The Journey Continues - Finding Lost Civilizations, Part 2.

Chapter 1
The Forgotten Souls of Ixtapa De
La Conception
While at the La Penita market a lady named
Deb Drew approached me and said she was
building a pool at her house. She invited my
father and me to join her and her husband to
sift through the dirt during the excavation. On
the day of the excavation I spoke with the
Mexican backhoe operator, who told me he had
been driving a backhoe for more than 20 years
and that his home garden held many remnants
of old civilizations he had dug up during
excavations. He said he did not believe we
would find any ancient artifacts in La Penita. I
then asked him which area contained the most
relics. He thought for a while and said that the
area most fertile and filled with ancient
artifacts was in a small town called Ixtapa De
La Conception. By chance, I had planned a trip
the next day to the fishing village of Platanitos
and would be passing through Ixtapa.
The following day I drove to the village of
Ixtapa. It had only one small, dusty main street,
and as I entered I saw a man walking down the
road. I introduced myself and explained that I
was writing about the history of the region and
asked him if he knew of any ancient Indian
sites or symbols that were engraved into large
boulders in the area. He said there were ancient
sites and petroglyphs in the area, but he did not
know their exact locations. However, he said
he knew a man who did and volunteered to
walk me to his house. I followed this man
through town and we eventually arrived at a
brick building that was painted yellow. I
immediately felt that this person was certainly
an artifact collector who was knowledgeable of
the ancient sites in this area. Hanging over his
doorway and across the front of the house were
the skulls of very large rams—something like a
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