Hugh Thomson's A SACRED LANDSCAPE Featured in American Scientist Magazine

Hugh Thomson's A Sacred Landscape: The Search for Ancient Peru receives a lengthy review by Mark Aldenderfer in this month's American Scientist magazine: "Hugh Thomson, a British writer and self-described explorer, has set himself the task of redressing this situation through his thoughtful writings covering 5,000 years of Andean prehistory. . . Thomson joins a long and illustrious list of explorers, scholars and writers intent on bringing the Andean world into clearer focus. Three themes run through Thomson's exploration of the Andean past: the lure of the lost city, a desire to explain what appears to be long-term continuity in the form and content of Andean cultures, and the notion that the Andean world is perhaps best characterized as a sacred landscape. Each of these themes has been the focus of archaeological research in the Andes for decades. What Thomson has done is to offer a panorama, linking them through his experiences of more than 25 years of walking through the Andes and writing about Andean peoples and their past. His is also a personal exploration, an attempt to make sense of this long relationship in terms that might make sense to others who have yet to get to know, and possibly love, the Andean world."

Hugh Thomson's A SACRED PLACE in Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer

Sunday's Seattle Times offers a round-up of noteworthy new paperbacks, among them Hugh Thomson's fascinating travelogue of ancient Peru, A Sacred Landscape. Thomson made headlines with his work near Machu Picchu, which he recounted brilliantly in The White Rock. Now he takes the reader on a journey back from the great Moche pyramids to remote sites in the Central highlands that date back to the first millennium BCE--ancient Incan sites of the Andes that remain cloaked in mystery. Thomson gives an immensely personal and accessible guide to the region’s wonders alongside the story of his family’s relocation to a farm in the Yucay valley, the one-time heartland of ancient Peru. Drawing on the year that he spent alongside contemporary Peruvians, Thomson illuminates how things have changed—or failed to change—in the five centuries that separate contemporary Peru from the civilization that is one of the world’s oldest and most captivating enigmas.