Nestled on a mountain ridge in the Urubamba Valley, Machu Picchu was built as a palace that was part of a larger royal estate belonging to the Inca emperor Pachacuti (reigned ca. 1420–1472). A team of ...

Stone box: 14 by 10.6 inches; camelid votive: 1.5 inches long; gold foil votive: 0.9 inches long Five hundred years ago, someone stood in a rocking boat or on a swaying raft, grasped the ropes ...

The Inca Empire was the largest empire in pre-Columbian America. From their capital, Cuzco, in the central Peruvian Andes, the empire stretched over 2,400 miles (3860 kilometers) along the length of ...

The medicinal use of plants and the collection, dissemination, and application of traditional knowledge surrounding plants (ethnobotany) is an indigenous practice from the Americas well documented to ...

Segundo Villanueva was born in 1927 in a tiny farming village perched in the Andes. When he was 17, his father was murdered and Segundo was left with little more than a Bible as his inheritance. This ...