Hiram Bingham was an American historian employed as a lecturer at Yale University; he was not a trained archaeologist. In 1909, on his way back from attending the Pan-American Scientific Congress in Santiago, he traveled through Peru and was invited to explore the Inca ruins at Choqquequirau in the Apurimac Valley, which gave him an interest in Inca ruins, and an introduction to Peruvian President Augusto Leguía. He organized the 1911 Yale Peruvian Expedition with one of its objectives to search for the lost city of Vitcos, the last capital of the Incas. He researched sources and consulted Carlos Romero, a historian in Lima who showed Bingham helpful references and Father Calancha’s Chronicle