Peru: The Trail to Paititi
Explorer and independent scholar Andrew Nicol uncovers the legends surrounding Paititi, the lost Inca city of gold.
The history of Peru, specifically within the last 500 years, portrays an intricate mix and infusion of cultures, epitomised by the amalgamation of two great titanic imperial forces – that of the Inca and Spanish Empires.
Peru has always been synonymous with lost cities, forgotten explorers and legends of gold. It has played host to intrepid explorers, adventurers and treasure hunters since its “discovery” in 1532 by Francisco Pizarro and his infamous band of gold greedy conquistadors.
The year 1532 is perhaps one of the most important dates in the history of Peru.
This was the year that saw the arrival of the strange white-bearded men, about whom nothing was known regarding. Religious superstition and belief dictated that these white men could perhaps be Viracochas – prophesised immortal liberators who had arrived to usher in a new chapter of the Inca story.
With hindsight we can perhaps see that this was, albeit rather eerily true. However, they were not immortals. Francisco Pizarro and his band of conquistadors had landed on the very banks of this strange new land of ‘Biru’ in 1532, after hearing rumours of a land of an abundance of gold and silver.
Little did they know that this small band of treasure hunters and soldiers – many of whom were on the lower fringes of social status back home in Spain – would soon procure vast quantities of the precious metal that they so coveted; and all in the space of a few years.
The Spaniards were able – although small in number – to effectively bend the will of the Inca people to satisfy their greed by capturing the Emperor and holding him for ransom.
The Inca beheld the Spanish fascination towards the precious metals with curious eyes.
destruction of Vilcabamba
Indeed, the Inca did not regard the gold and silver as having monetary values (unlike the Spanish, for whom it represented the upwards mobility of social status), for them it represented Inti, the sun god, on earth and it was used exclusively as religious items.
Nevertheless, the Spanish did manage to obtain massive quantities of Inca riches (thought to be around US$15 million in today’s values) before they realised that the Spanish were not the fabled Viracocha liberators after all, but they were thieves and potential oppressors. Thus, the newly instated Inca puppet King Manco Inca felt that he could no longer watch the theft of his people’s religious items, and the persecution and enslavement of his people, thus beginning the great revolt against the Spanish invaders.
This period of history is when legends of secret stores of Inca gold start to emerge, and the history of the Inca Empire’s treatures becomes somewhat sketchy. What is known is that the rebelling King Manco Inca, along with an entourage of Inca royalty and other peoples from his empire, relocated and retreated into the edges of the jungle where they established a city named Vilcabamba.
This city (said to have a population of a few thousand) became the new Inca capital in the guerrilla war that Manco had decided to initiate to try and rid his lands of the Spanish oppressors. The thinking behind such a move was indeed tactically clever: Manco reasoned that the specific military advantages of the Spanish, namely the cavalry, would be useless in the confines of the jungle environment. To a degree he was correct, however this did not stop the Spanish finally overrunning the city in 1572; thus ending the final stand of the Inca towards the Spanish, and with the Spanish crushing Vilcabamba, all opposition was seen to be destroyed. Or was it?
Legends to this day describe further possible Inca cities located within the Peruvian Amazon, the best known of which being Paititi, the legendary city of El Dorado.
Could it be possible that such a city represents a further Inca retreat into the rainforest?
pushes southwards in search of gold
After all, what is still unclear today is the extent to which the Inca Empire extended eastwards, and how far it penetrated into the depths of the jungle.
The legend of Paititi maintains that either following or just prior to the Spanish destruction of Vilcabamba, the Inca nobility retreated once more deep into the jungle to a city named Paititi. Indeed, this story is perhaps corroborated somewhat by the lack of any Inca treasure at the site of Vilcabamba, which produces two alternatives: either the Inca had not managed to save any gold from the Spanish in the first place or had taken it elsewhere.
There exists also a similar legend by the Q’ero people, a Quechua community found in the high elevation of Paucartambo in Peru, who claim that they are the direct descendants of the Inca. This legend focuses on the mythical king Inkarri, who supposedly founded the cities of Q’ero and Cuzco before retiring into the jungle area to establish the city of Paititi, where he was said to live out the rest of his days.
Arguably such a legend may perhaps better explain the origins of the whole Paititi/El Dorado legend, with the old Q’ero legend of Paititi perhaps becoming the foundations upon which today’s legend of the lost city of gold could develop. It had seemed, therefore, that the legend was nothing but hear-say, with no positive historical proof towards its actual disposition. That was, until very recently.
Extensive archaeological work in the Peruvian Amazon regions within the last few decades has produced some interesting results.
Explorer Gregory Deyermenjian and his team discovered in the 1980’s the site of Memeria, the stone ruins of a pre-Columbian settlement thought to exist for the purpose of coca cultivation and the extraction of other jungle products. Indeed, recent work by the Anthropologist Michael Heckenberger in the Matto Grosso area of Brazil has led to the discovery of, he claims, large scale settlement ruins. From such discoveries, archaeologists are beginning to reassess their stance on the possibilities of large scale jungle communities. Once deemed very improbable due to the poor soil and harsh climate, the realisation is beginning to ferment that it may be entirely possible for large scale municipalities to exist within the Amazon rainforest. If this is so, then the whole search for Paititi becomes reopened.
Whether or not the last chapters of the story of the Inca Empire is to be found there is, of course, in practicalities, very hard to distinguish. If Paititi were to exist, even without the vast hordes of gold that some legends mention, then it would force the re-writing of the last pages of the story of the Inca people. Indeed, such a discovery would be monumental in archaeology, and if a city were to exist with samples of Inca gold and religious artefacts, would eclipse the discoveries of other notable finds considerably. However, in reality, the only way to prove conclusively that Paititi does exist would be to find it; which is something that, even now, explorers and archaeologists continue to endeavour to do.
Further Reading:
- Deyermenjian, Gregory, “Expedition 2000: The Search for Paititi and the Lost Realm of the Incas”
- Hemming, John, 1980, “The Conquest of the Incas”, Macmillan, Cambridge
- Lee, Vincent, 2000, “Forgotten Vilcabamba”, Cortez: Sixpac Manco Publications
- MacQuarrie, Kim, 2007, “The Last Days of the Incas”, Piatkus, London
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