Josh Gates Uses Eagle-Eye Drones To Reveal Lost Inca Fortress

This is some Indiana Jones right here.  This is like undiscovered country. We step further down into the ruins and  to an even more impressive discovery.

What is this?

This is the most important building of the whole  complex. We believe that this is the place where Atawapa’s mommy was kept every night. Right  here. Yeah. So the mummy of Adawapa literally could have been right here laying seated. How  would he have been positioned? He would be in a seated position like the Inca king was on  his throne. The problem though is that he’s not here now. So if they took the mummy, where  would they have taken it? The Inca were fleeing from the Spaniards and whoever has the mummy  possess the power of the Inca. They needed to protect this mummy. They knew how to get in higher  land. Up there. Up there looks difficult. Yeah, that’s the point. So, if we’re looking for  Adawapa, that’s the place to look. That’s the place. How far down does that go? I don’t  know. 15 ft. Okay. What the hell is that?

Man believes it’s a tomb. Why would  there be a tomb here at a fortress, do you think? Maybe it’s a huge offering.

This was an important. Do you think it could  have been the mummy? Who knows? Who can say? Let’s see if we can get eyes down to the  bottom. Do we have rope with us, Color? Yeah.

Though I’m not entirely confident  about the rigging of our wet rope, I eagerly descend into the pit, hopeful to  discover what’s hiding at the bottom. Okay, I’m down. This has all been carved out and then  they went in a little bit. Loose debris down here. Some stone as well. Can someone run back  and grab me that metal detector? Here it is.

Yeah, I got a hit down here. There’s something  in this corner, I think. Shovel. Thanks. I got a hit over here a minute ago. Just  seeing what it is. Maybe a false hit. No, I got something. Oh man, look at this. What is  it? I don’t know what it is. It looks very old.

Oh my god. Beautiful. Oh my god. What is that?  A tupo. A thing they used to clip their clothes together. What’s it made of? Copper and gold.  Copper and gold. Unbelievable. This is surreal.

That’s incredible. Our plan is to explore  unmapped Incan trails and to investigate the area inside the perimeter of the ruined  Pukara fortresses. Are we on a trail here? Yes, it’s hard to imagine. It’s covered  by vegetation today. You think it’s conceivable that the mummy followed  this route? It is possible because we’re kind of retracing the last steps of  in this area right before it’s captured.

And now it’s raining. It’s the problem with the  weather in a cloud forest. Very unpredictable.

Keep passing through different environments and  as we get up here to the clouds, it’s just turned into a thick jungle. The wall of fog has gotten  the better of my sense of direction. It’s just like being inside a cloud here. You can’t see  anything. But it’s not a problem for Benois.

We have a drone. Uh we can put it in the air and  find out if we if we can localize any any trail or any feature. Yeah. Let it let it look ahead of  us. Absolutely. Sounds like a good idea. Benois’s plan is both high-tech and yet simple. Send up  an aerial camera to take photos of Incan trails from above and then use computers to stitch the  images into a 3D road map of the unknown. Also, we’re basically lost out here. So hopefully  we’ll be able to kill two birds with one drone.

Up and away. Here we go. So heading uphill.  Misty. Let me gain a little bit of altitude.

The drone peers down through the fog and  quickly spots trails. So we’ve got terraces in here. Yep. And also something else. Oh,  right there. What’s that? It’s huge. I mean, this definitely does not look natural. It’s  weird. You can’t see it from down here. It’s blocked by by all the vegetation. How far is  that from us? It’s less than a mile. Let’s try to bring the drone back and uh we can go  there on foot. Yeah, let’s check it out.

Too steep and muddy for the animals. We have to  hoof it to the site ourselves. An undertaking made all the more difficult by the thin air and  wet conditions. But soon we’re standing at the foot of the rise. Well, there it is. Yeah, this  is definitely different than what we have seen so far. This one has like multiple platforms,  multiple layers. It does have a strange shape.

