People of the Clouds Lost Kingdoms of South America

Archaeologists crave unexplored territory.

Nothing thrills more than new discoveries of ancient civilisations.

For over a century now,

Peru has given us treasure after treasure.

It's a vast country of extremes. From tropical rainforest

to the dry deserts of the Atacama.

And in one of the most remote northern regions

lies the most mysterious kingdom in Peru.

I'm Jago Cooper

and, as an archaeologist who specialises in South America,

I've always been fascinated by the secrets and mysteries

buried deep in these awe-inspiring and forbidding landscapes.

The history of this continent has been dominated

by the stories of the Inca and the Spanish conquistadors.

But in this series, I'll be exploring an older, forgotten past,

travelling from the coast to the clouds

in search of ancient civilisations

as significant and impressive as anywhere else on Earth.

In remote northern Peru,

one such civilisation thrived for over 500 years.

They were called the Chachapoyas,

which translates as the People of the Clouds,

and who they were is one of the greatest archaeological mysteries of the Americas.

In the year 900 AD, on Andean mountain tops

lived the Chachapoya people.

The remnants of Chachapoya culture

are amongst the most stunning and least understood in South America.

The Chachapoya, quite frankly, are still a mystery to us.

All we have to go on are tantalising fragments,

treasures and artefacts from faraway tropical rainforests,

tombs placed high on unscaleable cliffs,

mummies hidden in caves.

And one of the most impressive archaeological sites in South America.

How did such a complex and advanced culture bloom

in this remote part of Peru over 1,000 years ago?

Before venturing into the mountains,

my investigation into these enigmatic people

begins here in the Peruvian capital Lima.

None of the indigenous South American cultures

left us written records, so the earliest written accounts

are the chronicles of the Spanish conquistadors.

In 1638, a century after the Spanish arrived,

Father Pedro Calancha - one of the first chroniclers -

ventured into Chachapoya territory

and he wrote of the Chachapoya people that they were

bellicose and indomitable, herbalists and sorcerers.

And to the amazement of the Europeans, he also wrote

that they only obey the chief during war time, and not any special one,

but he who is known to be the most valiant, enterprising and daring.

Sorcerers on mountain peaks!

Bellicose Indians who were not controlled by their chiefs!

Intriguing though these conquistador claims are,

they're not much to go on.

The Spanish invaders weren't always reliable eye-witnesses.

The problem is, only a handful of archaeologists

have even ventured into the Chachapoya territory.

So before heading into the Andes, I need a more trustworthy source.

One of the few who has studied the cryptic Chachapoya

is Adriana von Hagen, so I met with her to establish the basics.

What is it that drew you to the Chachapoyas region?

What do you find so interesting about the Chachapoyas culture?

Just the fact that there's so little known

and that the iconography, the imagery -

that's what I've been studying - what it can reveal about a culture.

You will notice that all Chachapoya sites, almost all,

are located on mountain tops or ridges.

They were known as sorcerers, using Amazonian esoteric knowledge

of herbs and hallucinogenic drugs.

So little of the Chachapoyas region seems to have been mapped.

How much of the archaeology do you think we've actually found?

Oh, 5%? If that!

Yeah, I can count on one hand

the sites that have been excavated scientifically.

-Incredible, and it's a huge region?

-Huge.

Why do you think more work hasn't been done by archaeologists there?

Mainly because it's isolated.

At least it's isolated to us

in our Western sort of concept of getting to places, distant places.

I mean, for pre-Colombian people, walking for two weeks was nothing,

but, for us, even driving for a day is a long way.

Peru is roughly five times the size of the UK.

The Chachapoya were found to the north,

and on the eastern side of the Andean mountains...

..in 9,500 square miles of challenging terrain.

After a flight from Lima and a 14-hour drive,

I finally arrive in what is, to this day, called the Chachapoya region.

And seeing the epic landscape for the first time, it strikes me

that this isn't an obvious place to build a civilisation.

The first humans made their way across Alaska and into North America

over 14,000 years ago. Over the next 1,000 years,

they travelled southwards, along the Pacific coastline,

and through the continental interior

to colonise and populate South America.

The Chachapoya culture emerged around 900 AD,

and some archaeologists believe they emigrated

to these desolate mountain tops from the lower-lying Amazonian region.

