BERKELEY,
Calif. July 6, 1998 -- David Ultan and Adam
Ballachey were both 29, struggling to launch
careers as documentary filmmakers and working as
house painters when they got The Call. It was an
invitation for the two boys to take up their
cameras, to become cinematic explorers in a quest
that would bring 21st-century technology to bear
on 15th-century Ecuadorean legend, that would
cross the paths of Silicon Valley scientists with
long-dead Incan kings and treasure hunters
looking for gold. Lots and lots of gold.
The call was
from Bill Kurtis, a television journalist and
host of "The New Explorers'' on the A&E
network. He had seen their pitch for an hour-long
segment called "Search for Inca Gold,''A
year and a half later, after two reconnaissance
trips to Ecuador and floppy discs full of
research, the two friends and their scientific
team are about to culminate work on the project,
one that will, at the very least, break ground in
archaeology. And one that could, given the best
possible outcome, catapult them into the history
books.
In the next few
weeks, they will go to Quito and fly over the
Andes, carrying recently declassified
ground-penetrating radar developed by Dr. Roger
Vickers at Stanford Research Institute. They will
attempt to find traces of the vanished Incan
people and their enormous caches of gold. It's a
mystery that has lured treasure hunters and
archaeologists to the region, called the cloud
forest, for centuries. The 60-square-mile area of
the Andes north of Quito is a unforgiving land,
where heavy rain, earthquakes and jagged cliffs
have claimed the lives of countless treasure
hunters. "Everyone agrees on this: An Inca
general familiar with this area took this army
and these tons of gold and disappeared,'' says
Ballachey. "The question is: Did he go into
these mountains, and where did he hide the gold?
The radar will be looking for evidence of Inca
infrastructure or pathways that could have led
these 15,000 people into this remote area. If
they find it, it will raise the level of
discussion to a whole new level.''
"As you can
imagine, I get calls from treasure hunters all
the time who want to use my technology,'' says
Vickers, 60, whose title is director of the
Geoscience and Engineering Center at the Stanford
Research Institute. "But I have no interest
in that. David was the first person to approach
me about a project where I could see that the
treasure was not the most important thing to
them, but the archaeology.'' The only wealth that
might be generated from the trip will come from
demand for Ballachey and Ultan's documentary,
should it record some historic discovery; or from
future treasure hunts, should this one prove
successful. (The team is forming a company for
other explorations.)
In 1532, the
Spanish conquistadors, led by Francisco Pizarro,
a 54-year-old illiterate soldier, entered the
lowlands of northern Peru near Cajamarca, capital
of the Incan empire. The empire was at its peak,
covering more than 2,500 miles and boasting
beautiful cities and temples filled with golden
artifacts. The Incas, who called themselves
Children of the Sun, were led by the young
Emperor Atahualpa.
With visions of
gold, but only 183 soldiers compared with tens of
thousands in the Incan army, Pizarro knew
treachery was the only way to conquer. He asked
to meet with Atahualpa, who welcomed him with
pomp and ceremony. Atahualpa was surprised by a
vicious attack on his unarmed attendants --
Pizarro himself pulled the emperor from his
gilded throne -- and thousands of Incas were
killed.
Now a captive,
Atahualpa offered as ransom storage rooms full of
gold and silver, and sent word to neighboring
cities to collect the booty. But after four
months, with the ransom only partly collected,
the Spaniards murdered Atahualpa. When word of
Atahualpa's death reached the ends of the empire,
the stream of gold headed for Cajamarca was
halted.
One of
Atahualpa's generals, named Ruminahui, fled into
the mountains north of Quito with 15,000
soldiers, taking along what historical accounts
estimate as "70,000 man-loads'' of gold.
Although the pursuing Spaniards tortured and
burned alive many Incas, the gold's location was
never revealed.
And what's
70,000 man-loads of gold worth today? Ballachey
and Ultan look uncomfortable. "That's
between two and four billion dollars,'' Ultan
stammers."Why do you think these mountains
are full of treasure hunters?'' Ballachey says.
"A lot of people think that's worth dying
for.''
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