Hunt For The Great Sun Disc: The Inca Holy Grail | Lost City Of Gold | Odyssey

[Music] south america for 500 years a warrior people ruled over peru and beyond they were called the inca the people of the sun they built great cities like machu picchu where they worshiped the sun and sacrificed virgins to their gods eventually they would be destroyed by spanish invaders searching for gold and glory i'm here seeking a city perhaps even greater than machu picchu one of many still lost in these jungles where the inca's history and perhaps their treasure lie undisturbed [Music] hi i'm david adams and this is the remote cloud forest of the peruvian ranges and this is where the last of the incas found their refuge and it's where they built their golden cities and that's why i'm here [Music] because hidden somewhere in this jungle vastness legend says there are cities still waiting to be found cities never sacked by the spanish cities that may conceal hidden inca treasure or even the holy grail of the inca empire the great golden disk of the sun bueno aurelio plan require this meet gary ziegler an archaeologist and someone i've come halfway around the world to meet us gary's devoted his life to exploring peru's jungle if i'm to have any chance of finding a lost city david it's going to be with gary's help we found this wonderful uh major anchor road and these inca roads always go somewhere so it's a good place to look for ruins how are you sure that no one else has been up there well there's nothing recorded on maps so it's a really good chance that uh that no one's been up there that's good i'm pretty sure that we're gonna find something significant up there the phil kabamba the inca's final refuge the place from which they waged war on the spanish and where they built their lost cities to get there i plan to head through this sacred valley down the urabamba river before arriving at the very edge of the amazon basin but my journey starts in the old inca capital cusco in the late afternoon light it's easy to imagine cusco in its heyday as the city of gold so intoxicating to the first europeans to see it right now it's mid-winter in the southern hemisphere time for inti the festival of the sun the oldest surviving inca celebration a vital link to peru's past gary ziegler's seen it all before though he couldn't wait and so he's headed straight to the mountains but i plan to take my time and get a feel for the people whose past i'm seeking the sun set many years ago on the incar empire but something of the spirit of the incas lives on in music and dance it's here in the people and it's here in the stones of the buildings so perfectly constructed 500 years ago the sun was the inca's supreme god and the temples they built to worship it in were among the greatest pre-industrial buildings in the americas the most celebrated of all was the korakancha the fabled temple of gold these walls look pretty bare now but once they were totally covered in gold right throughout the whole temple and there were golden llamas and golden idols in these recesses the like of which the world had never seen in fact the only three europeans ever to see them were the ones who discovered them and they also took most of it away part of what they took included 700 sheets of gold each one weighed four and a half pounds but the only thing they didn't take was the great golden disk of the sun but someone did take it because by the time the spanish returned to get it it was gone [Music] to this day it's never been found its final resting place remains one of the world's great mysteries most likely it's in the veal cabamba where gary ziegler is gone and where i plan to meet him in a week [Music] the journey takes me in the footsteps of one of the world's great explorers hiram bingham the man who put the veal cabamba on the map [Music] like gary ziegler he was an adventurer the discoverer of the most famous inca city of them all machu picchu but gary ziegler is also an archaeologist so he's the perfect expedition partner by now i can't wait to follow him into the mountains and that means i need transport the valley secretary a typical way of getting from place to place in peru is by buying a seat on a truck okay fantastic very good so for 150 solos about 40 bucks i have the doubtful honor of squeezing in for a long slow ride it's a wind-up the driver is don tieflow he's offsider i think this is uh it's all about technique this sort of thing yeah yeah i think it's like a sweet spot somewhere [Applause] this may be one of the oldest trucks on the road but no one knows that road better than don tieflo and ephraim with their help i will follow a trail over 500 years old a trail that leads deep into the peruvian rainforest to a place of ritual sacrifice sun worship and golden cities the lost realm of the incas [Music] the incas believed they were the children of the sun born on an island in lake titicaca this was their garden of eden the place where it all began [Music] where i'm going though is the place where it all ended the place where the incas made their last stand against the spanish and where they're supposed to have built their lost cities the incas ruled over the largest empire since the romans and like the romans they built an elaborate network of roads stretching from the equator halfway to the south pole and crisscrossing the