Leading questions

"On the eastern slope of the Andes mountains in northern Peru, forests cloak the ruins of a pre-Inca civilization, the size and scope of which explorers and archaeologists are only now beginning to understand. Known as the Chachapoya, the civilization covered an estimated 25,000 square miles (65,000 square kilometers). The Chachapoya, distinguished by fair skin and great height, lived primarily on ridges and mountaintops in circular stone houses..."

"Inca chronicles and legends persist that the Cloud People were tall 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...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."

"the Incas so respected their fighting prowess that they made the Chachapoyas their bodyguards"

"Little is currently known of this culture, although it was one of the most advanced civilizations to develop in the tropical jungle region of Peru. One of the most outstanding archaeological remains of this culture, Kuelap, was discovered by a local resident in 1843...The structure of the main building is circular and for security purposes has only one access corridor, sufficiently narrow to allow only one person at a time to enter. Inside there are several divisions, hundreds of round stone houses decorated with zigzag patterns, small up to 1,969 feet (600 m)long and 66 feet (20m) high. Towers indicate how well protected the compound was. It comprised more than 400 buildings, many of them with decorated walls and cornices or protruding friezes."

While circular forts with pointed thatch roofs do not resemble Incan buildings, they do resemble Iron Age roundhouses and Viking circular forts. Which leads to the question: were there Vikings in South America?

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