LIMA, Peru -- (AP) -- An American explorer credited with discovering
several
major Indian ruins in Peru's rain forests believes he has located
another jewel in
the jungle.
``I believe we have found the environs of the lost city of Conturmarca,''
Gene Savoy
said returning from a month-long expedition in Peru's high cloud
forest. ``It's a lost
world with the remains of the Chachapoyas people.''
Savoy described the Chachapoyas as tall and fierce warriors who
were defeated
by the Incas about 500 years ago, shortly before the Spanish
conquest of Peru.
He said the Incas so respected their fighting prowess that they
made the
Chachapoyas their bodyguards.
The 72-year-old adventurer's latest find comes a year after his
catamaran, a
73-foot boat designed along the lines of a pre-Inca sailing vessel,
sank in the
South Pacific. The disaster cut short a voyage aimed at showing
that Peru's
advanced Indian civilizations could have had contact with cultures
in other parts of
the world.
The robust explorer, who lives most of the year in Reno, Nev.,
where he directs
the Andean Explorers Foundation, has irked many academics with
his theories.
Among his many discoveries are three major ruins -- Vilcabamba,
the last refuge
of the Incas; Gran Pajaten, a citadel city atop a jungle-shrouded
peak; and Gran
Vilaya, a complex of more than 20,000 stone buildings in a damp,
fog-bound
region of the Andes that Peruvians call the ``jungle's eyebrow.''
He says Gran Vilaya, situated on a ridge 6,000 feet above the
Maranon River, was
the capital of the Chachapoyas empire. The Incas conquered it
in the late 15th
Century.
But legend tells of a network of seven Chachapoyas cities strung
like a necklace
along the heights of the high jungle of northern Peru. Conturmarca,
his latest find,
was the centerpiece, Savoy said.
With a team of six Americans, 40 porters and 50 horses and pack
animals,
Savoy set out on Aug. 20 toward a valley along the Tepna River,
320 miles north
of Lima.
Copyright 1999 Miami Herald