December 30, 2005
Yale University holds huge amounts of artefacts excavated from the lost Peruvian city of Machu Picchu. Peru wants many of these artefacts returned, claiming that they only ever gave the university permission for the loan of these items.
from the December 29, 2005 edition
90 years later, Peru battles Yale over Incan artifacts
By Danna Harman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
MACHU PICCHU, PERU – The Incas built this mysterious city here, it is told, to be closer to the gods. It was placed so high in the clouds, at 7,700 feet, that the empire- raiding Spaniards never found, or destroyed, it.
Today, visitors to Machu Picchu see well-preserved ruins hidden among the majestic Andes: complete with palaces, baths, temples, tombs, sundials, and agricultural terraces, and also llamas roaming among hundreds of gray granite houses.
But they won’t find too many bowls, tools, ritual objects, or other artifacts used by the Incas of the late 1400s. To see those, they have to travel to New Haven, Conn.
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