ANCIENT INCA CIVILIZATION

Professor Hiram Bingham, the Yale archaeologist who conducted the recent successful Peruvian expedition, lectured in New Lecture Hall last evening, under the auspices of the Harvard Anthropological Society.

After speaking briefly on the four periods of Inca history, Professor Bingham went directly to a description of the expedition of 1912, on which was discovered Machu Picchu, the capital city of the Incas. He first told of the difficulties involved in reaching the region for research; how the party painfully plodded its way through a well-nigh impassable jungle, at the rate of a mile a day; how the problem of labor was overcome only by Peruvian police, who forced the lethargic natives to work; and how the expedition made its way over mountains, flooded torrents, and fathomless abysses.

When the party drew nearer the lost city, they came into a country which the Indians themselves knew nothing about. This the engineers surveyed very carefully. The city was finally found on the top of a mountain, for the most part burried under a growth of plant life which took months to be cleared away. Professor Bingham called attention to the ingenious way in which the Incas built their houses: entirely of huge blocks of granite, with the aid of no cement, derricks or metal tools. A typical example was a temple erected on a stone which slanted at 40 degrees. The city was divided into wards, each of which was closed off by a massive gate. The construction of these gates, and the surrounding walls of fortification, were shown to have many points in common with Grecian styles.