EXPLORATIONS IN PERU 
THE National Geographic Society 
has subscribed $10,000 to the 
Peruvian expedition of 1912, to 
which the friends of Yale University 
have made an equal grant. The expedi- 
tion is directed by Dr. Hiram Bingham, 
of Yale University, who was also direc- 
tor of the remarkably successful Yale 
Peruvian expedition of 191 1, and will be 
known as "The Peruvian Expedition of 
1912, under the Auspices of Yale Uni- 
versity and the National Geographic So- 
ciety." The researches and explorations 
of last year will be continued, the work 
centering in the Vilcabamba Valley and 
around Cuzco. 
This region was the cradle of the Inca 
race, which became an empire 2,000 
miles long, and reached a very high de- 
gree of civilization and culture. Com- 
paratively little is known of its origin or 
of the wonderful Megalithic people who 
preceded them, and who built vast palaces 
■ and temples, which have endured to this 
day (see page 421). 
In addition to the discovery of eight 
Inca and pre-Inca cities and temples, 
Professor Bingham found (1911) in a 
gravel bank in Cuzco the bones of the 
thighs, hip, ribs, and a portion of the 
skull of three human beings. The bones 
appeared to be interstratified with gravel 
of glacial age and may be the remains of 
men who lived 20,000 to 50,000 years 
ago. Other bones were also found, one 
of which appears to be the bone of a 
bison, the first recorded evidence of bison 
south of Mexico. 
"The proof of the antiquity of this 
man," says Richard Swann Lull, Profes- 
sor of Vertebrate Paleontology at Yale 
University, in the Yale Reviezv, "lies 
... in the geological evidence offered 
by Professor Bingham that the remains 
lay at the bottom of a mass of stratified 
gravel, which covered them at one time 
to a depth of not less than 125 feet, a 
fact which, he rightly argues, points to 
glacial origin. Just what that means in 
the light of man's antiquity in Europe is 
not so clear, for it is not yet possible to 
correlate with any assurance a glacial 
deposit in South America with the meas- 
ured advances and retreats of the great 
ice-sheet of the Old World. 
"A conservative estimate of at least 
20,000 years has been given as the 
probable age of the Cuzco man, a mere 
fraction of the duration of time since 
the appearance of Pithecanthropus (ape- 
man), or the man of Heidelberg or 
Neandertal ; but whether the age be 
20,000 or 60,000 years, if this discovery, 
which should be amplified by further ex- 
ploration, will bear the test of time, its 
importance is paramount as the first 
authentic physical record of man's exist- 
ence in the prehistoric western world." 
Where did the bones come from? 
This question can be answered only by a 
careful geographical and geological study 
of the Cuzco basin and its vicinity, with 
special reference to the age of the gravel 
deposits where the human and other re- 
mains were found. Seldom do we find 
geographical and historical problems so 
intertwined as they are in Peru. Only a 
careful geographical study of the region 
can solve the many mysteries which are 
now puzzling the historian, the anthro- 
pologist, and the archeologist. 
The Peruvian expedition consists of 
Hiram Bingham as director ; Herbert E. 
Gregory, Silliman Professor of Geology 
in Yale University ; Dr. George F. Eaton, 
Curator of Osteology in the Peabody 
Museum of Yale University ; Albert H. 
Bumstead, for seven years topographic 
engineer in the United States Geological 
Survey ; three assistant topographers, a 
surgeon, and three general assistants. A 
topographic map on the scale of two 
miles to the inch, with a contour interval 
of 100 feet, of the Cuzco basin, and also 
a detailed map of the entire Vilcabamba 
country, will be immediately made. 
Dr. Bingham will continue the work, 
so successfully inaugurated in 191 1, to 
discover and identify the places men- 
tioned in the Spanish chronicles and in 
the early accounts of Peru, particularly 
the places connected with the 35 years of 
Inca rule after the advent of Pizarro. 
As many of these place names have 
changed, it will be necessary to identify 
the places by a careful comparison of 
their situation and surroundings with the 
itineraries and descriptions given in the 
chronicles. An attempt will be made to 
penetrate still further into the jungles of 
417 
