[blam]

"Of interest the Indianapolis Museum of Art has a collection of large cups from this civilization."

Thanks. I'll be in Indy for Thanksgiving...I'll go look.

[muawiyah]

Let me tell you when I saw that collection I about dropped my jaw on the ground, particularly when I saw the one that was decorated up like a mushroom.

Some of this stuff popped up about the time a guy named Selig (from Indianapolis) went from Naptown to Brazil to assist in setting up an enormous developmental effort in the jungle.

I've subsequently discovered that a guy named Carvalho/Carvajal (same name, one Spanish, one Portuguese) made the first trip down the Amazon by starting over in the Andes, and then made his way to the plains in what is now Southern Ecuqador, etc., and moved from there (with some companions) to the East Coast. He had a diary which no one ever paid any attention to until recently. I'm betting Selig was simply the first guy to believe that diary. This is where all the stories of folks with blond hair come from. He also said there were large cities out there with hundreds of thousands of people. More recently another Carvajal has been using the older information as a guide to find massive settlements ~ and he's been finding massive settlements (or rather, their raised bed farms, still there).