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A hundred years ago, Hiram Bingham ‘discovered’ Machu Picchu. The site stunned the world and, splashed over the pages of National Geographic, quickly became one of our most iconic wonders. But nearly 70 years before Bingham set up his camera in the Inca ruins, and far to the north, another lost city was quietly reclaimed from the jungle, one of the most awesome monuments in all the ancient Americas.

Kuelap was brought to the world’s attention in 1843 by a local judge, Juan Crisóstomo Nieto, who was guided to the site by villagers while conducting a survey of the area. In a letter to a regional administrator, he wrote of its massive size, and as word got out a straggle of adventurers hacked their way through the vine-entangled forest to see for themselves. But the journey was perilous, and few made it. Tour parties still trundle round the country retreat of its Inca conquerors, but Kuelap rests undisturbed on its mountaintop, wrapped in sky and mystery.

Around Kuelap stretch the Amazonian Andes, a rugged, remote area of deep ravines and soaring precipices shrouded in cloud forest. It is the homeland of the Chachapoya, a people famed for their fierce warriors and powerful shamans, whose civilisation flourished from around AD 800 until the Inca victories of the 1470s. They lived as autonomous ayllus (extended kin groups), in circular houses clustered on high ridges. Remains of their distinctive settlements are scattered all over this vast region, and yet remarkably little is known about them. Already, by the time of the Spanish conquest, an air of exotic otherness hung about this people who lived perched on what seemed the edge of Andean civilisation, where wild Amazonia begins; the “Ceja de Selva”, the eyebrow of the jungle. “These are the whitest and most graceful Indians in all the Indies,” wrote Father Calancha, “and the women are the most beautiful.” 1

Even our word for them is not their own, but an Inca name: Chachapoya, meaning cloud people.

Today’s visitor may not need a machete, but Kuelap is still very definitely off the gringo trail: buses connecting the nearest town, Chachapoyas, with the rest of Peru are infrequent; rockfalls deposit boulders in the middle of roads; hairpin bends twist under gravity-mocking overhangs; violent rains make muddy tracks impassable. But the day we visit, the Sun is breaking through and the citadel can be seen from miles away, 3,000m (10,000ft) above sea level, gleaming on its cliff edge. As we wind towards it, first by car then on foot, there’s a feeling of expansiveness. The path is embroidered with flowers, llamas nuzzle the grass, and, far below, cloud shadows scud through the Utcubamba Valley.

On the summit, the scale of the landscape and of Kuelap is overwhelming. The site is encased in a creamy, colossal wall – 20m / 65ft high in places – that stretches away along the ridge until it’s lost in a knot of greenery. It wraps a six-hectare (15 acre) urban centre; the entire complex, including terraces, tombs and outlying settlements, is around 450 hectares (1,100 acres). Built out of big limestone blocks, the wall is blank but for a tall thin slit; we enter and are sucked up a narrowing corridor and out onto the citadel itself.

We emerge amid the low ruins of round houses, clinging together like burst bubbles on water. The forest has reasserted itself: roots break through walls, moss crawls over a guinea pig run, orchids and bromeliads burst from the vine-heavy trees that lean over pathways. Somewhere, a team of archæologists are muttering and scraping; otherwise it’s just us and our guide. There are over 400 buildings up here, almost all of them circular and between 3m and 12m (10–40ft) in diameter, once home to a population of approximately 2,000. One has been restored, and with its thatched roof and impregnable, organic form, it gives you an idea of how this place must once have dominated the skyline, houses budding out along the ridge and clustering together against the elements.

The houses are organised into upper and lower sections, probably an expression of a traditional Andean moiety system. Access to the upper section is via another tapering, high-walled corridor, funnelling attackers up to be picked off one by one; some of the walls are shaped into what resemble parapets; and at the far end and highest point is a tower where 2,500 sling stones have been found, and which has a commanding view of the valley below.

Who was it, then, that the inhabitants of Kuelap were afraid of? Why did they build their citadel, and what purpose did it serve? No one knows. It may have been the stronghold of an unusually powerful local chief; some researchers have even argued that it was the political centre of a Chachapoya kingdom, although the evidence suggests Chachapoya society was fragmentary. 2

Alternatively, it could be that it was conceived as defence against the Wari, who were expanding north through the central highlands and along the coast. What is certain is that they must have been driven by something extraordinary, by a fear or ambition strong enough to unite fractious tribes and organise this mighty construction.

