Hiram Bingham was 36 years old when he first climbed Machu Picchu in
1911 and set up camp in the ruins. Photo by E.C. Erdis.



Hiram Bingham is a household name around National Geographic. It is one of those bigger than life names, like Peary, Leakey, and Powell, that will always be associated with a place. In Bingham's case, the place is Machu Picchu. Archaoelogist Christina Elson posts here on some of the complexities that have emerged in the wake of Bingham's achievements.-Chris Sloan


Quechua farmers, German treasure hunters, Peruvian prospectors, European missionaries—it sounds to me like pretty much everyone got to Machu Picchu (“old peak” in Quechua) before the lanky Hiram Bingham in 1911. Bingham, in fact, said in his 1922 book “Inca Land Explorations in the Highlands of Peru” that on the day of his visit he met several farmers living at the base of the peak who were planting crops up on the old Inca terraces. Even Bingham’s guide Melchor Arteaga had already seen the ruins at least once. Melchor didn’t feel like climbing the snake-infested trail on a rainy day. He and his farmer pals sent Bingham up there with a kid while they hung out by a warm fire. I suspect that since archaeologists started exploring the world’s more remote corners in earnest, they’ve found the majority of “lost” sites in similar fashion.

Bingham wasn’t a casual visitor or looter. He took extensive photographs and collected everything he excavated for further study. Sadly, these artifacts—the core of what archaeologists call “the data”—are now at the center of a legal battle between the government of Peru and Yale University. After several years of negotiation Peru sued Yale on December 5th in a Washington D.C. Federal Court for the return of thousands of artifacts and for monetary damages.

Like many archaeologists, I’m interested to see how the case unfolds. One thing I don’t much care for that has been asserted in Yale documents and mirrored in press reports is a description of the collection as mostly “bits and pieces of pots, bones, and other small fragments that are similar or identical to countless objects already in Peru” and over all lacking in “museum quality pieces” (see “Myths and Facts about the Machu Picchu Materials at Yale University”). The repeated assertion that the collection lacks museum quality pieces reinforces problematic and pervasive ideas that it’s OK to assign relative value to cultural heritage. Unlike art historians, archaeologists learn as much from mundane sherds as they do from exquisite vessels. Most archaeologists would say that all of the pieces that make up this collection are of equal “value” and that excavated collections should be curated together along with the drawings, photos, and notes that document them (granted it’s OK to loan artifacts for exhibits). Each artifact is unique but only fully understood when studied within the context of the entire collection. Hopefully, the advent of new analytical techniques and ideas about Inca history means archaeologists will want to study this collection for a long time.

What do you think should happen to the collection Bingham excavated in 1912 at Machu Picchu? Should it stay in the US? Go back to Peru? Who should be allowed to study it? Why do you think Yale and Peru can’t resolve the issue outside of court?—Dr. Christina Elson

A few place you can read up on the Yale-Peru saga involving Machu Picchu
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/11/ap/latinamerica/main4663600.shtml
New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/ (see especially December 8, 2008, September 17, 2007 and June 24, 2007 articles)
Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com (July 4, 2008 article)
Yale: http://opa.yale.edu/news/article.aspx?id=1997

Austroraptor lived just before the extinction of the non-avian (not bird) dinosaurs. Its discovery shows that yet another lineage of maniraptorans grew unexpectedly huge and competed with large T. rex-like carnivores for meat. Art courtesy of Fernando Novas.

A "raptor" is an awesome dinosaur. We learned that in Jurassic Park. What can beat that? Maybe a bizarre giant raptor.

Meet Austroraptor cabazai, just announced today by NGS grantee Fernando Novas of Argentina. Take a look at this thing. It is huge. Average raptors were turkey to dog-size. It has a long snout with small conical hooked teeth. Most carnivorous dinosaurs had blade-like teeth serrated like knives. Novas can't say yet what kind of prey its strange teeth chomped into, but this animal may not have been a flesh slicer like its closest relatives.

Austroraptor also had tiny arms, reminiscent of the puny forelimbs of other dinosaur lineages such as the tyrannosaurs. What is odd about this is that the maniraptoran lineage, which Austroraptor is now the newest member of, is closely associated with birds. Most of its members, such as Deinonychus and Velociraptor,  are known for their long arms and hands. In the lineage that led to birds, these long arms eventually grew longer than their legs and became useful as wings. So it is very interesting to find a maniraptor with tiny arms living 70 million years ago, just 5 million years before non-avian dinosaurs went extinct and avian dinosaurs, aka. birds, flew on.

