca Land.
It was a decidedly romantic story and one that Bingham clung to until he died, in 1956, at the age of eighty-one. In the last book Bingham wrote on the subject, Lost City of the Incas, published in 1948 when he was seventy-three years old, Bingham staked his worldwide reputation on the fact that Machu Picchu was indeed
The “Lost City of the Incas,” favorite residence of the last Emperors, site of temples and palaces built of white granite in the most inaccessible part of the grand canyon of the Urubamba; a holy sanctuary to which only nobles, priests, and the Virgins of the Sun were admitted. It was once called Vilcapampa but is known today as Machu Picchu.
Such was Hiram Bingham’s stature in the archaeological world that few dared question his interpretation of his own discovery, at least during his lifetime. Only a year after Bingham’s death, however, in 1957, another American explorer arrived in Peru—an explorer who quickly began to suspect that the great Hiram Bingham had gotten it completely and utterly wrong.
17 VILCABAMBA REDISCOVERED
“‘Don’t think you can just crash around blindly in the jungle and find anything,’ he [Savoy] continued. ‘You can’t. Listen to the campesinos. They know where everything is. Pay attention to their tips and look for old roads. Follow them. They all go somewhere…. One thing though: don’t trust anyone.’ … It was the best 30 seconds of advice he could possibly have given us.”
VINCENT LEE, RECOUNTING A CONVERSATION WITH GENE SAVOY, FORGOTTEN VILCABAMBA, 2000
“When night was come, the Earth rocked to and fro as if seeking to unite itself with the Light. And the stars fell from heaven in a great shower. And an angel appeared to the Man [Gene Savoy] in his dreams, saying that he should await the signal of God, the cross by which the world was enlightened, at the tomb of the [Christ] Child [Jamil] two days hence.”
GENE SAVOY, JUNGLE EXPLORER AND MESSENGER OF GOD, JAMIL: THE CHILD CHRIST, 1976
FIFTY-SIX YEARS AFTER HIRAM BINGHAM’S DISCOVERY OF Machu Picchu, a twenty-nine-year-old American named Gene Savoy arrived in Peru, determined, like Bingham, to discover lost ruins. Six-foot-one, handsome, with an athletic physique, swept-back brown hair, and a certain resemblance to the movie star Errol Flynn, Savoy had recently lost his home, his business, his finances, and his wife. Having hit rock bottom, he had come to Peru to reinvent himself as an explorer.
As unlikely as his decision may have seemed, the truth of the matter was that if you wanted to become an explorer in 1957, Peru was an excellent place to be. Hiram Bingham’s final book on his discovery of Machu Picchu, Lost City of the Incas, had been published nine years earlier and had become an immediate bestseller. Because of it and of other publications, the ruins of Machu Picchu were now known throughout the world. Bingham himself had returned to Peru in 1948 to help inaugurate the opening of a paved road that allowed an increasing number of tourists to arrive by bus at Machu Picchu.
Meanwhile, in 1947, the Norwegian explorer Thor Heyerdahl had sailed a primitive-style raft, called the Kon-Tiki, from Peru to the Marquesas Islands in the South Pacific, hoping to provide evidence that ancient Peruvian cultures could have had contact with islands in the South Seas. Heyerdahl’s book about that voyage, Kon-Tiki, had also become an immediate bestseller and was published in more than sixty languages. In addition, a documentary Heyerdahl made of the voyage won an Academy Award in 1952 and had been shown in theaters throughout the world. Three years later, in 1955, the American writer-adventurer Victor von Hagen had published Highway of the Sun, an account of his exploration of more than 25,000 miles of ancient Inca roads, during which he had discovered many ruins. Two years later, as Gene Savoy stepped off a plane in Lima—Pizarro’s former City of the Kings—one thing was certain: a worldwide audience was primed and waiting for more sensational discoveries from Peru. Savoy merely had to find them.
Unlike Hiram Bingham, Savoy possessed no college degrees, having dropped out of the University of Oregon in his sophomore year. Savoy and Bingham did, however, share a marked similarity: both had experienced a spiritual crisis in their youth over whether to forsake the physical pleasures of the world and instead consecrate their lives to God. Perhaps that was not so surprising in the case of Bingham, who, after all, was the product of two generations of Protestant missionaries. Bingham, in fact, while still an undergraduate at Yale had struggled over whether he should become a missionary. “I have been led to consecrate myself anew to the service of my Master,” the young Bingham had written to his father. “It is my purpose to save souls for Christ…. Oh father, pray for me that I may be kept by the power of the Holy Spirit from all unrighteousness. I do so want to do His will.” Six months after receiving his undergraduate degree, however, Bingham had met his future wife. Not long afterward, he switched from wanting to save people’s souls to the more worldly pursuit of chasing after fame, status, and fortune by, among other things, exploring for lost ruins in Peru.
