Kota Mama: Retracing the Lost Trade Routes of Ancient South American Peoples

IN 1998 AND 1999 legendary explorer Colonel John Blashford-Snell led one of the most ambitious expeditions since Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki. It was an epic journey that spanned a continent and provided evidence that ancient South American peoples could have been trading with Africa 1,000 years before Christ.Intrigued first of all by the idea that Plato's Atlantis might have been on a vast Bolivian plain high in the Andes, then fascinated by the notion that pre-Inca people and their trade goods might have found their way down central South America's massive rivers to the Atlantic and even across it, Blashford-Snell commissioned a fleet of traditional reed boats - the largest named Kota Mama - in which to test these theories. He navigated a route, in two phases, from Lake Titicaca to Buenos Aires, which took him and his companions through terrain of stark contrasts: from Bolivia's high Altiplano, through steamy Brazilian rain-forests and the arid thorn scrub of Paraguay's Gran Chaco, and finally to the Argentinian capital where their achievement was widely acknowledged.John Blashford-Snell and Richard Snailham recount their amazing story of adventure and discovery, of lost civilizations and little-known archaeological sites, and of seventy-five people whose combined efforts ensured the success of the Kota Mama Expedition.