But we know that when they arrived here,

they built homes on the hilltops

and eventually grew to a population of half a million strong.

They ruled these mountains and valleys for six centuries.

But the first question surrounding the Chachapoya

is why settle in this particular region?

To the west is the Andes, for thousands of miles,

the highest mountain range in South America.

To the east, the vast Amazon Basin,

stretching out, thick, dense tropical rainforest.

To modern eyes,

the Chachapoya region appears to be surrounded by barriers.

Appears to be.

Archaeologists have to look beyond first appearances.

This is Rio Utcubamba,

one of the many rivers that flows through the Chachapoya region.

Although some of these rivers start just 150 miles from the Pacific coast,

they defiantly, all, turn eastwards,

flow into the Amazon Basin and run 3,000 miles out into the Atlantic.

To modern eyes, the river may seem like another obstacle

to make ancient life difficult.

But, of course, it's easier to move over water

rather than through the jungle or up into the mountains.

If, as seems likely, the first Chachapoya had rafts and canoes,

the river takes on a whole new significance.

It becomes an A-road connecting the Andes with the Amazonian basin.

Journeys that would take days on foot

could be completed in just hours on the river.

At lower levels, there's a hint of the tropical jungle

and the connections with the vast Amazonian basin,

the most biologically diverse place on Earth.

So despite living high in the mountains,

the Chachapoya could trade with the peoples of the Amazon,

ensuring a supply of an amazing array of herbs, medicines,

animals and exotic bird feathers.

The Chachapoya had chosen an ideal crossroads.

What appears isolated would actually have been a hub for trade.

Their lofty communities on the mountain tops

would have been closely connected with the people down river.

This is beeswax, a typical product of the upper Amazon,

It's exactly the type of exotic commodity

that they would have traded up into the mountains, and beyond.

So, it seems one thing we can know for certain about the Chachapoya

is that by using the rivers,

they could trade with the peoples downstream in the Amazonian basin.

The vast majority of the materials traded from the tropical regions

were perishable, but some of that evidence still survives.

In Chachapoya sites, spectacular head-dresses have been found,

festooned with exotic feathers of parrots

from the Amazonian rainforest.

Animals from the lowlands have been found, mummified and preserved.

With such a rich supply of resources close by,

it appears the Chachapoya thrived -

transporting the tropical goods deep into the Andes.

These transactions undoubtedly enriched the Chachapoyan knowledge

of medicine, herbs, hunting and mythology.

But this wasn't their only frontier.

The Andes is the longest north-south mountain range in the world.

The mountains seem to represent an impassable barrier

between inland South America and the Pacific coast.

Like the rivers, the mountains might appear to be a massive obstacle

to the Chachapoya, but again, we shouldn't go on appearances alone.

Deep canyons like these, carved over centuries by the Rio Maranon,

provided the lowest routes into the Andes for hundreds of miles

in either direction. These river valleys acted like funnels

through which the trade would pass.

The valleys provided a gateway to the coast,

just as the rivers opened up trading routes to the Amazon downstream.

And at Chachapoya sites throughout the region,

we find traces of that ancient trade.

I'm going to the town of Chachapoyas,

the administrative capital of the region.

Here, the Chachapoyas Ministry of Culture

has a treasure trove of artefacts hidden away.

Stacked in a cupboard, there are finds from miles around.

Watched over by mummified remains from a Chachapoya tomb,

they're allowing me to take a closer look.

This is a llama.

And these llamas are really important.

They play a crucial role in the life of the Chachapoya.

Obviously, you don't get any horses in the whole of the Americas

before the Europeans turn up,

so the llama is not only used for its meat and its wool,

it's also the main beast of burden.

We can see that there's a rope going round the llama's back

and forming up here to a pack on the back.

Although this is actually a vessel as it is now,

it looks like this rope represents that rucksack

which is on the llama's back

carrying the produce from the Chachapoyas up into the highlands.

Lovely.

This shell was found in the tomb of a Chachapoya warrior in this region.

We've got these perforations up the sides,

and even right inside there, you can see right down there,

the holes inside the shell.

So to me it looks like this is a flute, a musical instrument.

This will have come from over 500 kilometres away on the Ecuadorian coastline.

It gets us thinking about those trade networks

of the Chachapoya region, going up the river systems across the Andes

and down the other side.