continent from the amazon all the way to the pacific this is a lookout area overlooking very steep all the way down dontiaflow might be right about keeping your eyes on the road but sometimes it's easier said than done because there isn't much of a road to keep your eye on [Music] [Music] he's agreed to take me to the top end of the sacred valley to the town of oliente tambo where i plan to hire porters for my journey into the vilcabamba [Music] the road is full of sharp bins his friends call him el rey de la caratera the king of the road he's been hauling wool and corn back and forth between cusco and the sacred valley for over 50 years and probably in the same truck [Music] on a hillside near the ruins of pizac i get my first look at the urobamba valley the sacred valley this galley along this small valley ends up in a creek which flows into a big river river which goes down to the second valley of the incas it's amazing then what was the bread basket of the anchor empire rank upon rank of terrorist gardens line the valley when the spanish first arrived they were still planted with corn and potatoes that were the staple foods of the 15 million strong incarnation these days most lie overgrown and ignored in fact peru produces less food today than it did before the spanish conquest one of the many advantages of traveling with a veteran truck driver like don tieflo is that he knows all the best truck stops no come on you find small roadside kitchens like this all over peru serving up the same food that kept the incas going corn and potatoes with the favorite meat of the conquistadors pork in this case deep fried good food very good food very good food three glasses of chicken please then there's chicha the maize beer that was the sacred ceremonial drink of the incas today though it's mostly drunk as a low alcohol alternative to regular beer i'd like a big glass please traditionally brewing chicha is women's work recipes are passed down the generations mother to daughter as a result no two brews are ever the same edges fill it up right up i want david it's actually very good but they do all have three things in common maize water and a magic ingredient what he's just told me is this stuff is prepared by basically women chewing the corn up in their mouths and then spitting it into a barrel and so and then it ferments it doesn't taste as good [Music] back on the road again and don tieflo and fram and their magnificent old truck have got me almost all the way to my destination [Music] of all places to stall in the sacred valley this is probably the worst impossible to get off the bridge and impossible for traffic and hand cranking this thing was never easy for anyone thank you that means the incas didn't have truck gods of course in fact they didn't use wheeled transport at all but if they had i would have offered up a short prayer right now getting to oliente tambo on time provides an unexpected bonus the day we arrive a local carnival is in full swing people have come into town from all the surrounding villages this means i can most likely hire the porters for my journey right here not having to go from village to village will save days alejandro is from the patakancha valley the same valley hiram bingham hide his porters from [Music] which means i can have the rest of the day off to enjoy the carnival [Music] one of peru's links to its past is the traditional dress of the andean women the hats heavy petticoats and plaited hair are not peruvian at all it's a dress code imposed on them in the 18th century by charles iii of spain [Music] back then he ordered all his colonial subjects to dress in imitation of the spanish peasantry of the day 250 years later most of them still do the main event is a competition where riders try to grab a corn cob suspended on a rope the idea is simple enough but like trying to start don tieflo's truck it's not as easy as you might think thank you [Music] beginners like maybe but not so lucky for the prize the incas not only worshiped the sun they also celebrated the natural world thunder and lightning the mountains lakes and rivers the urubamba river is one of the inca's most sacred and when you see it at its mighty thundering wildest it's easy to understand why [Music] at yesterday's carnival i met this man eric arenas and he's offered to take me to meet my porters down river it's a nine hour walk to our rendezvous point or about 90 minutes by river [Music] trouble is eric's a former olympian and peruvian kayak champion and i'm not this is as good as whitewater kayaking gets and is dangerous get caught in the undertow on the wrong side of one of these rocks and your kayak will snap in too and so will you [Music] for me this is a recurring cycle of terror adrenaline rush and calm but when you fall in it's nothing but terror [Music] time slows down directions get confused fight a river like this and you lose well i fell out of my death there at least i'm here i'm gonna save these as well rest can come later though tomorrow i climb to the roof of the andes and find the first clues pointing to a place that's remained hidden from the world for over 400 years four hundred years ago a band of spanish soldiers emerged from the peruvian jungle to gaze on this land their long sword prize the vilcabamba this was the rebel incas hideout their last bastion against the pillaging