Mesoamerican origins -- Maya agriculture -- Maya society -- Maya religion -- A Mayan temple -- Maya calendar and writing system -- Daily life aamong the Mayas -- Rise of the Aztecs -- Daily life in an ...

For centuries, the vanished Inca fortress of Ancocagua existed only in lore. Now, at a mountaintop site in Peru, researchers are zeroing in on a discovery that could reshape what we know of the empire ...

Three decades ago, researchers working atop the Llullaillaco volcano, located on the border between Argentina and Chile, ...

In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Inca Empire was the largest South America had ever known. Centered in Peru, it stretched across the Andes’ mountain tops and down to the shoreline, ...

Long before their empires disappeared, the Maya, Aztec, and Inca built entire civilizations around powerful gods, cosmic cycles, and terrifying visions of creation and destruction. Their myths told of ...

The Incas have the double distinction of presiding over the largest empire of the ancient Americas and one of the shortest-lived. Sprawling along the Pacific Coast and across the Andes Mountains to ...

This story appears in the April 2011 issue of National Geographic magazine. On the remote Peruvian island of Taquile, in the middle of the great Lake Titicaca, hundreds of people stand in silence on ...

The city of Cusco seems to hum in anticipation. Villagers dressed in colorful shawls, or chompas, mingle with city-folk and tourists. Processions parade down the cobble stone streets. Horns blare over ...

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