Like Bingham, Savoy had experienced a similar religious calling. During his school years, Savoy had developed a strong desire to become a Catholic priest. In college, however, Savoy wrote a paper in one of his religion classes, taking an unusual slant while comparing Christianity with other religions. At least one of his professors labeled Savoy’s ideas “heretical.” A priest who had befriended the young student suggested that Savoy take some time off from the university. Savoy departed—and never went back.
For much of the next decade, he worked as a journalist and editor for a variety of small newspapers, traveling widely throughout the Pacific Northwest. As he honed his writing skills, Savoy found himself becoming more and more interested in Native American cultures and in local archaeology. Savoy later wrote:
I was a member of the Oregon Archaeological Society and often joined in on weekend digs where we were overjoyed if we found a few bits o
f broken bone or a few arrowheads after a hard day’s screening. But I grew tired of excavation and took up archaeological photography because it gave me the freedom to roam about, which was more to my nature.
When in 1957 his marriage ended and his finances collapsed, Savoy was forced once again to reevaluate the direction of his life.
Almost thirty and enflamed with restlessness, an education seemed tame in the light of what I really wanted to do. “Why not strike out and go to Mexico or South America and explore for lost cities as you’ve always wanted to do?” I asked myself. As a journalist and photographer, perhaps I could write and illustrate articles on a free-lance basis, picking up on the job what had to be learned about archaeology and anthropology.
The more I thought about it, the more intriguing the idea became. I was determined to go.
Savoy eventually ended up in Lima, where he soon lined up freelance work with the Peruvian Times, a weekly English-language newspaper. He next founded a club, called the Andean Explorers Club, and appointed himself president and chief explorer. Not long afterward, Savoy met and married Elvira “Dolly” Clarke Cabada, a woman from a powerful and wealthy Peruvian family. In 1960, the couple and their newly born son, Jamil, settled in the small town of Yungay, located in central Peru at the base of the massive Cordillera Blanca, the White Mountains—a particularly impressive stretch of the Andes. Savoy had chosen Yungay because it was near the center of the ancient Chavin civilization, which had flourished some three thousand years earlier, and which intrigued him. A number of decades earlier, a Peruvian archaeologist, Julio C. Tello, had developed the rather unorthodox theory that the Chavin civilization may have originally developed not in the Andes, which was the traditional view, but rather to the east of the Andes, in the jungles of the upper Amazon. It was just the sort of contrarian thinking that fascinated Savoy. Indeed, Tello’s theory would influence Savoy’s entire career as an explorer.
On January 10, 1962, however, fate dealt Savoy a second blow that once again triggered both a life crisis and an abrupt shift in his thinking. High up on the face of nearby Huascarán Mountain, which at 22,205 feet is Peru’s highest peak, a mass of ice and snow suddenly broke loose and created a massive avalanche that crashed down and engulfed the nearby village of Ranrahirca. More than four thousand people were killed. When sickness and disease later broke out among the survivors, Savoy’s son—three-yearold Jamil—grew sick and died.
Most parents, of course, are deeply shocked and saddened by the loss of a child. Savoy’s grief, however, seemed to trigger a fundamental shift in his perceptions. Despite his aborted college career, Savoy had never lost his interest in theology. Not long after settling in Peru, in fact, Savoy had founded the Andean Mystery Group, a sort of New Age church long before such terminology existed, and of which Savoy became the ordained minister. Now, however, stricken by the sudden death of his son, Savoy began teaching his religious group that his son, Jamil, had actually been a second Christ, and that he—Gene Savoy, who himself had never known his father—was the father of the new Messiah.
In a book he later published in 1976, which he titled Jamil: The Child Christ, Savoy informed the world that soon after his son, Jamil, had been born, his infant son had communicated to him—apparently through some nonverbal means—that he was the new Messiah. The tiny infant had also informed Savoy that he was not destined to live long in this world but that Savoy, his father, had been chosen by God to be God’s own personal messenger. Savoy wrote that prior to his son’s death, Jamil had communicated to him a wealth of detailed information about the spiritual history of humanity, information that Savoy later dutifully wrote down in a series of seven books called The Prophecies. Just as Christ had been considered a heretic among the Jews yet had been accepted as the Messiah by his followers, Savoy believed that he, too, was not a heretic but rather God’s messenger among the world’s Christians. Savoy’s years of religious study had obviously reached a sudden and acute apotheosis; at the age of thirty-four, the explorer Gene Savoy was now also in direct communication with God.
Whether consciously or unconsciously, Savoy was reenacting what the founders of hundreds of religions have done since the very first religion appeared on earth. Savoy, after all, was a student of the subject and had always been interested in comparing different faiths. The God of the Old Testament, after all, had “revealed” himself to Moses in the form of a burning bush. Muhammad had likewise told his followers that his new religion, Islam, had been “revealed” to him by an angel. Joseph Smith, the twentytwo-year-old founder of Mormonism, similarly informed the world that in 1827 he had copied the content of the Book of Mormon from golden tablets that an angel had led him to near Palmyra, New York. Gene Savoy was thus well aware of the fact that religions usually begin as cults formed around a charismatic leader, one who offers his or her followers a new way to attain a higher level of spirituality. All the world’s great religions had begun as cults that had then gradually transformed into larger sects. As more and more members were gathered and as the new theology was formalized, the sect gradually grew until it ultimately became a church. Savoy’s claim that God had contacted him through his dead infant son and had chosen him to be his messenger, Savoy no doubt realized, was at least as valid as any older religious claim. Indeed, Savoy clearly intended to create a new branch of Christianity—offering his departed son as the new church’s Messiah and himself as a religious leader who had a direct link to God.
