 Researchers believe that Fawcett may have been influenced in his thinking by information obtained from indigenous people about the archaeological site of Kuhikugu, near the headwaters of the Xingu River.After Fawcett's presumed death in the jungle, Kuhikugu was discovered by Westerners in 1925.The site contains the ruins of an estimated twenty towns and villages in which as many as 50,000 people might once have lived.