Peru’s President Says Yale Will Return Inca Relics

Peru and Yale University have reached a deal in which the university will return some 4,000 ancient Incan artifacts, including pottery and bones, that had been the subject of a long dispute, according to CNN, which cited as its source Peru’s president, Alan Garcia, who met for 90 minutes on Friday with a senior representative of Yale. The items were taken from the Incan ruin of Machu Picchu by the Yale archaeologist Hiram Bingham III from 1911 to 1916. Peru had sued for their return and had stepped up its fight for the disputed relics in recent months. Yale issued a statement saying it had always wanted to reach an agreement with Peru and was “very pleased with the positive developments in the discussions,” CNN reported. The key to the deal may have been Yale’s representative, the former Mexican president Ernesto Zedillo, who directs the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization.