Posted on 03/18/2002 9:15:42 PM PST by d4now
LIMA, Peru (Reuters) - In the first major Inca find in four decades, Peruvian and British explorers say they have discovered a hidden city, perched on an Andean hilltop, that may have sheltered stalwarts of South America's legendary empire as they made a last stand against Spanish conquerors.
Located on a narrow ridge around 11,000 feet up in Peru's windswept, southern Andes, the Inca citadel of Corihuayrachina is a mysterious gathering of religious platforms, funeral towers, and food storehouses.
British scholar and guide Peter Frost told a news conference on Monday he first spotted the ruins in the rugged, isolated Vilcabamba region some 300 miles south-east of Lima three years ago.
Frost said the site was the biggest of its kind found since 1964 and could have been occupied by the Inca when they took to the hills after the Spanish conquest. It is about 22 miles southwest of the famous Inca citadel of Machu Picchu.
The Incas once ruled a vast swath of South America stretching from Colombia to Chile, but Spain's Francisco Pizarro and his band of 160 treasure-hunters, using cannons and horses, brought that empire to a bloody end in 1533.
Some Inca, moving with an army of 50,000 to the more remote Vilcabamba area, held out against the invaders for nearly 40 years.
"It's a jigsaw puzzle. What we're finding are more pieces ... to get a better sense of what was happening in that area," said Frost, who has lived for 30 years in the Inca's imperial capital Cusco in southern Peru, gateway to Machu Picchu.
European diseases like measles ravaged the empire, cutting its population from an estimated 32 million people in 1520 to 5 million in 1548.
Frost said he found Corihuayrachina -- eyeing it from afar but not able to actually reach it -- when he was leading a group of tourists through the remote region in 1999.
Funded by the Washington-based National Geographic (news - web sites) Society, Frost was finally able to set foot on the cloud-shrouded site two years later in June, 2001, trekking four days along winding mountain paths with a team of scientists and excavators.
UNTOUCHED BY SCIENCE
"This was an area totally untouched by science," said Peruvian archeologist and expedition co-leader Alfredo Valencia, who along with local workers hacked away at the thick leaves and vines covering squat buildings and murky tombs.
But Frost said the scientists were still in the early stages of puzzling out who inhabited Corihuayrachina, how they lived, and why they chose to live in such an inhospitable place.
"If (the site) was occupied after the Spanish conquest, what will we find? If we find human remains, will they show European diseases?" Frost said.
Like most of the scores of native shrines, tombs and temples across this Andean nation, the explorers said the site had been looted over the years by local grave-robbers and now the graves were only filled with pottery fragments and bones.
But unlike Machu Picchu, discovered in 1911 by American explorer Hiram Bingham, Frost said the recent find was not home to the Inca elite.
Machu Picchu has been named a United Nations (news - web sites) World Heritage site and draws throngs of tourists from across the globe.
Unlike Machu Picchu, only stone foundations some 2-3 feet high remain of the new find's structures, which were originally constructed with adobe or wood.
National Geographic is due to release a television special chronicling the Corihuayrachina discovery (news - web sites) in May.
Date: Sat Nov 28 14:19:12 1998
Name: Keith Muscutt
Subject: White, blue-eyed, bearded Atlanteans, Martian, etc.
Comments: As the author of Warriors..., I need to make my personal position clear on some of the issues raised in this forum.
Despite speculation, sensationalism, and flat-out money-grubbing lies, none of the researchers I respect have ever encountered
anything in the Chachapoya area (modern or ancient) which suggests or requires the intervention of any of the following
in the establishment and florescence of the Chachapoya civilization:
Blue-eyed, bearded white men; Egyptians; Phoenicians; Martians; Atlanteans; Lost tribes of Israelites; Mormons; Irish priests paddling corracles; etc.
Indeed, all the scientific evidence suggests that indigenous, native-American cultures developed entirely independent of Old World
(or interplanetary) contact subsequent to the initial human immigrations into the Americas.
My views on this subject are clearly spelled out in "Warriors..." for anyone who cares to read them.
Personally, I remain open to the possibility of trans-Pacific and/or trans-Atlantic contact.
There is some circumstantial evidence to that effect which has been presented by reputable authorities,
but nothing which convinces me so far. I find it disappointing that so many people continue to invoke mysterious, unsubstantiated, and worse yet unsubstantiable, causes behind the development of ancient American civilizations.
In some cases these opinions seem tinged with a kind of racist assumption that native-Americans do not have the intellectual skills to develop high levels of culture.
Others are simply engaged in flights of fantasy. Feel free to continue discussing these issues here.
However, I hope some of the contributors will chime in occasionally to challenge irrational or misinformed claims.
Thank you. Your host, Keith Muscutt.
Yes, I believe the same. Look at this about the Guanchas and this. I think the Guanchas were related to the Chachapoyas.
gnarledmaw, you may find these links interesting.
Yes I remember last time I couldn't find the eye-witness account of the hiker who described the blond, tall, white natives in detail who were probably the descendents of the Chachapoya. About all I still have is anothers cricket's link.
Could well be. I usually refer back to America B.C. by Harvards Dr. Barry Fell when it comes to this sort of find in the Americas. It's a great eye opener and starting point, and he attributes many of these finds to early "proto-Celts".
Thanks, I have the book. Also, I have Assyrian Tablets on order.
E. Raymond Capt
This is the one I ordered.
Yours would look more like larger versions of this juvenile...
Of course Floridians are missing out on all the sturgeon fun. They will never know what its like to cut giant holes in the ice in
-20 degree weather and spend the day staring at a decoy down in the hole, a beer in one hand and a spear in the other.
Ha ha...thanks for the chuckle - just what I needed this cold and snowing morning.
>E. Raymond Capt
>This is the one I ordered.
Yep, that's the one. I saw some of those Assyrian Tablets in the British Museum years ago but never realized how important they are. They were translated long ago, but the results never organized and analyzed. Raymond Capt came along and in ~1985 made sense of at least part of them with this book. Shows how Archeology can make a MAJOR impact on our understanding of history.
Thor Heyerdahl would probably agree with at least the trans-Atlantic part of that theory.
. . .do not doubt they saw it in the stars; but the Spaniards with their cannons surely hastened their star time. . .
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