Machu Picchu Ruins

by Maira
(Pakistan)

There are quite a number of claims to who discovered the Machu Picchu ruins first. New of the ruins was brought to the outside world by Bingham, but there were explorers before him who had already discovered the place.

In Cusco alone there were already researchers studying the Machu Picchu area, such as Simone Waisbard who even claimed that she had seen rocks with previous explorers names etched in. As early as July 14, 1901, people like Agustín Lizárraga, Gabino Sánchez, and Enrique Palma had already discovered the place.

An engineer simply known as Franklin had seen the Machu Picchu ruins while he was trekking a different mountain in 1904, which he informed a locally based English Christian missionary, known as Thomas Payne, about as narrated by the members of Thomas Payne’s surviving family members. Apparently, Thomas and an associate missionary, Stuart McNaim, took a trek and climb to the Machu Picchu ruins in 1906.

The site is known to have been plundered by Augusto Berns, a German businessman who took the trip in 1867, although there has been evidence that J.M. von Hassel, an engineer from Germany, had discovered the place even before then. 1874 mark the year that maps have referred to Machu Picchu as reference points as discovered by historians.