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Destination Peru
Kuelap: the Machu Picchu of Northern Peru
By Henry Cooper

Kuelap is the largest building structure of the Americas. It is estimated to contain 3 times more material than Egypt's largest pyramid. Many knowledgeable Peruvians consider Kuelap to be as wondrous as Machu Picchu, and would like to make this Peru's second major tourist destination. It is twice as old as the Incas and in remarkably better condition before restoration.

Kuelap is an unknown giant just waking up. When the Spanish arrived, the Incas ruled the Andes.

The reason this zone is America's best kept secret is that the first dirt vehicle road was built only 35 years ago. Previous to this the natives say that few came by the only access -- a two-month walk on ancient Inca routes. One “Inca highway” goes through here in a partially explored zone from Colombia to the Inca heartland. Another unexplored lateral route goes from Levanto and Kuelap to the coast through Cajamarca, where the Inca Atahualpa was captured and murdered by the Spanish conquistadores. This former Kuelap East-West road may have been the “gold and feather route” used by the spectacular Moche and Chimu cultures from the coast to the Moyobamba jungles zone. No other culture reached their superior levels of goldsmithing and the construction of hundreds of pyramids.

Kuelap has barely been studied. Construction began about 800AD, at the same time that the Andes' most spectacular empire began its expansion from Bolivia. This was the Tiahuanaco or Wari Empire, known as “The Golden City-Building Era of the Andes” or the Middle Horizon. The Wari (or Huari) built most of the “Inca roads and trails” and almost every ancient city. They were in power 300 years, compared to less than 100 years of the Incas. The Wari evolved into an empire of cities that was sustained by a sophisticated transportation system, which implied the specialization of labor into engineers, artisans, and so forth.

Now it seems that Kuelap was not built by the empire but rather a confederation of the Chachapoyan Cloud People in order to stop the Wari invasion. A relatively short distance across the Marañon River at Cajamarca and Huamachuco was the most advanced stronghold of Wari cities in the north of Peru. A glaring fact is that on the other side of the river, all of the pottery and artifacts mirror the Bolivian style of the empire. The total lack of Wari artifacts in this zone would indicate that the Wari either could not defeat the Chachapoyans, or were themselves defeated at Kuelap, thus causing the collapse of the empire at that time.

The greatest mystery of the Chachapoyan Cloud People was “who were they?” How would they know to start construction of mountain-top citadels and fortresses 250 years before the Wari advanced to conquer them? Was it a coincidence that Kuelap was completed at just the right time to stop them? John Hemming wrote in “Conquest of the Incas” that Kuelap was the strongest fortification in the Americas, and if the Inca could have made a stand there the Spanish horses and artillery would have been useless there history might have been different. Keith Muscutt wrote in his book that this zone was once so heavily populated that today it would be unlikely to go to any peak in the cloud forest and NOT FIND a lost stone citadel. Being made of stone, these ruins can still be found today. I have been approached ten times in the last couple of years by pioneers wanting me to see an “undiscovered ruin” they have found on their land.

Vanquished cultures of the Andes usually were displaced to lower areas and the jungles. The Incas first began their conquest, in fact, after the Inca Pachacutec defeated the Chancas from Wari. At that time the Chancas were the former Wari Empire culture, - but now in decline. Later when the Incas were approaching their peak, the former Wari nation bolted and fled from the Inca influence. So, where did the former Wari flee as the most secure place of the entire Andes? They fled down in the lower slopes below Kuelap into the jungle of Lamas. Even today, these former Wari people contrast drastically in their customs, clothing and appearance from the jungle cultures.

Inca chronicles and legends persist that the Cloud People were tall and fair (skin and hair) warriors. This is reinforced by an unusually large proportion of blond, fair natives in this zone who know of no European ancestry. However Julio C. Tello and anthropologists speculate the Chachapoyans may have been a jungle culture that migrated there through the Magdalena Valley of Colombia, and preferred the mountaintops. Whichever is the case, the Cloud People don't fit the pattern of other Andeans. They lived behind walls in well-crafted stone round houses with a pointed thatch “tepee” roof. One would suspect they farmed better land below the cloud forest, which wasn't leached out and eroded, but lived on the peaks.

Kuelap's five walls inside of walls contain over 400 buildings. Each wall is from one to two telephone poles high with its second-level walls being the highest, extending a kilometer along a mountain ridge overlooking the Utcabamba River. Some think Kuelap was positioned to defend the Gran Vilaya region that was heavily populated behind Kuelap and the cordillera. There are some mysterious structures inside the fortress. One is a large cone-shaped stone structure, defying gravity with the top much larger diameter than the bottom. Now the inside is shaped like a rose bud vase - or a light bulb without the plug. The top hole is about ½ meter diameter, and a few meters down below, it opens into a large circular room. Some think it was a prison. Others think it was an oracle observatory.

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