"In this book, Nicholas J. Saunders explores, among others, the Moche, Nazca, Teotihuacan, Maya, Aztec and Inka cultures who - developing in isolation from the rest of the world for thousands of years - had created highly sophisticated civilisations without the wheel, draught animals or metal tools. From the first settlements of the Olmecs in Mesoamerica, and South America's great mud-brick cities on Peru's Pacific coast, to the arrival of the Spanish in 1519, the book's unparalleled breadth and scope allow us to appreciate the Pre-Columbian Americas as among the world's greatest flowerings of civilisation."--Jacket.