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 heaps of khipus emerged from garbage bags in the back of the tiny, one-room museum—clumps of tangled ropes the size of beach balls. Sabine Hyland smiled as she gazed down at them and said, “Qué ...

Obsessed with a treasure city, conquistador Francisco Pizarro captured the Inca emperor Atahualpa. To spare his life, the emperor offered up the largest cache of gold the Spanish ever acquired in the ...