The White Rock : An Exploration of the Inca Heartland

Description

pp. 316, 8 glossy pages of B&W images and 16 glossy pages of color illustrations, 3 maps in text, ep maps. “Part travelog, part history lesson, this narrative by documentary filmmaker Thomson (Out of India, Great Journeys: Mexico) recounts a successful expedition he led in 1982 to ‘refind’ Llactapata, the ‘lost city of the Incas,’ and to explore other Inca sites spanning three countries. Among pages of encounters with flora, fauna, and fermented beverages, Thomson provides a good dose of Peruvian history: the Inca emperors come off as heroic defenders of the land, but we also learn that they had built their empire by subjugating other tribes, exploiting forced labor and other spoils of war. When the Spanish came, some of these conquered tribes were only too glad to help. Thomson returns in 1999 (after the Shining Path guerrilla group is gone) to visit Vilcabamba, the ‘last city of the Incas,’ where the final Inca emperor retreated before turning himself over to the Spanish Viceroy.”  //  “The lost cities of South America have always exercised a powerful hold on the imagination. The ruins of the Incas and other pre-Columbian civilisations are scattered over thousands of miles of still largely uncharted territory, particularly in the Eastern Andes, where the mountains fall away towards the Amazon. Twenty years ago, Hugh Thomson set off into the cloud-forest on foot to find a ruin that had been carelessly lost again after its initial discovery. This was his introduction to the curious and confusing world of Inca archaeology. He has since travelled to many remote lost cities via the countless interconnecting paths the Incas laid across the Andes, and explored what they left behind ‘ the remnants of a remarkable civilisation that is still only partially understood. Into his gripping narrative, Thomson weaves the accounts of some of the explorers who had gone before him: Hiram Bingham, who discovered Machu Picchu; brave Robert Nichols, killed looking for the mythical ‘Paiti’ (a temple-site in the Madre de Dios which has acquired the same lure for explorers as the original El Dorado had for the conquistadors); and the remarkable modern explorer Gene Savoy, who has discovered many impressive sites in just the last few years, including Espiritu Pampa, the last refuge of the Inca court after the Spanish Conquest. The book explores the Inca people as well as their heartland, vividly resurrecting their extraordinary culture and giving a true flavour of their strange and sometimes hostile world.”