The Ancient Civilizations of Peru

Abstract

Inca gold no longer lures the conqueror - but the Quechua Indian still guides his llamas through the narrow-walled Inca streets of Cuzco, and the lost civilizations of Peru still call to the imagination across the centuries. And with reason - for radiocarbon dating places an embryonic civilization in Peru in 7566 BC, over 9000 years before Pizarro plundered the mature flowering of the Inca Empire. Other, less destructive, visitors have worked since then at Machu Picchu, at Cuzco, at Titicaca and myriad other sites to resurrect the rich variety of Inca and pre-Inca culture wiped out by the Spanish Conquest. The sum of their discoveries, archaeological, historical, artistic, geographical and ethnographical, is surveyed here by J.Alden Mason in a picture of the peoples and country of ancient Peru.

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