Peru’s President Alan Garcia has asked Yale University to return the Inca artifacts found in Machu Picchu in the 1900’s. More than 40,000 artifacts including pottery, jewelry and bones were found from this site in the Peruvian Andes and are currently in Yale’s possession.
Peru filed a lawsuit in 2008 demanding Yale to return these pieces, taken from the ancient Inca citadel by Hiram Bingham III, a Yale alumnus, between 1911 and 1915. President Garcia told the press that those ancient pieces should be back in Peru before July 7, 2011, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the re-discovery of the citadel. The President states that Peru lent those objects to Yale for 18 months but the University never sent them back. He is hoping that Yale will voluntarily return those objects instead of waiting for the U.S. legal system to decide the case.
“We don’t want a half-Machu Picchu, we don’t want a Machu Picchu piece by piece, we want a Machu Picchu with everything it had on July 7, 1910,” said President Garcia.
