Sacred Landscape: Travel through Ancient Peru

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Sacred Landscape: Travel through Ancient Peru

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781585679010
Publisher:	The Overlook Press
Publication date:	06/14/2007
Pages:	376
Product dimensions:	6.32(w) x 9.27(h) x 1.21(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

List of Illustrations     vi
Maps     ix
Chronology of Cultures in Ancient Peru     xiv
Introduction     xv
Chasing Hiram Bingham to Llactapata     1
The Incas and the Andean Legacy     31
Caral: the Beginning of Peruvian Civilisation     70
The Pyramids of the Moche     102
Chavin: at the Heart of the Labyrinth     128
The Sacred Valley     141
Reclaiming the Desert: the Nasca     170
The Huari: the People of the White Buildings     191
The Island of the Sun     217
A Parliament of Bears: Qoyllurit'i     232
Return to Llactapata: Machu Picchu's Observatory     272
Glossary     287
Notes and References     297
Select Bibliography     311
Index     321

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Editorial Reviews

Documentary filmmaker and pre-Colombian historian Thomson (The White Rock, 2003, etc.) journeys to ancient archeological sites in Peru. The author proves an adept and diligent tour guide in this scholarly work, though he's less successful at bringing the extinct Andean civilizations to life. As he picks through the vine-covered ruins and desert arroyos, readers may feel like visitors to a dusty museum who never quite grasp just what they're looking at. Because the Incas and the civilizations that preceded them left behind no written texts, many things about these master builders, skilled artists and resourceful survivors must be inferred by educated guesswork that doesn't always satisfy. Mind you, the sites Thomson introduces often compensate. He and his team find extensive undiscovered ruins at Llactapata, sister city to Peru's most famous archeological site, Machu Picchu. They visit the infamous Nasca lines: giant, elaborate designs carved into the landscape 500 years before the Incas arrived. Originally thought to be purely astronomical markings, the lines may have been followed by processions during ancient rituals, Thomson suggests. Indeed, some of those ancient rituals still exist. At the Festival of Qoyllurit'i, he joins thousands of costumed pilgrims in a bone-chilling all-night ascent of glacial mountains. At Sechin, he finds great pyramids rising nine stories tall, built as early as 1500 B.C.E. Along the way, he introduces us to colorful Peruvian locals and heroic unsung archeologists like Gordon McEwan, who has labored for 25 years in remote desert ruins. Among the eye-opening information Thomson imparts is the revelation that some pre-Inca civilizations were victims of ancientclimate change, most likely fomented by El Ni-o; human sacrifice and gory mutilation may have been their groping attempts to halt the droughts and floods that eventually destroyed them. A diligent but disorienting work, best suited for readers with a healthy appetite for all things archeological and Andean.

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