Tuesday 06 January 2009
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Paititi, the sacred city
What a story !
Supposed zone of the Realm of Granpaititi in South America. (Photo: Courtesy, Spot Image)
The veil rises little by little on the mysteries of Paititi, one of the most attractive stories of the Inca mythology. An immense city which, according to the legend, would be hidden in the green ocean of the Peruvian Amazonian forest. The starting point of the legend is little after the death of Atahuallpa, the Inca reigning when the Spanish arrived. Captured by Pizarro, he proposed, in exchange of his freedom, a fabulous treasure. Covetous, Pizarro had accepted. The ransom of the emperor then started to flow in Cajamarca, in the Spanish camp, of all the provinces of Tahuantinsuyu. Some real gold mountains ! One says that at the same time, a part of the Inca wealth, taking sideways through secret cities, sought refuge in the forest and eventually found it on the Amazonian slope of Peru. Ever since, the word "Paititi" was mentionned…
The zone of the rio Alto Madre de Dios, theater of the first expeditions of Thierry Jamin.
(Photo: CNES, Distribution Spot Images, 1999)
Was it about the hidden face of the Empire of the Sun, of a secret Inca stronghold ? Nobody does know it. Because nobody ever found this mysterious Lost City yet. This city would have been used as refuge for the last Incas of the dynasty, after the Spanish invasion. And also there would have been hidden in urgency all the treasures of the Empire. Tons of gold and fantastic invaluable objects ! The tradition speaks about twenty thousand spangled charged with gold, directed through the jungle by the Coya, the wife of the Inca.
The "pyramids" of the Paratoari, seen by Spot IV in May 1998
© CNES Spot Image
Several chronicles speak of a marvellous "gold chain", that the Inca Huayna Capac had made carry out to commemorate the birth of his son Huascar, that Atahuallpa, his half-brother, made assassinate. One says this yahuirka, which length was at least two hundred meters, had links as large as the inch of a man. Garcilaso of Vega, a mongrel which spent his youth to Cusco, claims that his weight was such important that two hundred Indians hardly managed to raise it. It was covered with articulated gold plates which, simulating the scales of the skin of a snake, scintillated with the sun. The conquistadors vainly tried to seize some. But the legend claims that the priceless gold chain was brought back secretly, by the Indians themselves, to the kingdom of Paititi. Since, their descendants dream of the fabulous reptile, and some tell that, the come night, a gold snake goes up sometimes the course of some lost Rios of the Amazon...
© Thierry Jamin, 1998-2008