Monday, February 14, 2011

Yale To Return Inca Artifacts To Peru

by NewsDesk - iWireNews ™ (iWireNews ™ and OfficialWire)

LIMA, PERU

Yale University has agreed to return thousands of ancient Inca artifacts removed from Peru in 1912 by a U.S. archaeologist and explorer.

The objects are to be housed in a new International Center for the Study of Machu Picchu and Inca Civilization to be run jointly by Yale and San Antonio Abad University in Cuzco, Peru, the BBC reports.

Hiram Bingham III, a Yale professor and later a U.S. senator from Connecticut, rediscovered Machu Picchu in 1911. The city, high in the Andes 50 miles northwest of Cuzco, had been the capital of the Inca Empire but had been forgotten by everyone except residents of the valley below it.

Peru has argued for years that the thousands of objects Bingham brought to Yale were on loan. Yale said everything Bingham borrowed had been returned.

"This agreement ensures the expanded accessibility of these Machu Picchu collections for research and public appreciation in their natural context," Yale President Richard Levin said.

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