The Chachapoya were ferocious warriors, as the Inca found to their cost. Skulls found at Kuelap show evidence of scalp removal, though whether this was to take trophies or for medicinal reasons is not known. The Spanish were equally impressed by the reputation of the Chachapoya shamans. Juan Polo de Ondegardo wrote of their “great sorcerers and skilled herbalists who make poisons”. 3

The numerous references to sorcerers and brujos in these early chronicles can in part be explained by the location of Chachapoyas: not only were there plentiful medicinal plants locally, but the region was situated at a crossroads on the trade route to the Amazon lowlands, an even greater pharmacopoeia mythologised as the source of primordial knowledge. Shamans from the Andes would travel to the lowlands to procure herbs and learn new techniques, or to serve apprenticeships with their more powerful Amazonian counterparts. Quartz crystals and rare metals have been found at Chachapoya sites at La Playa and Gran Pajatén, probably used in shamanic activities, and a number of skulls show evidence of trepanation, a process that could have been intended as a cure, or served some magical purpose.

However, Professor Warren Church, an archæologist and anthropologist who specialises in the region, is wary of reading too much into reports by the Spanish, which were often written by clerics with their own agendas. He points out that while the rise in hostile sorcery was probably greatest in Chachapoyas it occurred everywhere in the Andes during the Spanish conquest; just as throughout world history social and demographic upheavals have triggered increased outbreaks of witchcraft. The indigenous populations were being devastated by European diseases, and, “in the absence of modern Western disease theory, natives often attributed misfortunes to the hostile actions of rival kin groups. Old grievances rose to the surface as people took advantage of political and social chaos that accompanied the conquest to settle old scores.” 4

This chaos, and the imposition of the Inca solar cult, and then Spanish Christianity, destroyed the Chachapoya belief system. Any rituals, sacrificial practices or use of hallucinogens specific to the Chachapoya people are long forgotten. What we know of their art tells us little: while they were reputed to have been great weavers, their ceramics are plain and their buildings are decorated with geometric friezes. We know little of their gods and myths. They revered serpents, condors and lightning as cosmic forces. As well as these, archæologists have found representations of human-feline hybrids, presumably shamans transforming; of human heads, possibly signifying either ancestors or trophy heads taken in battle; and a range of fertility and cycle-of-life symbols.

There is no evidence of temples, although there is a strange structure at Kuelap, which, it seems, had spiritual significance. The Tintero (‘inkpot’) is a noseless upside-down cone containing a bottle-shaped vault; at the bottom, among a crush of Ecuadorian shells, is a slab of rock carved with three rounded grooves. Over the years, there has been a whole series of imaginative explanations for the Tintero – dungeon, water tank, mausoleum, storehouse – but Alfredo Narvaez, the archæologist who has been working on the site for decades now, believes it served some religious function. Offerings he has found on the top of the Tintero contain the bones of deer, llamas, and guinea pigs, and to the front he found ash, burned earth and cooked maize for chicha (corn beer), suggesting that the area was used for rituals. In 1996, a team from the San Diego Museum of Man studied the building and concluded that it was a solar calendrical observatory. They found that in early October and early March – important dates for local farmers – a sunbeam shines into the vault at a 90-degree angle; what’s more, they noted that the shaft leading down into the vault is not vertical but tilted slightly, so that the Sun at noon on the day of the Winter Solstice shines down it and onto the stone block below. As well as the agricultural and ritual significance of the date, this beam of light may have represented the Axis Mundi; Kuelap as the microcosm, a central pillar around which the forces of the cosmos move. 5

One aspect of Chachapoya belief systems that we do know more about is their attitude to death.  Kuelap’s inhabitants liked to keep their ancestors close. There are tombs everywhere: in the walls, under the houses, built into the cliff face. Narvaez has suggested that many of the dead were brought by pilgrims from remote tribes, making Kuelap, with all these ancestors to protect the living, a place of immense sacred power.

Nearby, purunmachus glare out of mountainsides: human-shaped capsules made of clay, sticks and stones, each with a mummy inside, wrapped in the fœtal position. Other Chachapoyas valleys hide tombs that cling to rock faces like swallows’ nests. Both forms of burial involved extra-ordinarily brave and skilled engineering, manœuvring building materials onto tiny shelves high up crumbling cliffs. In a further feat of ingenuity, by placing the mummies on ledges sheltered by overhangs, they were preserved – despite all the rain – in a dry and cold microclimate.

Like other Andean peoples, the Chachapoya kept up a relationship with their ancestors, bringing them offerings of food and drink, consulting with them, and taking them out of their tombs for important rituals and festivities. 6

This was important, as they expected the ancestors to intercede with the gods, ensuring the fertility of the land. To empower them in these dealings, the dead were buried in sacred places, or huacas. Huacas, greatly revered all across the Andes, could be mountains, caves, lakes, rocks, or the meeting of rivers, and often embodied ancient spirits; some were venerated as places of origin, and tombs would be placed so that they could watch over both their living descendants and the birthplace of their ancestors.

