Machu Picchu Picchu a "historic sanctuary". In addition to the ruins, the sanctuary includes a large portion of the adjoining region, rich with the flora and fauna of the Peruvian Yungas and Central Andean wet puna ecoregions. In 1983, UNESCO designated Machu Picchu a World Heritage site, describing it as "an absolute masterpiece of architecture and a unique testimony to the Inca civilization". Bingham was a lecturer at Yale University, although not a trained archaeologist. In 1909, returning from the Pan-American Scientific Congress in Santiago, he travelled through Peru and was invited to explore the Inca ruins at Choqquequirau in the Apurímac
Vilcabamba, Peru the site where Tupac Amaru fled after the Spanish captured Vitcos. Bingham speculated in his book Lost City of the Incas that Machu Picchu was the lost city of Vilcapampa the Old, in part because Bingham only saw a small portion of Espíritu Pampa. It remained for Gene Savoy to discover the full extent of the site in 1964, and later evidence did confirm the site was indeed the old Vilcabamba. In the 1960s, the explorations and discoveries of Antonio Santander Casselli and Gene Savoy finally associated the "Espíritu Pampa" site with the legendary Vilcabamba. Their 1970 book "Antisuyo" brought