Lost Kingdoms of South America

Episode 1

People of the Clouds

60 mins

The Precolumbian Chachapoya culture and realm, whose name in their ancient language means 'People of the Clouds' and still denotes the region in present Peru, pre-dated the Incas but persisted within the great Andean empire. After consulting a rare modern specialist and the somewhat unreliable Conquistador chronicles in capital Lima, Jago Cooper sets off for the rare excavated sites. Little is known or even studied precisely because of their presently inaccessible position, on the Andean slopes down to the Amazonian rain forest, but because of the rivers streaming that way and others to the pacific, this precisely enabled their rich trade and cultural exchange between jungle and coastal regions. Also shared with the Incas are their mysterious 'kipu's', a complex '3D' notation system with colored knots on sets of threads. They excelled in building on steep, high slopes, as for a necropolis.