When Tupac Amaru, the last Sapa Inca, was killed by Spanish soldiers at the town square in Cuzco in 1572 (whether he was murdered or executed depends upon your perspective), the great culture of the Inca was transformed from reality into legend. What little we know about them is primarily drawn from information recorded by the Spanish conquistadors and, as such, is subject to much interpretation regarding its veracity. Yet in the world today, few cultures exert as much power upon the imagination as that of the Incas.
Other than a brief series of lessons from my junior high school days, in which we studied the Inca as well as the Maya and the Aztecs (three very different groups of people, to be sure), I have not previously spent much time learning the history of the Inca culture, its people, or its influence upon the modern world. However as one planning a trip to Peru, where the remains of Machu Pichu loom large in the national landscape, I cannot help but think some understanding of this once great culture will help me to interpret what I will see while there.
Thus in pursuit of a better understanding of the Inca and the lasting effect they had upon modern Peru, as well as in the minds of people around the world, I picked up a copy of Hugh Thomson’s The White Rock to help enlarge my understanding of this subject. While not a pure academically rendered history of the Inca, rather more of a travel narrative mixed with portions of history, archeology, and biography, Thomson’s book seems to approach the subject at just the right level for the purpose I have in reading it. Should I find that it proved helpful to me in acquiring a better understanding of the Inca and Peru, he also wrote a second volume some years later titled Cochineal Red that I may also investigate.
