The Incas explained that the lighter-skinned people descended from a white people who had mostly been massacred by an Inca chief. During a battle at Lake Titicaca, almost all these lighter-skinned people had perished, but their leader, Kon-Tiki, had escaped on a raft into the sea.
When the Spaniards ventured up to Lake Titicaca, high in the Andean mountains, they discovered tremendous pyramids along with large statues of humans. The Incas explained that these structures had been erected by the race of whte men long before the Incas had come to power. European explorers would not find similar structures until landing on islands in the South Pacific.
The islands of the South Pacific. Having crossed the continents of North and South America, European explorers embarked across the Pacific Ocean toward Asia. Halfway through their journey across the world's largest ocean, they discovered strings of islands stretching from the coasts of Australia and Asia thousands of miles east into the Pacific. To the surprise of the explorers, even the islands most distant from Asia were inhabited.