Let’s get to the next level. Okay, looks like  it flattens out. This hill is curious to say the least. Steep sections lead to flattened  terraces. Is this natural or something else?

Look at that. A trench. Check it out. It’s  like the other site. Yeah. Yeah. No stonework, but this is man-made. I mean, it’s  really uniform. Let’s see where it goes.

Like the trench we saw yesterday, this path wraps  around the hill almost all the way to the top.

Another flat layer. There’s no way this is  natural. It looks completely leveled off just like the one below it. It’s almost like it’s stepping  up. Where does it all lead is the question. Let’s follow the trenches. Yeah, for sure. Let’s keep  looking. Look at this. That’s breathtaking. Feels like the top of the world. Look at that. From the  peak, we look down through a world of vapor to seemingly endless jungles below. Incredible.  Really has a 360° view. Yeah, we can see the entire in Empire from here. Unbelievable. Clouds  are starting to suck us in on this back side.

Look at that. Huge stones. I mean, they’re  definitely not from this area. Someone brought them here. Question is why, right? Let’s get those  tools. See if we can dig around a little bit and reveal anything. The path, the stones, the oddly  shaped terraces. This hill appears to have been engineered. And exploring the peak reveals even  more mysteries. Drop over here. Yeah. Oh, look at that. Guys, come here. Come here. We’ve spotted  an opening in the ground. One that definitely doesn’t look natural. Oh my god. What the Look  at this. Unbelievable. You think it could be part of the trench system? It could be. Or it might  be a place to hide in case of an attack. Well, I’ll grab a couple tools in the metal detector.  Let’s check it out. While I gather some equipment, Benwis wastes no time and jumps down into the pit.  Here you go. Tool. All right. He’s looking to see

if there’s any actual masonry or whether it’s just  a raw pit. Any stones? No, I don’t see any stone work, but there’s definitely an opening. Can you  go forward at all? No, it looks like the whole thing is collapsed. We We can’t. It’s definitely  sealed. There’s no way we’re going to get further in that without some serious equipment and some  way to buttress that thing. All right, come on.

This is the first thing that I’ve  seen that says to me this is not just a farming site. Something else is  going on here. There’s no way. Okay, so what do you think? You think it could be  a passage? It looks like a tunnel. Actually, it might be connected to the trenches, which were  probably way deeper than what they are today. So, what’s our move? What I would like to do is  to use my drone one last time and I have a 3D scanning software so we can fully scan the  site and understand what this place is. But we need to do it now before the weather gets  too bad. Sure, let’s break it out. Come on.

The Inca Sun God is clearly not on our side.  Above us is a ceiling of concrete and heavier rain and darkness are moving in fast. Hopefully  the camera can cut through the fog in time. You ready? It’s not starting. Beneath our feet is a  massive mystery. One that’s about to be solved.

Walk me through this. How does this work? I’m  taking a picture every 3 seconds. Okay. Wow. So, I need every single angle. So, this  way, you know, they can stitch the pictures together and recreate the  site in 3D. There we go. Look at that.

Oh my god, look at it. You can see the  whole thing. Yep. It’s enormous. I mean, you can clearly see the shape of it.  There’s symmetry. There’s terraces.

You can see how it steps up. It’s definitely  man-made. The drone struggles in the rain, but still manages to snap thousands of photos  which are digitally woven together into a 3D image that renders in real time. It is  a structure. There’s no doubt about it.

So big it looks like a temple. This is a pukah.  This is a huge India fortress there was probably a structure at the top maybe a ceremonial center  which explains you know the presence of the stones and so in terms of awapa in terms of  the mummy you think it’s possible that it could have come here yeah that’s  quite possible I mean we know that he came to this area he followed these  ancient Inca trails like us today this is the biggest structure of this type that we  have seen in this area we are at the furthest point of the border of the Inca Empire you  could absolely Absolutely. I’ve come here.