A Sacred Landscape: The Search for Ancient Peru
After traveling across Peru for more than two decades, writer and documentary filmmaker Thomson (The White Rock, 2003) began discerning unexpected connections between distant monumental ruins. An amiable and erudite guide, he provides a clarifying overview of Andean scholarship much as Wade Davis did for the Amazon in One River (1996), along with vivid descriptions of astronomically oriented buildings and powerful artworks, some sexually explicit, others grotesque depictions of human sacrifice. Always looking to the landscape for clues, Thomson theorizes that these bloody rites were aimed at deflecting natural disasters, especially a lack of freshwater and radical climate change, predicaments sadly relevant to our time. His feet-on-the-ground approach and alertness to the significance of textiles and pilgrim routes in decoding the purpose of ancient constructions also yield a fresh take on the famous geoglyphs of Nasca, the immense line drawings of birds and animals viewable only from the air. Anecdotal and instructive as he weaves together lively profiles, tales from arduous explorations, and carefully weighted insights, Thomson creates an encompassing vision of the complex cosmologies of pre-Columbian Andean civilizations. Seaman, Donna