This is a little seed pod and it's from the maichil plant,

which is a seed that only comes from the lowlands

at altitudes less than 500 metres.

So it must have come from the Amazon,

but this shell is clearly a utilitarian shell

used for a musical instrument.

Placed on a string and used as a rattle around the wrists and ankles.

Just like Morris dancers in the UK.

But goods aren't the only things that pass along busy trade routes.

With trade comes communication, with communication comes knowledge.

Walking through a local market really highlights

the benefits of an effective trade system.

You don't have to mine your own mines to get metals.

You don't have to forage for days in the Amazon to get exotic plants.

What I think is most interesting is having these trade networks

exposes you to the new, latest arts, technologies, medicinal plants

and, most importantly, new ideas which can affect your culture.

So by controlling the trade routes

between the cultures of the rainforest

and the kingdoms on the coast, they absorbed ideas from both,

encountered new artistic techniques,

and had exotic resources at their disposal.

Believe it or not, the Chachapoya were pretty cosmopolitan.

As so often with this elusive community,

there are only fragments of their vibrant culture remaining.

There are pictograms and paintings on the hillsides,

musical instruments and pottery.

And, most striking of all, their beautiful textiles.

The Chachapoya region has always been famous for its woven textiles.

Unfortunately, very few of these Chachapoya textiles survived,

but the ones that do give us this lovely insight

into the beliefs and imagery of the Chachapoya.

THEY SPEAK SPANISH

Chachapoya tunics and blankets were patterned with colourful animals,

serpents, and strange frog-like creatures.

We simply don't know enough to say for sure what these images mean,

but it does suggest a rich, highly developed, symbolic belief system,

with influences from both the lowlands and the highlands.

Decades of work may be needed

to even begin to understand the imagery

and the tantalising clues it provides to Chachapoya culture.

But one artefact found at later-period Chachapoya sites

embodies the complexities of Chachapoya culture.

The khipu.

The khipu is a piece of string encrypted with coded information,

that seemed to be carried by special persons, known as khipu keepers,

and were often buried alongside the dead.

There are just over 600 of these fascinating artefacts in the world,

including this amazing collection at the museum in Leymebamba.

Khipus are one of the great unsolved mysteries of modern archaeology.

When people come to a museum in South America,

the first thing they're attracted to are the gold objects,

those glittering, shiny pieces. But the reality is that,

tucked away in a dusty corner, are these pieces of string. Khipu.

Khipu are extraordinary.

In Quechua, the Inca language, khipu means knot.

These mysterious objects were initially thought to be

some sort of simple South American abacus, but recent research suggests

they are far, far more sophisticated than that.

If we think about our own language, we have 26 letters.

That gives us 26 different variables. You can then have

any number or combination of those letters in sequence.

So if we take that idea of looking for variables and different ways

that information can be recorded and turn our attention to the khipu.

There's a main cord, with three different cords that come off it.

Each of those cords can be spaced at different distances

along the main cord.

Each of these subsidiary cords can have a different length.

There can be different knots positioned at different places

down each of those subsidiary cords.

Even the knots themselves have a number of different forms,

with single knots to double knots,

to 10 different strings being wrapped around within the same knot.

There's different colours, there's different twinings.

You realise there are so many different scales

which information is locked within.

Originally thought of as just being a series of numbers,

what we now know is that locked away within these khipus

are legends, myths, narratives of the people that made them.

If, as we suspect, the khipu do contain narratives,

the significance is enormous.

It means the Chachapoya and the Inca, who also used khipu,

had a three-dimensional system of recording stories.

Hidden in the knots could be the key to unlocking countless secrets.

So much remains to be understood about the khipu,

but for now we can just stare at them in wonder.

We know that the Chachapoya were a trading people,

and that they absorbed influences from across the region.

But if their livelihoods were dependent on the river,

why settle on the less accessible mountain tops above?

I met with Klaus Koschmieder,

a German archaeologist who has spent much of his life

studying the origins of the Chachapoya.

What's distinctive about a residential complex of the Chachapoya?

The residential complexes, they are on top of the hills

while the ceremonial centres, they are on the slopes of the hills.

Why do you think the Chachapoya

put those settlements on top of the hills?

The main reason is that

the settlements are on the level of the cultivation sites of the fields.

They were cultivating maize and potatoes. This is in high altitudes.

In the Andes, different altitudes provide different micro climates

where different crops could be grown.

