Good story of modern-day explorers looking for Inca ruins in the mountains and jungles of Peru. A little too "New Journalism" touchy-feely and not enough straightforward writing knocks it down a peg from "What a classic!" status. And I wish there were more pictures.

But it does stir that part of the imagination where there are places of the world not yet explored, or once explored but long-since lost, the sense of a very far-away place in time and space that where there could still exist El Dorado.

_The White Rock_ by Hugh Thomson is a fascinating, well-written account of both the author's travels to Inca sites in Peru and Bolivia and his efforts to address the big discrepancies between popular conceptions of the Incas and the actual evidence of what they were like, an effort complicated by the fact that the Incas left no written record and much of what know about them comes from the often biased accounts of Spanish conquistadors and from the supposition of archaeologists.

Though Thomson visited a number of Inca sites throughout the book, Machu Picchu clearly dominates, as it is most famous Inca site, the one most likely known to the average person. The very familiarity of the place he wrote can lead to misleading impressions of the Incas and Thomson regretted that few visitors to Peru traveled beyond it.

The author recounted a number of misconceptions regarding the site. Many suppose that it is a major site for archaeologists; it is not, as the site was thoroughly excavated by the famous (and some say "over-enthusiastic and cack-handed") Hiram Bingham in the early years of the 20th century, who acted "with the over-confidence of an age of certainty" and so thoroughly excavated the site that little was left for later researchers. In addition, later restoration efforts to prepare the site for tourists were often done with little thought for archaeological preservation.

Speaking of Hiram Bingham, he is famous for having discovered the site. Thomson wrote that it would more accurate that he should be famous for having publicized the site. A geographer by the name of Antonio Raimondi had a site labeled as Cerro Machu Picchu on a map made in 1875 and in 1902, a full ten years before Bingham visited, Don Enrique Palma of Cuzco visited the site and left an inscription on its walls.

Tour guides and many popular books on Machu Picchu speak of the city's great religious significance, but Thomson interviewed archaeologists who said that the site was not a religious shrine at all. Occupied for less than a hundred years, largely forgotten after it was abandoned (something the Incas would not have done if it was a religious or especially a pilgrimage site), it was basically a winter quarters for the Inca emperor (known as the Inca), a country estate or leisure complex, a "gigantic hunting folly" that was "both too impractical and ostentatious" to maintain, basically an old country house and pleasure resort built on a grand scale at the height of the Inca Empire and then "left to fade away as royal tastes and fashion moved on." While the site was attractive both for its milder and warmer climate that Cuzco and its abundance of game, it was an expensive locale to live in.

Those who maintain the notion that the site was religious point to the great number of female skeletons unearthed at the site, labeled by many as "Virgins of the Sun." In fact later studies showed that the proportion of male and female remains was about equal; this misconception dates back to one of Bingham's colleagues, George Eaton, who in 1912 wrongly identified most of the remains as female.

Another misconception (albeit one that the Incas themselves promoted) was that they were the only or the first Andean or South American civilization. Incan rulers like the famous Pachacuti (originally known as Inca Yupanqui but who took the title Pachacuti or "Transformer of the Earth") promoted within their own society powerful origin stories, as Pachacuti, though important as he led the first wave of Inca conquests to Bolivia and Lake Titicaca, bringing an area from Colombia to Chile, some 3000 miles and about the size of continental Europe, under Inca control, carefully promulgated official versions of Inca history.

In reality, the Incas were adept at incorporating whole tribes into the Empire, as large numbers of people or even whole populations were taken away from their homelands to serve as tribute labor elsewhere in a system called mitamayo (the workers were called mitimaes). Thomson compared the Incas to Stalin in the way that they moved around client peoples, shipping them from one part of the empire to another to do jobs, moving potentially difficult peoples into new, uninhabited (and distant) areas, even splitting towns into upper and lower sections and having them compete in providing services to the State and the town itself.

The Incas were noted for appropriating the ruins of previous civilizations, altering them as they saw fit, manipulating and distorting the meaning of the ruins and of history. In reality, the Incas, "[f]ar from imposing order on an unruly bunch of savages, ...were merely the latest dominant tribe (and a short-lived one at the that) in a series of Andean civilizations" that had existed for over 2000 years previously. The Incas built their achievements on earlier civilizations such as the Moche of the north of Peru (noted for their magnificent pottery), the Huari, and the Tiahuanaco culture (who produced magnificent stone buildings) near Lake Titicaca.

Thomson also recounted many other aspects of the Incas. He noted their careful uses of terraces and canals, giving them the ability to support thousands where only dozens now live today. I had heard of Peruvian mummies before, but I had no idea of their role in Inca society; when each Inca died, his estate or panaca continued to maintain his palace as if he were still alive, with the Inca's mummified form resident in the old palace and brought out for feast days and coronations (Thomson wrote that the"mummy lobby" was very powerful towards the end of the Inca empire and was a system open to much abuse). Other interesting topics covered include the building, planning, and maintenance of Inca roads, Inca architectural methods and styles, and the course of the Spanish Conquest, particularly the struggles of the last Inca Emperors.

The book is also a great and witty travelogue particularly of Peru, with maps and many photos.

I read this book some years ago and as a fan of travel literature placed it near the top. However, I did not write a review at that time. Now, having recently returned from a two week vacation in Bolivia and Peru, I can see what a fine book it is. The Incas were the last of the world's great civilizations to be "discovered." Since they developed in isolation and were not literate, we must try to interpret their mind set from what has survived these 500 years. Mr. Thomson manages by observation, rigid scholarship, many miles on the trail, along with canny speculation to get inside the mind of the Inca as well as anyone. For all of you romanticists out there this book comes as close as is possible to the modern possibilities of adventure.

The author does a great job of recreating both the ancient world of the Incas and the modern world that exists around the ruins today. You definitely see the sights, smell the odors, hear the sounds.

It keeps your attention while taking you to an exotic world past and present

This book is more about the self absorbed author than Peru or the Inca. Hugh Thompson's idea of exploring seems more like pointless wandering. I would certainly not recommend this book to anyone