Peruvian archaeologists have found remains from a person believed to be a leader of a key pre-Inca civilization that is more than 1,200 years old, one of the researchers said.

Carlos Elera told AFP the remains from the northern region of Lambayeque are from what some call the Sican culture that flourished in the area between around 700 and 1375 AD.

He said among the remains found two weeks ago in the archaeological complex Las Ventanas is a type of sarcophagus for an adult with a headdress and a feathered eye mask, which are "characteristic of the nobles of the Sican culture."

Spanish adventurer Gaspar de Carvajal wrote of "cities that gleamed white" and "very fruitful land," on his wanderings along the Eucadorian Napo River in 1541. But today there is little evidence of such a civilization. Instead this corner of the Amazon, like the rest of the massive tropical forest, is seemingly inhospitable: full of dense, obstructive vegetation and buzzing with poisonous creepy crawlers.

Is this a case of a Spaniard painting pretty pictures to pocket more money for future conquests, or an example of a perfectly executed cover-up directed by Mother Nature herself?

The Washington Post recently reported on the work of Augusto Oyuela-Caycedo of the University of Florida, who is part of a growing number of anthropologists who believe an ancient, advanced society once occupied Amazonia.

Some called it El Dorado, others, like Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett (a British version of Indiana Jones) cryptically named it the "City of Z."

The jungle swallowed them all, and no evidence has ever been produced that such a place existed.

Now the satellite imagery of deforested sections of the upper Amazon Basin revealed more than 200 geometric earthworks.