Thus, at the optimum height for cultivation,

the Cloud People built their impressive villages.

Settlements can tell us a great deal.

The architecture and layout of the buildings provide valuable insights

into the way the Chachapoya lived.

It's great to be inside one of these Chachapoya structures.

What's distinctive about Chachapoya architecture?

Chachapoya structures are round

and we have a decoration in the form of friezes,

mostly in zig-zag form.

That's a universal motif of the Chachapoya people.

Just looking around this structure,

I can see these beam slots in the walls.

What does that tell us about this structure?

The beam slots were possibly to put a second floor on this house.

Having multiple storeys in a house is very unusual for South America.

This is quite a large building, a large structure to be having.

Yes, this structure is not a habitation site,

it's a ceremonial site, no?

And so inside the houses, they were practising rituals and dances.

I'm amazed to see a 600-year-old, two-storey building

here in South America. It's almost unheard of.

I'm struck by how sophisticated these structures are.

This reconstructed building reveals

that the Chachapoya were not just talented traders,

but skilled architects and builders.

But the settlements pose as many questions as they answer.

Klaus talked of their ceremonial buildings,

but we don't know exactly what kind of ceremonies

the Chachapoya used when in life.

But we do know about rituals around death,

which can tell us a great deal.

I want to see for myself the elaborate Chachapoya burials,

so I'm going far off the beaten track, beyond the road network,

where the remains of the Cloud People lie undisturbed to this day.

THEY TALK IN SPANISH

This is my horse and it's called the Mad One, El Loco,

which, er, fills me with a little bit of fear.

So I've got a lovely saddle of cloth underneath here,

the stirrups made of old tyres

and me and El Loco, the horse, are ready to head up the valley.

El Loco and the other horses

will take our expedition part of the way up the mountain,

until we get within sight of the towering cliffs of La Petaca.

It's tough and arduous terrain, but archaeologists should never grumble

because it's the very remoteness of these sites

that have protected them from treasure hunters and looters

that are a constant threat in this region.

Hola, Maximo.

This is the most insane spot.

We've just come down from the top of the mountain

and caught up with Maximo, who's one of Peru's best mountaineers.

The reason I need Maximo's climbing wisdom

is that I am here to see for myself the cliff tombs of the Cloud People.

These vast cliffs in the remote site of La Petaca are a true necropolis,

a Chachapoya city of the dead.

I never thought I'd be sitting edge of a mountain,

about to drop off and feeling bloody terrified!

It's a seriously long way down!

So...just come over the top and this is the view down.

You can feel the sensation of the rope...

grinding on the limestone as we go down.

There's a 200 metre vertical drop

from the top to the bottom of the cliffs

and, even with expert climbers and the latest equipment,

it's a daunting prospect.

But astonishingly, centuries ago,

the ancient Cloud People not only climbed up and down

these crumbling limestone cliffs with their dead,

they actually built on them.

You can see signs of Chachapoya walls on this rock face.

They've come up here

and built these walls on the vertical rock face.

These crumbling limestone cliffs are pitted with caves,

and the Chachapoya transformed these, we think,

into burial chambers.

What's most remarkable of all

is that some of those burials are still here.

How the Chachapoya got up here is completely mind boggling.

Coming down the ropes, you can see behind me, unbelievably,

there are still Chachapoya burials intact.

The bones of these ancient people poke out all over the cliff,

alongside the occasional vulture's nest.

But the true revelations come inside the tombs themselves.

Wow, we're inside the cave.

It's a little natural cave, but just here on the edges,

you can see the Chachapoya have built the walls up,

expanding the sides of the cave.

We're still a good 100 metres up.

And I can't imagine there have been too many people here

since the Chachapoya were last here 500 years ago.

Wow. That was really quite some ride down!

These inaccessible little cave tombs are known as chulpas

and it's a real privilege to be inside one.

The cave is full of little nooks and crannies.

I'm going to climb up this wall, and up here, I can see a little ledge.

Inside this alcove is a human skeleton that is still articulated,

it's still intact, all the bones are in the correct position.

You can see that it's been wrapped in some sort of tunic or shroud.

That is truly spectacular.

This cave is just one of many within the honeycomb cliffs of La Petaca,

and all the remains appear to be

carefully, ritualistically positioned.

