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 ...

This small gold model of a llama is a fitting offering for an Inca mountain god. The Incas revered gold as the sweat of the sun and believed that it represented the sun's regenerative powers.

Descended in part from Inca colonists sent here more than ... Their lands were rich and desirable. Gold and silver veined the mountains, and herds of alpacas and llamas fattened in lush meadows.

Many little figures like this have been found, in gold and silver, all over Inca territory, and they were frequently buried as offerings on mountain peaks. That territory was on three distinct levels.

Atahualpa, the last Inca emperor, was captured by Spanish ... According to tradition, Rumiñahui transported the gold to the Llanganates Mountain Range, where he hid it in the dense, forested ...

As Peruvian biologist Constantino Aucca Chutas sat chewing coca leaves with a local elder high in the Andes, his companion ...

Choquequirao is the Quechua word for "Cradle of Gold," and this captures its ... rugged trekking through even more Inca ruins, high mountain passes, and misty cloud forests before you arrive ...

When the Inca sacrificed children on mountain summits 500 years ago in the ... and castings made from gold, silver, wood, and spondyllus, a spiny oyster shell from the coast of Ecuador that ...

Silver and gold were abundant, but only used for aesthetics. Inca kings and nobles amassed ... long road system criss-crossing high Andean mountain passes and linking the rulers with the ruled.

This small gold model of a llama is a fitting offering for an Inca mountain god. The Incas revered gold as the sweat of the sun and believed that it represented the sun's regenerative powers.