Other giant raptors are known, such as Utahraptor and Achillobator, both from the northern hemisphere. And it wasn't so long ago that Novas introduced us to Megaraptor, another giant Patagonian raptor. That thing had giant scimitar-like toe claws. I remember that we could just barely fit an actual size photo of the claw in the magazine, which is 14 inches wide. Some paleontologist are now suggesting that the toe claw was actually a finger claw and that Megaraptor was not a maniraptoran but a different type of dinosaur. I'm not so sure. In this reconstruction by Jordan Mallon, (right), it just doesn't look right. But hey, dinosaurs were bizarre. There are minor disputes about Achillobator, but both it and Utahraptor seem solid as maniraptorans.

Right: Did a Megaraptor's giant toe claw turn into a giant thumb hook? Illustration courtesy Jordan Mallon.

Austroraptor is classified by Novas as a member of the Unenlagiinae, a diverse group within the maniraptoran group that includes the tiny dinosaur Shanag from Mongolia and the once bird, now dinosaur, Rahonavis from Madagascar. Now the group not only contains far flung members, but giants and midgets as well. The strangest thing about the Unenlagiian raptors, however, is that two of them, Buiteraptor and Rahonavis had winglike forelimbs (Rahonavis even had quill knobs). If they flew, which Rahonavis almost certainly did, then it is possible that flight evolved independently in two separate dinosaur lineages—one in the south and one in the north. The northern lineage is represented by Archaeopteryx and numerous Asian specimens, among others.

What can beat a bizarre giant dinosaur? Maybe a giant bizarre idea like flight evolving twice.

Nefertiti is considered by many to be one of the most beautiful of ancient queens. Was part of her beauty due to an epicanthic fold in her eyelids? Photo by Victor Boswell.

In the March/April issue of Archaeology magazine art historian Earl Ertman suggests that Nefertiti had an epicanthic fold in her eyelids. He says this produces "an East Asian appearance." Ertman goes on to suggest that this trait, if a true reflection of Nefertiti's appearance, may be due to a genetically-based syndrome, that is abnormality. He also points to depictions of Nefertiti's daughters and even King Tut (the wooden head depiction) that show this trait as well, suggesting the trait could be inherited by offspring.

This is an interesting observation, but I immediately thought of the Khoisan, a fascinating group of sub-Saharan Africans who have an epicanthic fold. They also show the largest genetic diversity in mtDNA of all human populations. I'm no geneticist, but why look for genetic abnormalities in Nefertiti when the genes for an epicanthic fold are right there among the African ancestors of all humans?

And since we're talking again about Egyptians and African ancestry, here is a bit more information my colleagues and I pulled together on ancient Egyptians.

GEOGRAPHY

Egypt’s population was influenced by human migration long before the first dynasty of pharaohs emerged around 3150 B.C. The geography of northeast Africa makes it an easily traversable region. To the north and east are the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea. The Nile Valley creates a continuous north-south corridor that is surrounded by oases, stepping stones in the desert making it possible for humans to travel in every direction.

Both archaic and modern forms of humans probably passed though Egypt on their way “out of Africa.” We also know that the Sahara desert was drying between 6700 B.C. and 3600 B.C., and drought drove refugees from across northern Africa into Egypt, Nubia (what is now southern Egypt and northern Sudan), and Sudan. These immigrants mixed with people already living in the fertile Nile Valley.

As towns and villages sprang up along the Nile, people and goods moved up and down river contributing to population diversity. By the time the Egyptian state formed, people living along the Nile were in regular contact with their neighbors and, while we can detect some diversity in the general physical characteristics of northern and southern populations, these people shared a way of life that became the foundation for Egyptian civilization. The early Egyptian state is simply a politically complex expression of this indigenous African culture.

After 3150 B.C., Egypt entered into a number of peaceful and hostile relationships with foreign powers in Africa and the Near East. We know that Libyans, Nubians, the Hyksos (from the Levant), and Persians all came to Egypt as traders, diplomats, and conquerors—likely further contributing to population diversity.

Sounds like a melting pot to me.