spaniards the place they hid what was left of their gold and culture i must go deep into this mountain stronghold from the edge of the sacred valley through the high mountain passes of the andes to yurak rumi i'd left the river unexpectedly early but luckily it's only a short walk to my rendezvous point sorry i'm late nice to see you representative alejandro's friend is david esparyo translator shaman and for the next two weeks an invaluable source of information about all things inca yeah have you been waiting long not too much you know but we're just enjoying some drinks and i love a beer actually a long way let's go true to his word alejandro has organized a small team of porters these guys have spent all their working lives doing nothing but hall gear through the veal cabamba even so we're planning on going places even they've never been luckily though alejandro has organized us a mule skinner and guide called hubenal kobos known as the old man of the mountains but before we go anywhere coca just about everyone in the mountains choose these bitter tasting leaves so how do you take this well basically we have to do is take the hang of the leaves before you chew it you just have to moderate cocoa was sacred to the inca which is hardly surprising as it's a kind of wonder plant it suppresses hunger and altitude sickness relieves stomach aches it even allegedly eases the pain of childbirth but most of all it provides energy the only thing this stuff doesn't do is give you a despite being the same stuff that they make cocaine from you'd have to actually eat about a ton of it just to get any narcotic effect it's more like coffee it just gives you a good buzz when you uh when you're up in the mountains said that by chewing cocoa inca messengers could run 150 miles a day we're planning a much more modest 10 miles [Music] legend has it that the ville was where the inca hid their treasure and it's easy to understand why [Music] it's not just that it's a long way from anywhere it's also the crippling combination of the terrain coupled with the altitude what's normally a 10 minute stroll at sea level becomes an hour-long hall at this height now when hyrum bingham first came up here he was an absolute amateur and so it really hit him hard we're nearly at 10 000 feet and he'd be stopping every 50 feet well i can understand why it's pretty hard slug up here ten thousand feet three thousand meters doesn't matter which system you use when you start getting this high it's hard going in anyone's language [Music] the andes range is the longest mountain chain on earth [Music] the terrain varies from jungle to glaciated ice peaks at this altitude even the slightest breeze is bone chilling you know we have a saying here in the andes yeah what does that mean whatever it goes up keeps on going up and i'm just going to be happy when we start going down sadly that's still a long way away every now and then though we do get to a ridge top and the terrain flattens out for a short stretch of pompous what's so exhausting when you get up here onto the pampas after climbing up we're about 12 000 here is that it's swampland sinkholes and it's just exhausting walking through this mud and there's mosquitoes everywhere but where there's water there's often an inca site because a reliable water supply was an essential requirement when the incas were looking for places to build their cities [Music] on the late afternoon the 9th of august 1911 hiram bingham came across this inca watercourse as soon as he saw it he knew he was near a significant site and this was it urak rumi the white rock known to the inca as the house of the rising sun well there's not much of a house left these days and the white rock is more of a black rock because of the lykan covering it the inca believed certain mountains springs caves and rocks were all endowed with magical significance like shrines along a pilgrimage route uruk rumi was one such place why was it so important to the incas oh this because uh manko inca one of the last inca ruler was uh who set up his new capital here in bitcos and decided so this was like the shrine like the temple the temple of the sun one of the most important place in this area the inca with stone masons without pier and their legacy can still be seen in the way these guys make a camp oven [Music] the idea is to light a fire inside heat the rocks until they're ready to explode then throw in your potatoes collapse the stones and put on your meat cover it all over and then let it cook for an hour or so but not all cooking is done in the oven [Music] spit roasting is the preferred way of preparing the most traditional of all andean meats guinea pigs oh it's good you like it yeah so did the inkers eat eat a lot of guinea pigs well yeah special occasions yeah yeah when we were guests you know because you know back home we uh we keep them as pets [Laughter] we eat them here so the people that live up in these remote areas do they still consider themselves as incas native yeah yeah quechua people yeah so is that is that um do they take on some of the ways of the inca do they they think of themselves as incas still yeah i feel like that myself yeah yeah yeah well you look like a lot of the paintings the spirit of the inca is not only alive and well in david espaio it's also here in these mountains and tomorrow we head