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Thor Heyerdahl, the great explorer, anthropologist, and adventurer, is a man of bold ideas that he is not afraid to put to the test. Almost half a century ago he risked his life sailing the balsa raft Kon-Tiki from Peru to Polynesia; in later decades, similar epic voyages took him across the Atlantic in the papyrus boat Ra, and the Indian Ocean in the reed craft Tigris.Since the late 1980s, however, he has returned to his original starting point in Peru, where he learned of the mysterious pyramids of Tıcume in the north of the country. Heyerdahl braved hardships, evil spirits, and bandits at Tıcume before he won the acceptance of the local people and, with his fellow researchers, the archaeologists Daniel H. Sandweiss and Alfredo Narvıez, put in place an ambitious program of excavation.The city was first constructed nearly nine centuries ago by the people of the Lambayeque culture. Numerous burials have been uncovered with splendid grave goods, including beautiful silver figurines and featherwork textiles. One of the high points of the story is the discovery of a frieze depicting reed boats of exactly the type that Heyerdahl had foreseen. Shells from Ecuador and Panama, lapis lazuli from Chile, all bolster the case for ocean-going travel and trade in pre-Columbian times.Whether exploring ancestral myths or uncovering the record of how an ancient people lived, Heyerdahl's story is consistently informative and engaging, weaving together myth and history with vivid portraits of the present-day community of Tıcume, of which he became a part."We got barely a glimpse of a lifeless prehistoric city of pyramids glowing like red hills in the last rays of the sun, before the unreal vision was swallowed up in the tropical night. I knew what I had seen would change my life. How could I free myself from this sight? Unknown people like ourselves had lived here. What would these walls enclose and these pyramids contain?"--Thor Heyerdahl

Pyramids of Tucume: The Quest for Peru's Forgotten City: Search Results