Machu Picchu was never actually the lost city of the Incas that explorer Hiram Bingham claimed it was, but rather a relatively standard royal estate built for the Inca emperor Pachacuti in the fifteenth century.

A closer look

Machu Picchu was never actually the lost city of the Incas that explorer Hiram Bingham claimed it was, but rather a relatively standard royal estate built for the Inca emperor Pachacuti in the fifteenth century. Bingham aggressively marketed his 1911 "discovery" to a gullible Western audience to secure lucrative funding and international fame, completely ignoring the fact that local indigenous farmers were already living among the ruins and literally had to guide him there. Today, millions of tourists hike the grueling Inca Trail under the delusion of uncovering ancient mystical secrets, entirely unaware that they are essentially just visiting the historical equivalent of a wealthy politician's abandoned summer vacation home in the mountains