for one of the most sacred of all inca sites a place so remote more gringos will climb mount everest this year that have been to where we're going in the last 400 years [Music] high on a mountain plateau in the peruvian andes a ceremony to greet the dawn unchanged since the time of the inca [Music] holy man david espao leads the porters in asking the mountain gods for their blessing and safe passage today we must climb to one of the most sacred of all sites in the ville cabamba in kawasaki and the nature of our destination demands only the most powerful offerings a piece of guinea pig skull llama fetuses amulets in the shape of humans and herbal alcohol its potency is increased by being offered in a shell carried to the mountains all the way from sea level [Music] only after the mountain gods have been invoked and the offerings burnt can the next stage of my journey commence [Music] mama [Music] this is the hardest leg of all trekking high in the cold thin air we must pass through the cloud line on our way from yupunka to in kawasi perched high in the pankuyok mountains upank is where we agreed to meet archaeologist gary ziegler so david espaio and i decide to strike out on our own leaving the porters to locate gary's campsite whether in the andes can change in moments this is called cloud forest for a good reason and it's not long before the drizzle starts they may have been among the greatest road builders of all time but maintenance in the andes seems to have died out with the last inca well believe it or not this was once an inca road but over 400 years these things have all collapsed it's a lot of time you just have to go straight up the hill [Music] the inca also ripped up many of the vilcabamba's roads and pathways so the spanish couldn't follow them especially if they led to an important place like inkawasee [Music] our first glimpse it's still three hours away across a mist-filled valley but in view at last [Music] for the incas who tried to recreate their empire in the vilcabamba this was their equivalent of the vatican their mecca the place where the last of the incas kept their most holy relics hidden in the clouds 4 000 meters above sea level 13 000 vertical feet of rugged terrain has protected this most sacred of sites for centuries even when you're almost there climbing the carved steps leading to the top of the ridge is equivalent to taking the stairs to the top of the empire state building six hours after leaving the porters we finally arrived and right on the sun comes out and this is where they think that the golden disc of the sun came looks like this looks like a place here and i mean uh inkawasi is a testament to the decline and fall of the inca empire it's one of the highest you know in the momentum range for nearly 500 years the incas had ruled most of south america from cusco the richest and most fabulous city of the americas it took the spanish only a few short years to reduce them from mighty palaces to this humble temple but at least it remained undisturbed the conquistadors never got here [Music] it doesn't surprise me that the spanish didn't get up here their horses couldn't have walked up and with all that body armor it would have been impossible it also doesn't surprise me that bingham didn't get up here because this really is a hell of a hike what is surprising is that the incas got up here at all and built this place [Music] no one really knows if inkawasi ever housed the golden disc no one's ever found it but they chose its location for a very good reason look at see the reflection over there yeah in that lake so that's a wire rug to see over there this is why it was built here yes so see the clouds now it's covering this but when the clouds clears you can be able to see the reflection of that white rock in the lake so that's i think that's why the the the beliefs of people here know that the inca turned into into this white rock became like a sacred that's the main reason why they built up this temple here i can see location because of the nature of the terrain the valley ecowas he sits above is nearly always filled with cloud however it generally clears for a short while around midday when it does you can see a tiny lake reflecting the white stone outcrop to the inca this was sacred geography at its most potent a two-man pilgrimage over and where in luck the porters have located gary's camp gary's been here a couple of days and he's already probed into the jungle aurelio rice of camino inca yeah gary's an old school explorer one of the last of a dying breed a modern day hiram bingham who's devoted his life to helping locate peru's lost cities so what we plan to do is to go up to about this level of altitude how high is it going to be it's going to be uh above 3000 i'm guessing about the 36 3 700 meters and then we're gonna we're going to clear trails and look for individual this is what i've come all this way to experience the chance to find one of the inca's lost cities the thought of it affects us all the atmosphere is electric i'm pretty sure that we're going to find something significant and find something we did like hiram bingham 90 years before us we're about to hack our way through some of the densest jungle on earth and enter another of the inca's lost cities [Music] peru's vilcabamba region is home to some of the densest jungle on the planet