Lost and Found

When is a “lost city” lost, and when is it merely misplaced? The question is prompted by the reports a few weeks ago of the exploration of a “lost city” in Peru, high on the eastern slopes of the Andes, where a pre-Incan civilization flourished in a harshly inhospitable rain forest. We were so interested in the story, which came from the University of Colorado at Boulder, that we commented on it on this page.

The city, called Gran Pajaten, was there all right, and its inhabitants built multistory buildings and agricultural terraces as reported. But the city wasn’t lost, and the Coloradans who trekked there last summer did not discover it. The place had actually been found by a previous expedition in 1963. The university noted that in its press release, but went on to say that the city was not considered “for scientific study until the Boulder group made the arduous trip in the summer of 1984.”

As it turns out, Gran Pajaten has been relatively well known for the last two decades. It has been the subject of journal articles and a previous scientific expedition. It appears on a map of Peru, and is listed in a tourist guidebook. To be sure, there is no paved road to the place, and no Holiday Inn or McDonald’s once you get there. But last year’s expedition was more a reminder than a discovery that Gran Pajaten exists.

There is a moral here, somewhere. Perhaps it is as simple as the fact that when someone stops you on the street and asks how to get to the public library, it doesn’t mean that the library is lost--only that the stranger in town is on the verge of rediscovering it. It happens every day.