On the following day, in what ranks as one of the strangest events in all recorded history, the Spaniards managed to seize the Inca king Atahuallpa and, in the ensuing panic, used the advantage of their 120 warhorses to kill and wound 10,000 Inca warriors. From that day onward, through luck and guile, and with reinforcements soon pouring in from Panama, the Spaniards - who came in search of gold and glory, in the name of the Roman Catholic Church - never relinquished the edge they seized in that first fateful encounter.

What the Spaniards never knew, and what history does not record, was the reason for the apparently inexplicable collapse of the greatest land empire on the face of the Earth.

Secrets of the Incas explores the baffling and tragic vulnerability of the Inca empire and comes to a startling conclusion: the Spanish had appeared at precisely the right place and at just the right time to fulfil an ancient, astronomically based prophecy of doom.

This conclusion is the result of two decades of research by American scholar Dr William Sullivan into the sophisticated astronomical knowledge of the Incas and how they encrypted this in their myths.

The bulk of this website outlines Dr Sullivan's research and theories, and includes animations of very large clues in the Andean landscape. In addition, the orthodox view of historians is given, and there are pointers to finding out more and to travelling to Peru to see for yourself.