Wow. We're going to be really careful here,

cos there are bones on the floor.

If you look over here, you can see some remains of some Chachapoya.

I've never seen anything like it.

The way the bones are assembled makes me think

they might have been de-fleshed before they were brought here.

The way that all the skulls and long bones have been laid out,

they seem to be quite particular

about how they've been placed against this rock.

They must have laid here for at least 500 years.

We can see a whole group of long bones, skulls, a knee joint.

It's just incredible to see it all lying here.

Some of the chulpas contain a single burial,

others multiple burials, possibly families.

And here you can see some of the teeth in the lower mandible.

Judging by the tooth wear, this is an old individual.

The teeth have been worn right down.

It's remarkable you get this level of preservation in these caves.

It's only when you see the thought and effort

that has gone into placing these remains here,

protected from the elements,

that you understand just how important caring for the dead

must have been for the Chachapoya.

There's something really eerie about this tomb. This is somewhere

the Chachapoya clearly wanted to keep alive in their memory,

they'd come here again and again,

there's dozens of burials in this cave alone.

So the fact that it's been abandoned and desolate

and we're the first people to visit it for so long,

there's something so poignant about that, I think.

You might think that placing their dead inaccessibly,

high up in the cliffs, meant leaving them alone.

But astonishingly, some of the rock inside is worn smooth,

which suggests repeated visits to these caves.

Finding archaeology like this in context is crucial

because if we want to interpret and understand

what the Chachapoya were doing,

we need to see it exactly like this, just as they left it.

I'm not going to touch any of the bones.

I want it to be left here exactly like it is

and then, hopefully, one day some archaeologists will come here

and take a lot of time to excavate this cave properly.

Perhaps a major investigation

will discover how the Chachapoya got up here in the first place.

I can see intriguing beams sticking out from the cliff

and we've already seen that they were skilled at construction,

but no-one has yet come up with a conclusive explanation

as to how they scaled these dangerous heights, and so regularly.

Even with ropes and helmets...

..I found out they can be pretty hazardous.

But interesting as that puzzle is,

the real question is what role the dead played in their culture.

Why devote so much effort to entombing them

and then visit so often?

Finding an answer isn't easy.

But a different kind of tomb provides another clue,

albeit one tainted by recent history.

Chachapoya sites are hard to find.

You often have to come right up into the hills to try and find them.

But they're also becoming increasingly vulnerable.

In 1996, some cattle ranchers were pushing though a valley like this

when they saw a tree had fallen down off the side.

Behind the tree was a small opening.

Curious, they went right inside, and found 200 Chachapoya mummies.

The site was called Laguna de los Condores.

Unlike the cliffs at La Petaca,

the bodies at Laguna de los Condores had been carefully mummified.

These were mummies dating from a later period

when the Chachapoya culture overlapped with the Inca culture.

There were mummified adults, mummified babies, mummified animals.

It was a hugely important discovery,

but the ranchers began to search through the bodies,

hunting for treasure.

Word got out and, within days, tourists and tomb raiders

were trampling all over one of the most astonishing

archaeological discoveries in the Americas.

After 10 days of chaos,

the first archaeologist on the scene was Sonia Guillen.

Sensing the importance of the discovery

and seeking to preserve what remained,

Sonia collected the artefacts and mummy bundles together

and rescued them for the museum in Leymebamba.

The astonishing preservation of these mummies can get us much closer

to understanding why the dead meant so much to the living.

And they can tell us much more about the final days of the Chachapoya.

Oh, wow. Look at that.

This person had tuberculosis.

He was a young individual

and he probably died because of a complication with tuberculosis.

There are more than 200 mummies

here in the museum's controlled storage room.

By examining them, Sonia and her team have got as close as anyone can

to understanding the belief systems of the Chachapoya.

You get to connect to an individual,

you get to connect to the last events

before this individual was taken to their final repository

and, individual by individual,

you get to learn about a population.

Most of the mummies have never been studied scientifically.

Today, we are unwrapping this mummy for the very first time.

From X-rays, Sonia can tell the bundle contains a young man

who appears to have died from tuberculosis.

He was mummified and left in the cave some 500 years ago,

and no-one has set eyes on him since. Until now.

And there we are.

I'm amazed. Every time we look into any of these individuals,

there's always something new.

This is the first individual - the very, very, very first individual -

where we find the ear spool in place, OK?