this is the domain of the puma the scorpion and the deadly bushmaster viper but right now they're the least of my worries one of the things about traveling in this jungle is all the bugs that get you i've actually got one a really fierce one called the puma kanchi which translates to make the puma cry and i'll tell you when it bites you really does i'm on my way from the pancu york mountains to les esparta in central peru but before we can go anywhere we must cross the sacred vilcanota river here we go is cut off on all sides by rivers that's what made it such a perfect stronghold for the anchor okay i'm going out over the edge okay and while getting across is one thing getting out is quite another [Music] and it's not just me there's quite an art to keeping this thing steady on dry land the porters are as surefooted as they come but even they find the river crossing challenging the climb to the ruins is tough a 1 in 10 incline [Music] [Music] pack a trail out here one day and six months later it's gone reclaimed by the jungle little wonder cities and temples still remain hidden from view [Music] [Music] after four hours of steady marching a glimpse of a wall [Music] then another then a watercourse and suddenly it seems as if the jungle is cloaking buildings everywhere this is amazing look at this wall can you believe this what have we found in amazement we push forward through the overgrown streets and into buildings long ruined and that goes on and on at moments like this it's hard to know what to say david look at look at this window this is definitely anchor how it keeps going gary tells the porters to take a break while we try to work out the extent of our find i wonder they never found it i mean it's totally covered in jungle i don't even know what to say i i don't have the foggiest of what have you ever seen anything this big this is the biggest thing you found i think it is i have no idea the extent of it okay look at this view wow that's the uh that's the welcome river this is typically inca because they build on views like this yeah the river was one of the most sacred objects the vilcanota was the vilca mayu the uh the earthly representation of the the milky way one of the most important things to the inca this is really overgrown too this could well be a temple uh to the river and i'll bet up in the clouds that we're looking exactly at the ice peak veronica which was also very important so this could be a really major find yeah yeah we we don't know what we've got we just uh we're going to get the guys up here and clear it and see if we have time to see what else is around us there's got to be more well let's let's get a break okay let's take a break i'm about wiped out how about you but when you've got ruins to clear brakes don't last long at first we put our backs into it then as the worst of the undergrowth is cleared we ease up being careful not to damage anything [Music] and gradually the building starts to take shape moss covered walls see daylight for the first time in centuries before too long the jungle starts to give up its secret [Music] better for centuries the cities of the incas disappeared from view like atlantis el dorado and shangri-la they became places of legend sought after but never uncovered you know one of the odd things about hiram bingham was that when he came and discovered these sites he knew nothing about archaeology and he traveled around with this book which is the royal geographical society's hints to travelers it's got everything you need to know about discovering an ancient site if you happen to like we've just done you've got a little ruler thing is i know nothing about this of course but gary does so i'm relying totally on him and not the book but it seems our euphoria is premature we are not the first as we'd hoped gary ziegler's identified it as the town of super market a place noted but never visited by hiram bingham yeah we got to finish over here go ahead i'll keep working in fact it's almost never been visited at all and certainly never been filmed the incas may be long gone but these walls still stand in mute witness to the glory of the greatest empire of the ancient americas [Music] i wonder what may lie hidden and forgotten here lost gold the sweat of the sun as the incas called it maybe even the golden disc itself [Music] i had set out from the other side of the planet to find such a place now it will be for others to take on the painstaking work of exploration one day i'll come back when gary ziegler and others have private secrets from the stones [Music] for now though it's enough just to know that there are places like this still waiting to be found and that is what always keeps me going on my journeys to the ends of the earth [Music] [Music] hello

Channel: Odyssey - Ancient History Documentaries

Views: 460,420

Keywords: ancient history, classical history, ancient civilisations, classical antiquity, history documentary, classical documentary, inca history, ancient inca, ancient peru, the lost city of gold, ancient incan city, the lost city of the inca, great sun disk, sun god, aztec relic, great inca relic, inca relic, south american history, american history, david adams, lost city of peru, peru documentary, Odyssey, odyssey

Id: 7-C7AjvPpx0

Length: 50min 13sec (3013 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 20 2021