Hiram Bingham was an American historian from the Yale University, who came across Machu Picchu rather accidentally when conducting expeditions in the Peruvian Andes, searching for Vitcos, one of the last Inca cities that resisted the Spanish invasion.

The historian was driven by the desire to find the last city of the Incas; he had also heard rumors from Cuzco University’s North American rector about the existence of uncovered ruins in the Urubamba Jungle. Bingham conducted extensive research in the regions of the Urubamba and Vilcabamba, when he made the astonishing discovery of in 1911, July 24th, when he met a group of Quechuans who were actually living in Machu Picchu, also using the agricultural terraces there.

On July 23, Bingham and his party camped by the river at a place called Mandor Pampa, where they aroused the curiosity of Melchor Arteaga, a local farmer who leased the land there. Through Sergeant Carrasco, the policeman who was his guide and interpreter, Bingham learned from Arteaga that there were extensive ruins on top of the ridge opposite the camp, which Arteaga, in his native Quechua, called Machu Picchu, or “Old Mountain”.

According to Bingham, "The morning of July 24th dawned in a cold drizzle. Arteaga shivered and seemed inclined to stay in his hut. I offered to pay him well if he showed me the ruins. He demurred and said it was too hard a climb for such a wet day. But when he found I was willing to pay him a sol, three or four times the ordinary daily wage, he finally agreed to go. When asked just where the ruins were, he pointed straight up to the top of the mountain. No one supposed that they would be particularly interesting, and no one cared to go with me." Accompanied only by Sergeant Carrasco and Arteaga, Bingham left the camp around 10 am on the 24th July 1911. After a short while the party crossed a bridge so unnerving that the intrepid explorer was reduced to crawling across it on his hands and knees. From the river they climbed a precipitous slope until they reached the ridge at around midday.

Here Bingham rested at a small hut where they enjoyed the hospitality of a group of campesinos. They told him that they had been living there for about four years and explained that they had found an extensive system of terraces on whose fertile soil they had decided to grow their crops. Bingham was then told that the ruins he sought were close by and he was given a guide, the 11-year old Pablito Alvarez, to lead him there.

Almost immediately, he was greeted by the sight of a broad sweep of ancient terraces. They numbered more than a hundred and had recently been cleared of forest and reactivated. Led by the boy, he re-entered the forest beyond the terraces. Here young Pablito began to reveal to Bingham a series of white granite walls, which the historian immediately judged to be the finest examples of masonry that he had ever seen. They were in fact, the remains of what we call today the Royal Tomb, the Main Temple, and the Temple of the Three Windows.