And what material is that made out of?

-Wood.

-So the ear lobe would have gone around that

and it would have been a decorative earring?

It's becoming fashionable nowadays, isn't it?

Forensic archaeology is methodical and incremental

and every find, every detail, even a large earring,

illuminates the Chachapoya a little more.

Look at these hands up round the face.

They've been deliberately tied there twice,

round the fingers and round the wrists.

Why do you think they had them up around the face?

Sorry if I sound over simplistic,

but I think this was the best place to put them.

They were trying to make a package

that they could move from one place to another easily by foot.

So here, as in the cliffs,

the Chachapoya dead were not left to rest in peace.

Archaeologists believe the living tended to them, re-wrapped them

and may even have taken them from the tombs and displayed them.

What does this tell us about their attitude to the dead?

When you see the effort they put into creating these mummies,

do you think that's because they are trying to keep people alive,

keep the memory of them alive

and have that connection between the living and the dead?

Mmm-hmm, definitely because, in those days,

what else did you have to keep your memory alive?

It was to keep the individuals close to you

and remember, also, your rights to a territory

are rights that are defined through your ancestors.

So it's important to show others

that your ancestors are here with you,

helping you demand that this territory is yours.

The effort of mummification,

of scaling impossible cliffs with their dead,

it wasn't simply about remembering those they loved.

It was a ritual that helped root the Chachapoya in their land.

So looking at these mummies over all these years,

what are the key things that you think you've learnt?

When you approach a mummy bundle,

a mummy, with this whole context,

you can't avoid connecting to emotions

and they connect to you as humans,

and that's also one of the things we want to present to the public,

that they don't just look at the freaky show

where they will get scared,

but actually will connect to adults, young ones, children

and how their society treated them with respect, with sorrow,

with tenderness, with emotions that you can't reconstruct.

And they can connect to you.

The mummies from Laguna de Los Condores give us an amazing glimpse

of the Chachapoya attitude to life and death.

Displaying deceased ancestors

seems to have been about identity and belonging.

But the funerary culture of the Chachapoya

reveals even more than that.

As well as mummification, they built sarcophagi to display their dead.

And what these structures don't have

is just as significant as what they do.

How a people bury their dead

is one of the best ways of identifying hierarchies.

What's interesting about the Chachapoya

is they appear to be egalitarian.

There are hundreds of sarcophagi like this

with men, women and children buried inside.

But significantly, there are no elite burial sites, no royal tombs.

Unlike many other ancient cultures,

nor are there depictions of servitude,

or of regal figures being worshipped.

Instead, the independent Chachapoya

depicted distinct individuals in an egalitarian way.

I've dug burials in a lot of different places around the world

but I've really never seen a burial type like this.

The Chachapoya build these sarcophagi

in these anthropomorphic forms.

They have stones cascading around in a circle

and held together with a clay and straw matrix.

What I like about them is that they are all quite standardised,

they have these faces with this distinctive nose, this flat face,

but each one, although it has a standard form,

has been made individually.

Here we can see some of the decoration.

You've got a decorative pattern made out of an iron oxide paste

which gives it that red colour.

I like it because you have these bands of decoration

which can be made individual,

representing that individual family member.

These strange sarcophagi appear like ghosts on the landscape.

Not enough archaeological work has been done

to be sure who they commemorate,

which is not surprising given how difficult they are to access.

In fact, some of these intriguing little mud and straw statues

seem to be protected by nature itself.

Just over here are nine Chachapoya sarcophagi.

I really want to go and have a closer look,

but the one on the right, inside, has a nest of killer bees.

The bees have killed a few people in this valley over the last few years,

so there's no way I'm going to get any closer.

To see more evidence for this surprising lack of hierarchy,

you have to fight your way through.

Archaeological sites...

are always covered with things that sting and spike.

Which is why it's always good to have a machete.

But it's quite fun.

Spike in the hand!

Two spines.

It's really in quite deep, actually. Got to be careful here.

It's gone through there and across to there.

I'm going to need someone to get some pliers.

That's quite painful. I'm running out of amount he can pull.

Ah! Get him. That's painful.

On three, just going to pull it out. Three, two, one.

Beauty!

And here's our little friend.

Now it's time for some revenge.

Like lost kingdoms should be, Chachapoya architecture is

often hidden under centuries of vegetation

and we can only get glimpses through sharp thorns.