While busy developing his spiritual ideas, Savoy nevertheless continued with his secular research into Peru’s ancient cultures. Not surprisingly, Savoy was curious to know more about the history of what were by now Peru’s most famous ruins—those of Machu Picchu. Savoy therefore began reading Bingham’s account of his 1911 discovery. As skeptical about the accepted truths of ancient Peruvian history as he was about the accepted truths of religion, however, Savoy quickly realized that Bingham’s claim that Machu Picchu was Manco Inca’s lost city of Vilcabamba was far from proven. In reading Bingham’s final popular book on the subject, Lost City of the Incas, Savoy was struck by the fact that Bingham had admitted that he had initially been confused about the identities of the two groups of ruins that he had found: one in the cloud forest at 8,000 feet at Machu Picchu and the other at 4,900 feet in the jungles of Espíritu Pampa. “Was this the ‘Vilcabamba Viejo’ of Father Calancha,” Bingham had written about the Espíritu Pampa ruins, “that ‘University of the Idolatry where lived the teachers who were wizards and masters of abomination,’ the place to which Friar Marcos [García] and Friar Diego [Ortiz] went with so much suffering?”
Or did Machu Picchu deserve that assignation? Savoy was surprised by Bingham’s eventual and rather awkward compromise—that there were actually two Vilcabambas: the ruins at Espíritu Pampa and the ruins at Machu Picchu. Yet although Bingham claimed that some of the last Inca emperors may have temporarily resided at Espíritu Pampa, he nevertheless insisted that Machu Picchu was the “Vilcabamba the Old,” or “principal city,” that the two friars had tried to enter, and that it was there that Tupac Amaru and his Inca followers had made their final stand. As Bingham wrote in his final book on the subject:
The ruins of what we now believe was the lost city of Vilcapampa the Old, perched on top of a narrow ridge lying below the peak of Machu Picchu, are called the ruins of Machu Picchu because when we found them no one knew what else to call them. And that name has been accepted and will continue to be used even though no one now disputes that this was the site of ancient Vilcapampa.
Despite Bingham’s confident assertion, however, more than a few scholars suspected that Bingham might have been wrong. In his book Highway of the Sun, Victor von Hagen explained how, in examining a sixteenth-century account describing the journey of a Spanish emissary, Friar Gabriel de Oviedo, to Vilcabamba in 1571, von Hagen observed that in order to approach Vilcabamba the friar had crossed the Urubamba River downriver from where Machu Picchu was located, then had headed up into the Vilcabamba Valley
before traveling to “the headwaters of the Pampaconas River where he made contact with the Inca [emperor].” Von Hagen concluded, just a year before Bingham’s death,
This could only mean one thing. Machu Picchu was not, as Hiram Bingham would have it, the fortress of Vilcabamba where thousands of fierce warriors had for years eluded the Spaniard[s] and had organized a new empire…. We felt certain that, locked within this montaña [jungle] and accessible, if one could give the time to find it, was Vilcabamba, last capital of the Incas.
Perhaps inspired by von Hagen, and being a skeptic by nature anyway, Savoy soon began to research the source material on Vilcabamba—the original Spanish chronicles. Like Bingham, Savoy was surprised by the fact that he was unable to find any references in the chronicles to a site called Machu Picchu or Huayna Picchu. Nor did the descriptions of Vilcabamba in the chronicles seem to Savoy to match the characteristics of the ruins at Machu Picchu. The more Savoy read, in fact, the more skeptical he became about Bingham’s assertion that Machu Picchu was Manco’s Vilcabamba. Savoy later wrote:
Hiram Bingham, the Yale University professor, started looking for the “Lost City of the Incas,” and chanced upon Machu Picchu northwest of Cuzco. He believed this mountain citadel to be … Manco’s Vilcabamba…. [Yet] Spanish chronicles had placed the central city of Manco in that vigorous land between the Apurímac and Urubamba [Rivers], deep down in the steaming jungles forty to sixty leagues (six to eight days’ foot travel) northwest of Cuzco. On this assumption—and the records of reliable writers—I believed that I could expect to find the missing city in that vicinity…. If the friars and soldiers placed the city of Vilcabamba in this valley, then it had to be there…. [And while] Bingham … did not … believe that the Incas would have selected a hot, tropical valley for their last refuge, I decided to take the word of the Spaniards and follow this trail in search of the lost city.
The Last Days of the Incas Page 48
