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Here’s a cool fact to share with children visiting Machu Picchu in Peru—the place probably would never have been discovered without the help of a kid just like them.
You see, after two years of research to pinpoint the location of the “Lost City of the Incas” and raise money for his expedition, intrepid American historian and explorer Hiram Bingham set off into the Peruvian jungle in 1911 with a fedora planted firmly on his head and nothing more than an educated guess as to where it might be. He eventually only found the spot with the aid of an 11-year-old Quechua Indian boy.
“It fairly took my breath away,” Bingham wrote of his first encounter with the ruins in 1911 high in the Andes. “What could this place be?”
A century later we’re still not exactly sure why this place was constructed on a spot that practically touches the sky—a mystery kids will surely find compelling. Nobody is quite sure when Machu Picchu was first built—educated guesses put it at around 1450—or why it was abandoned a century later....
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