But it's worth hacking my way through the hills

to meet Peter Lerche.

Originally from Germany, Peter is an anthropologist

who has lived in this region for 32 years.

Past and present, nobody knows the Chachapoya people like Peter does.

In fact, he considers himself Peruvian

and was once mayor of the town of Chachapoyas.

And he managed to get me close

to one of the many lost Chachapoya settlements.

So what's the name of this site?

-This site is Yalape.

-Yalape?

Yalape. The Chachapoya, the population centre.

And what are we looking at here? What's this?

This is a ceremonial centre of Yalape.

This is a six-metre-high wall, right on the top of the bluff,

which you must be able to see for miles around, it's a real statement.

That's an ideological aspect - here I am!

They show that they are not hiding.

And what are we looking at here? What are these particular friezes?

This is the zig-zag frieze

and it symbolises a snake.

And the symbol at the top then, what do you think the symbol,

the value is, behind that rhomboid shape?

The rhomboid shape, it's the jaguar. It's not an Amazonian culture,

it's not an Andean culture, it's a mixture of both worlds.

At its peak,

over half a million people lived in the Chachapoya territory,

which is more than live here in modern times.

All the evidence suggests that the Cloud People's society

not only had its own symbolism and ideology, but that it evolved

in a distinctly different way than any European models.

We have no manifestation of power in an architectural way,

you know, no architecture of power.

Normally, we know about humans, when I have power,

I want to show my power in palaces.

And here, all the same circular structures.

And this challenges

some major constructs of archaeological interpretation.

When people think of a united culture of half a million people,

we associate that with a hierarchy, with an elite,

but we just don't have that with the Chachapoya?

Archaeologically, or architectonically,

there is no evidence.

Some of the technological developments

you see at places like this and the organisation of labour,

it's great to think that people must have been coming together

as a collective rather than under an authoritative leader?

For necessities, they knew they need retaining walls,

they need agricultural terraces,

so they had to stand together and work together.

I must admit I'm beginning to fall for the Chachapoya.

The evidence so far points to their architectural prowess,

their egalitarian culture, and a real devotion to their dead.

Lots of archaeology around the world

emphasises the more brutish side of human behaviour -

battles, weapons, sacrifices -

but the Chachapoya challenge that assumption

that all human societies evolve in the same way.

Let's not delude ourselves.

This is no South American Garden of Eden.

It's a tough place to live

and the Chachapoya often squabbled amongst themselves.

But there was no rigid hierarchy. They shared ideas.

On these mountain slopes arose a society

that was both complex and cultured.

With their own art and architecture, their own beliefs and values.

For 600 years, the society thrived on this land

and enriched their knowledge by facilitating trade.

As the Chachapoya civilisation developed,

it was constantly growing and innovating,

coming to dominate the landscape for thousands of miles around.

They built round houses

that could be seen on the numerous mountain peaks.

They built tombs on cliff faces.

And, at the heart of the Chachapoya territory,

they built their masterpiece.

Any notion that the Chachapoya were mere passive traders is dismissed

when you come to the most famous Chachapoya site in the Andes.

Covering 15 acres, 10,000 feet above sea level, this is Kuelap.

It's an epic statement of the power and skill of the Chachapoya.

It's estimated that Kuelap took centuries to build

and it's probable that the people who lived here

were constantly reinforcing the structure.

In places, the thick platform of stone is over 65 feet high

and some of the finely cut limestone blocks weigh more than 3 tonnes.

This is a building of such awe-inspiring scale,

it's hard to believe it was built by hand.

You don't have to be an expert to see the sheer scale of work

that's gone into building Kuelap.

These 60 foot-high walls enclose a site

that has transformed this mountain top.

The question is why?

Why would the Chachapoya carry

hundreds of thousands of stones like these

up the mountain side to build this incredible site?

In part, it was a safe haven.

The three entrances to Kuelap are in themselves clever and defensive.

The entrances initially appear open and welcoming,

but any gung-ho enemy charging through

will quickly find the walls narrowing,

until there is only space for a single warrior to pass.

So if the Chachapoya wanted to fend off an invading army,

the architects who designed this entrance would have made it easy

for them to pick them off one by one.

Like so much Chachapoya archaeology,

scandalously little research has been done on Kuelap.

