By the time of the Inca civilization, which lasted from approximately 1100 to 1500 A.D., the Andean tradition of preserving the dead was still intact. Most Inca mummies were arranged in the ...

Incan qeros from the National Museum of the American Indian. The white pigment “often appears yellowish over time,” says Emily Kaplan. National Museum of the American Indian In 1908, at a lab ...

Steeped in death, conquest, desire, and mystery, the legend of the lost Inca gold is guarded by remote, mist-veiled mountains in central Ecuador. Somewhere deep inside the unforgiving Llanganates ...

But the Inca, whose great era of imperial expansion ran roughly from 1438 to 1533, were also master builders, and Smithsonian-affiliated researchers are now bringing their accomplishments to light.

At over 6,000 metres, Mt Ampato is one of the highest mountains in Peru, and a place were the Inca used in one of their most dramatic and powerful religious ceremonies: human sacrifice.