{"id":157,"date":"2009-07-25T16:28:23","date_gmt":"2009-07-25T15:28:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?page_id=157"},"modified":"2014-04-30T10:24:51","modified_gmt":"2014-04-30T09:24:51","slug":"cochineal-red","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?page_id=157","title":{"rendered":"Cochineal Red"},"content":{"rendered":"

.<\/p>\n

Peru wears its ancient cultures wrapped around in layers, like one of the mummified
\nbodies so well preserved by the nitrates of its deserts.\u00a0 After The White Rock<\/strong><\/em>,\u00a0 his book
\non the Incas, Hugh Thomson unwraps those earlier layers of Peruvian\u00a0civilisations to show
\nhow they\u00a0flourished so spectacularly in this toughest and most arid of terrains.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

\"cover-cochineal-red_revised6a96c\"<\/p>\n

Reviews of
\nCochineal Red: \u00a0Travels through Ancient Peru
\n<\/strong><\/em>(published as A Sacred Landscape<\/em> in USA)<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

\u2018A dizzying tour through five turbulent millennia. The cumulative effect is enthralling.\u2019<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 Sara Wheeler, The Times<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018What makes Cochineal Red such a worthwhile book is that it is written by someone who is both an explorer and a scholar.\u2019<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> Toby Green, The Independent<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018Epic \u2013 in an increasingly homogeneous world, he has found, and describes to perfection, a mythical land.\u2019<\/span>\u00a0<\/span> Publishing News<\/em><\/p>\n

‘Conveys not only Thomson\u2019s great knowledge of the ancient civilisations of the Andes, but also the thrill of the chase for such knowledge.\u2019<\/span>\u00a0 <\/span>Matthew Parris, The Spectator<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2018A fascinating, intelligently told tale, full of intriguing revelations, that penetrates deeper into the Andean past than previously attempted.\u2019<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span>Traveller Magazine<\/em><\/p>\n

‘Communicates all the excitement of participatin<\/span>g in the discovery of a hidden world.’<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0 J.H.Elliott, author of Empires of the Atlantic World.<\/em><\/p>\n

‘Reminds us that the world is not, after all, explored.<\/span><\/span>‘\u00a0\u00a0<\/span> <\/span>Benedict Allen, Independent on Sunday, Books of the Year<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Many of the extraordinary cultures of Ancient Peru, from the lines of Nasca to the temple-cult
\nof Chav\u00edn, buried in the mountains, and the great pyramids of the coast, have only started to give up
\ntheir secrets and antiquity in just the last few years.<\/p>\n

As one archaeologist put it: \u00a0\u2018Imagine if all the discoveries of Ancient Egypt had been made so recently
\n\u2013 the finding of Tutankhamen\u2019s tomb, of the Great Pyramid of Cheops, of Abu Simbel – and you have some
\nidea of the great excitement at what has been happening in Peru.\u2019<\/p>\n

Hugh has been at the forefront of some of these discoveries himself, having made headlines with his work
\nnear Machu Picchu.\u00a0 Now he takes the reader on a journey back from the world of the Incas to the first dawn
\nof Andean civilisation, to give an immensely personal and accessible guide to the wonders that have been revealed.<\/p>\n

Published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

From the Introduction:<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

‘This book is an exercise in compressed time:\u00a0 into the year described I have poured many of my feelings about Peru over the past twenty-five years, and I have likewise used it to explore five millennia of Ancient Peruvian history as I travelled through the country.<\/p>\n

The impetus for this came from my continuing investigations at the Inca site of Llactapata,<\/a> near Machu Picchu, as it became increasingly difficult to understand the Inca mindset without a fuller understanding of the thousands of years of Andean culture that preceded the Inca.<\/p>\n

The story therefore begins with Llactapata and the Incas before returning to the dawn of Peruvian civilisation at Caral in around 3000 BC and moving through the millennia to return to the present day.<\/p>\n

In a book spanning 5000 years of Andean history, there is an inevitable concentration on the \u2018summits in the range\u2019, to the exclusion of some of the smaller civilisations:\u00a0 I was drawn to explore the principal and defining cultures which left enduring monuments, from the great pyramids of the coast, with their tombs and murals, to the temple-cult of Chav\u00edn, buried in the mountains, and the lines of Nasca.<\/p>\n

There is a virtue to this broad brush approach, in that it can help to see Ancient Peru as a continuum rather than many individual and discrete cultures.\u00a0 Andean culture developed in lurches and in different places across Peru, but a book such as this can give a panorama showing how consistent the development of their way of viewing the world seems to have been, and how different it was from ours.’<\/p>\n

\n
\"Cochineal<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Goodreads reviews for Cochineal Red<\/a><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n