Chachapoyas

Not to be confused with the Tchoupitoulas, the Chachapoyas, unbeknownst to many in the US, lived in the Andes prior to the much better known Inca civilization (conquered by world-class turd and illiterate SOB Francisco Pizarro). At any rate, an American/Peruvian team has just found another Chachapoyan city deep in the Amazonian jungles of Peru.

U.S. and Peruvian explorers uncovered the city, which may have been home to up to 10,000 people, after a month trekking in Peru's northern rain forest and following up on years of investigation about a possible lost metropolis in the region.

The stone city, made up of five citadels at 9,186 feet above sea level, stretches over around 39 square miles and contains walls covered in carvings and figure paintings, exploration leader Sean Savoy told Reuters.

"It is a tremendous city ... containing areas with stone etchings and 10-meter (33-foot) high walls," said Savoy, who had to hack through trees and thick foliage to finally reach the site on Aug. 15.

Covered in matted tree branches and interspersed with lakes and waterfalls, the settlement sites also contain well-preserved graveyards with mummies with teeth "in almost perfect condition," Savoy said.

Replete with stone agricultural terraces and water canals, the city complex is thought to have been home to the little-known Chachapoyas culture.

According to early accounts by Spanish conquistadors who arrived in Peru in the early 1500s, the Chachapoyas were a fair-skinned warrior tribe famous for their tall stature. Today they are known for the giant burial coffins sculpted into human figures found in the northern jungle region.

I find this sort of thing incredibly cool. However, I'm a nerd. I suppose, then, that this item could have qualified for a late edition of "Nerd Alert," but that feature didn't seem to catch on. So screw you guys for not feeling the Nerd Alerts.

Speaking of nerdish items, why haven't we heard more from the Cassini-Huygens mission? Shouldn't there be some absolutely fantastic images coming back from the ringed planet? I mean, the probe did just discover a couple of new moons. Where's the press?

For those of you who are old enough to remember the Pioneer and Voyager missions, the images and data from those endeavors made the evening news. Well, the Jupiter and Saturn parts, anyway. The Voyager 2 visits to Uranus and Neptune were far less hyped.

Still, where's all of that nerdy goodness? Huh? NASA? Why are you letting us down, punks?

Oh, yeah--the neatest thing about Saturn, I think, isn't the rings, isn't the gaggle of moons, isn't the beautiful butterscotch color--it's the fact that the planet has a density less than that of water. That is, if you could find an ocean big enough, you could float the entire freakin' planet. Ain't that some interesting shit?

Damn, this is a nerdy-ass post.