The destruction of this people, when it came, was swift, terrible and complete; their art and iconography were destroyed and even their language was obliterated. The divided Chachapoya were defeated by Inca Tupac Yupanqui around 1475 (although Kuelap, oddly, is missing from the list of his conquests), but rebelled repeatedly against his success-ors. For their part, the Inca fought repeatedly to subdue this unruly people, who controlled one of South America’s most important crossroads. So determined were the Inca that they summarily executed many Chachapoya warriors and deported half the population to other parts of the empire, importing colonists from elsewhere in their stead.

Chachapoya culture, then, was already in collapse by the time the Spanish – source of our earliest historical documents for the area – arrived. Initially, the Chachapoya welcomed the Spanish as allies against the Inca. Events didn’t turn out as they’d hoped. The Europeans brought diseases against which they had no immunity: by 1600, it has been estimated, as much as 92 per cent of a population that once probably exceeded 300,000 had been wiped out. It was genocide on a terrifying scale; and, Professor Church adds, “an enormous amount of lost memory… a permanent loss of ‘history’, as far as we are concerned”. 7

Those few Chachapoya who did survive were forced to pay tribute for which they received nothing in exchange; the chiefs lost their power and the ayllus their best farmland; and many communities – already shuffled into new administrative units and given new hierarchies by the Inca – were moved out of their traditional settlements and away from their ancestors, and muddled together in new Christian colonial towns. The rebellious Manco Inka had supporters among some of the Chachapoya, and in 1538, according to his son, he set off for a “fine fortress” in their territory from which he planned to lead the fight against the Spanish (he later changed his mind and headed instead to Vilcabamba); the historian John Hemming has argued that this fine fortress was Kuelap, although others have pointed out Kuelap’s impracticalities as a focus for revolt. 8

Many of the Chachapoya did rise up in support of Manco, but they were defeated by those Chachapoya who remained loyal to the Spanish, and their leaders burnt alive.

There’s no evidence of a pitched battle against the Spanish at Kuelap, but large clumps of burnt roof thatch suggest that the inhabitants were either forced to leave, and set fire to their houses as they went, or that Kuelap came to a violent end – probably caught up in the internecine conflict that followed the Spanish arrival. In an archæological investigation followed by a TV documentary crew, 9 the remains of over 80 Chachapoya were found in an area around the Tintero, not buried but sprawled where they fell. Researchers concluded that the dead were the citadel’s last inhabitants: Kuelap was a place of great spiritual importance, and those who lived there had responsibility for the wellbeing of the outlying tribes; when war and disease decimated the population Kuelap’s custodians were blamed and murdered by their neighbours. The event, speculated the programme, inspired a local myth about a sorcerer who leapt from mountaintop to mountaintop, clubbing people to death.

Parts of the citadel were later reoccupied, and dark angular Inca walls squat among Kuelap’s airy ruins. But, apart from the odd family who eked out a living amid the rubble, it was soon forgotten. Like sites throughout Chachapoyas, it has been damaged and looted and vandalised. The race is on to find out as much as possible about this enigmatic people before the clues are destroyed for good.

We’re left alone on the ridge, tiny in the shadow of the massive wall and a lost civilisation. Kuelap has an incredible empty power and presence; the buildings may be echoes of what they once were, but the ancestors are all around us.

With thanks to Professor Warren Church

Further reading

Warren B Church & Adriana von Hagen: ‘Chachapoyas: Cultural Development at an Andean Cloud Forest Crossroads’, in Handbook of South American Archæeology, ed Helaine Silverman and William H Isbell, Springer, 2008, pp903–926.

Keith Muscutt: Warriors of the Clouds: A Lost Civilization in the Upper Amazon of Peru, University of New Mexico Press, 1998.

notes

1 Reports of the fair skin and unusual height led explorer Gene Savoy to argue that the Chachapoya were descended from Europeans who sailed across the Atlantic and up the Amazon. Recent analyses of skeletal remains, however, indicate that they were of Andean stock.

2 Prof. Warren B Church: ‘Chachapoya Indians’, in Encyclopedia of Anthropology, vol 2, Sage Publications 2006, pp469–475.

3 Adriana von Hagen: An Overview of Chachapoya Archaeo-logy and History, p6; downloadable as PDF from museoleymebamba.org.

4 Prof. Warren Church, pers. comm., 6 July 2011.

5 James McGraw, et al: “Kuelap: A Solar Observatory?”, San Diego Museum of Man Ethnic Technology Notes 24, 1996.

6 The Inca royal mumm-ies kept their own palaces, where they were served as they had been in life. They paid social calls, held dances, gave toasts, paraded around the countryside, and took part in ceremonies.

7 Prof. Warren Church, pers. comm., 6 July 2011.

8 von Hagen, op. cit., p28.

9 The Ancient Skeletons of Peru, shown on More4, 14 May 2011.

JEN OGILVIE spent six years working on FT before leaving to seek her fortune in Cambodia. You can follow her adventures at www.jenogi.com