Douglas Eugene “Gene” Savoy was born in Bellingham, Washington on May 11, 1927. He had no formal training as an archaeologist, but nevertheless, he spent a lot of time deep in the jungles of Peru. He discovered more than 40 lost cities in his career, including Vilcabamba, the Incas’ last refuge from the Spanish conquistadors. People magazine called him “the real Indiana Jones.”
However, like the movie-hero Indiana Jones, Savoy’s expeditions weren’t entirely driven by archaeology. He had much grander plans — including finding the legendary city of El Dorado, where rumors have it that one can delve into the “ancient roots of universal religion” — and — the fabled fountain of youth.
In 1969, Savoy captained a research ship and sailed around the world gathering information on sea routes used by ancient civilizations to prove his theory that they could have been in contact with one another.
Savoy returned to Peru in 1984, where he discovered Gran Vitaya, the largest pre-Columbian city in South America. On one of his last trips to Gran Vitaya, he discovered a tablet that held inscriptions alluding to ships that were sent by King Solomon to the biblical land of Ophir to gather gold for the king’s temple.
Discovery of the tablet started Savoy on what was maybe his most ambitious adventure — to find the exact location of Ophir and to find proof that the gold in Solomon’s Jerusalem temple came from South America. And — to learn the secret to immortality.
It probably doesn’t come as a surprise to you that throughout his career, scholars scoffed at his theories and were skeptical of his findings.
I hate to spoil the ending, but Savoy didn’t find the secret to immortality. He died in Reno, Nevada, where he was known as The Most Right Reverend Douglas Eugene Savoy — head of the International Community of Christ.
Members of his church believed that staring at the sun would allow them to take in God’s energy and become immortal. (I suspect that they might not ever have good eyesight, though.) Savoy’s religion was based on a secret Savoy said was revealed to him in the jungles of Peru.
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