The history of the Americas they never taught you - six regions, 5,000 years, one flight.

Caral & the Desert Coast - History starts here - no, earlier.

5,000 YEARS DEEP. While Egypt raised its first pyramids, Caral was already a city - with music, trade, and not a single weapon found.

Oldest city in the Americas · Zero evidence of war

• The Inca Protected Bird Poop - With the Death Penalty - The Inca guarded bird poop with the death penalty - because it was the best fertilizer on Earth.
• The Bronze-Age Factory That Beat the Inca by 500 Years - Everyone knows the Inca. But 500 years before them, one Peruvian culture was already running an industrial metal factory - pouring bronze and faking gold by the ton.
• 2,000-Year-Old Cloth Modern Weavers Had to Relearn - This cloth is 2,000 years old - woven so fine, in so many colors, that modern weavers had to relearn how it was even made.
• Nazca Puquios - Desert Aqueducts Still Flowing - 1,500 years ago the Nazca drilled spiral wells into one of the driest deserts on Earth - and they still water farms today.
• They Amputated a Foot 1,000 Years Ago - and He Walked Again - A thousand years before modern surgery, a surgeon on the coast of Peru cut off a man's foot - and the man healed, stood up, and walked again.

The Southern Reaches - Older than Egypt. Never conquered.

THE UNCONQUERED SOUTH. The world's oldest mummies were made by fisherfolk here 2,000 years before Egypt - and further south, Spain met the one nation it never beat.

Chinchorro · Mapuche · The Andes' frozen sanctuaries

Cusco & the Andes - An empire run on knots, stone, and water.

ENGINEERING AT 11,000 FT. 40,000 km of roads without the wheel, surgery patients who lived, freeze-dried food before the freezer - and records written in knots we're still decoding.

Inca engineering · Andean medicine · Quipu

• Freeze-Dried Food - 500 Years Before the Freezer - Freeze-dried food feels space-age - astronauts, camping meals. But farmers in the Andes were doing it 500 years before the freezer existed.
• An Empire Written in Knots - The Inca ran an empire of millions - no alphabet, no paper. They wrote the whole thing in knots.
• The Grass Bridge Rewoven by Hand - Every Year for 500 Years - This bridge has held for 500 years - and it's made of grass. Every single year they cut it down and weave a new one by hand.
• Clean Water as Medicine: The Inca Kept the Sewage Out - By Design - At Machu Picchu, Inca engineers piped spring water 750 meters to 16 fountains - and deliberately kept the sewage out of it.
• The Cactus Andean Healers Drink to See Your Illness - In the Andes, a healer drinks a cactus to see what's making you sick. They've been doing it for 3,000 years - and they still do.
• They Opened Skulls and Patients Lived. Nobody Knows How They Killed the Pain. - Inca surgeons cut holes in living skulls - and most patients survived. The part nobody can explain? How they handled the pain.

See all Cusco & the Andes episodes →

The Amazon & the Caribbean - The "wilderness" was planted.

THE GARDEN & THE SEA. LIDAR keeps finding cities under the canopy, the forest itself was gardened for millennia - and you've been speaking Taíno (hurricane, barbecue, hammock) your whole life.

Amazon cities · Taíno · The pharmacy myth, corrected

• An Amazon Arrow Poison Is Why Modern Surgery Doesn't Fight Back - An Amazon arrow poison that drops a monkey out of a tree is the reason your body can't fight back during surgery.
• They Drilled Into a Living Skull - and the Patient Survived - Around 1400, an Inca surgeon cut a hole in a living person's skull - and they were better at it than American doctors 400 years later.

Mesoamerica - Cleaner than London. Bigger than Paris.

THE LAKE CITY. A capital of floating gardens and fresh aqueduct water, markets that stunned the conquistadors, schools for (maybe) every kid - and sciences from rubber to a blue that won't fade.

Mexica · Maya · Zapotec · Olmec · Purépecha

• The Aztec Capital Was Cleaner Than London - While Europeans were throwing sewage into the street, the Aztec capital had piped spring water and public toilets.

North of the Border - This story doesn't stop at the border.

MEXICAN BY NAME. AMERICAN BY HISTORY.. A pre-Columbian city in Illinois rivaled London - and half your kitchen was invented in the Americas. New story every day, sources included.

Cahokia · Your plate is Indigenous

• 510 Medicines - and Most Were Here Before Europe - Scientists counted the plant medicines still used in northern Peru. The number: 510 - and 83% are native, not imported.