And to document this astonishing ancient citadel would take years.

The sheer scale of the site is incredible,

with over 400 stone buildings hidden beneath the undergrowth.

I met with Alfredo Narvaez,

the archaeologist who has studied the site for years.

Alfredo believes the site was occupied for more than 1,000 years,

though whether the first people here were Chachapoya

or an earlier culture is unclear.

Kuelap is 500 years older than the more celebrated Machu Picchu

and is intriguing in both its construction and in its purpose.

At first sight, the structure certainly looks defensive.

There are secrets locked away within the walls

that suggest the site was much more significant than just a fortress.

Today, Kuelap feels a long way from anywhere, high on a mountain,

surrounded by a beautiful but a very empty landscape.

But over a thousand years ago,

archaeologists estimate that as many as 3,000 people

crammed into this amazing mountain-top citadel.

Far from being at the fringes,

Kuelap and the Chachapoya people who lived here

were at the centre of ancient life.

But the Chachapoya world was under threat.

A new power was rising in the mountains far to the south.

Today it's a magnet for tourists

but, from the 1430s, Machu Picchu and the nearby capital Cusco

was home to Inca royalty who set out to conquer northern Peru.

What the Romans were to Europe, the Inca were to South America.

At its greatest extent, their empire stretched from Ecuador to Argentina.

Around 1470, the Inca reached the eastern slopes of the Andes,

the land of the Cloud People.

They built conquest roads like this one,

they built forts throughout their lands.

The mighty Inca empire dispatched an emissary to the Chachapoyas

to ask them to submit peacefully, or face war.

They replied that they would rather die in defence of their freedom.

Above all else, the Inca coveted the valuable Chachapoya trading routes.

Access to the Amazon was everything.

But the Inca foot soldiers struggled to suppress the Chachapoya people.

They rebelled and had to be reconquered twice.

The Chachapoya paid a heavy price for their resistance.

The Inca empire had a policy they called mitma.

A conquered people would be dispersed far and wide,

forcibly removed from their home territory

to far-flung parts of the Inca empire.

The Chachapoya people were scattered and broken,

sent to what's now Ecuador and to the shores of Lake Titicaca

where, to this day, there is a town called Chachapoyas.

Some estimates suggest as much as half the population were exiled,

with many others killed.

Only a few Chachapoya remained in their homeland.

One thing we know about the Chachapoya

is that they ritualistically looked after their dead.

But just a few years ago, here in Kuelap,

200 skeletons were unearthed, found where they had fallen.

There was no evidence of the kind of ceremonial burial we've seen elsewhere,

which points to a violent ending.

The skeletons were of all ages and both sexes

and were found alongside everyday utensils and tools,

suggesting it may have been more of a massacre than a battle.

It seems likely that the 200 skeletons

were the last Chachapoya in Kuelap.

The Inca ruled over the remaining Chachapoya

until the New World changed forever,

with the arrival of the plundering Europeans.

By the time the Spanish arrived in this part of Peru in 1535,

they were able to exploit the resentment of the Chachapoya against their Inca oppressors

and persuaded them to join them in the fight against them.

Meeting with the Europeans was to prove fatal to Chachapoya culture.

The invading Spaniards brought missionaries in tow

who set out with evangelical zeal to convert the indigenous population.

Worse was the smallpox, measles and diphtheria

that swept through the Chachapoya in the years that followed.

Within just two centuries of the Spanish arrival,

90% of the remaining Chachapoya had perished.

The kingdom of the Cloud People contained only clouds.

The Chachapoya were gone.

The cloud forest from which they came grew around their structures,

swallowing them up, where they lay unseen for centuries.

Even today, it is certain that somewhere out there,

there are many more Chachapoya tombs, towns and monuments

that lie hidden in this vast and beautiful region.

Coming down from the Andes and returning to Lima,

I realise the size of the challenge

in truly understanding the Chachapoya.

The fragments we've seen are just a start

and it could be decades before we really unravel their true story.

But even this partial picture that we have today

resonates in this great continent.

Rediscovering the lost kingdoms of South America is not just academic.

History is the stories we tell ourselves

and as the amazing mummies, the chulpas and the fortress at Kuelap

begin to reveal their secrets,

they're a great source of pride in Peru

and they're also a reminder that the cultures of South America

thrived long, long before Europeans appeared on the horizon.

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