Yale to Surrender Inca Artifacts

Yale University has agreed to return thousands of Inca artifacts taken from Peru's famed Machu Picchu citadel almost a century ago, Peru's government announced yesterday. The university said some of the artifacts will remain there temporarily for research, but did not specify how many. Peru demanded the collection back last year, saying it never relinquished ownership when Yale scholar Hiram Bingham III rediscovered Machu Picchu in 1911. All told he exported more than 4,000 artifacts including mummies, bones, and ceramics from the famed site. Under the agreement, Yale and Peru will cosponsor first a traveling exhibition featuring Bingham's pieces and later in a museum in Cuzco, the ancient Inca capital.