What did Hiram Bingham rediscover in 1911?

In 1906 Bingham traced Simon Bolivar’s routes through Venezuela and Columbia in the 1820s. In 1909 he explored historic South American trade routes and took the old one from Buenos Aires to Lima in Peru, going on to Cuzco. In 1911 he led a small expedition to Peru in search of the ‘lost city’ of Vilcabamba, the last refuge of the Inca Manco Capac II, who fought against the Spanish conquerors in the 1530s. This took Bingham and his party of seven to Cuzco and from there by mule and on foot to a small settlement called Mandor Pampa, near Aguas Calientes, where they encountered a local farmer named Melchor Arteaga. Through Bingham’s policeman-interpreter, Arteaga told him that there were extensive ruins high in the mountains nearby at what Arteaga in his native Quechua called Machu Picchu, meaning ‘old mountain’.