When the Spanish Conquistadors encountered the mighty Inca empire, they found thousands of knotted-up ropes called quipus.

The Inca language, religion, and trade network dominated the Andes. A man chewing coca in a pre-Columbian figure Photograph by DEA/Album Vast amounts of coca, regarded as sacred by the Inca ...

The explorer Hiram Bingham bushwhacked his way down here in 1911, but another lost Inca city had already caught his eye. “Few romances can ever surpass that of the granite citadel” — he later wrote — ...