Published by: World Tibet Network News 97/12/02

PARIS, Nov 28 (Reuters) - A veteran French explorer said on Friday he had discovered in Tibet's freezing north previously unrecorded beehive-shaped homes which could be the remnants of the elusive pre-buddhist kingdom of Shang Shung.

Michel Peissel, returning from the remote Changtang region of Tibet, told Reuters he had identified two types of hive dwellings used by nomads, an igloo-like structure used as winter shelter and a larger, bulbous domed hive.

``Both are remarkable in that they are vaulted and that vaults and arches are unknown in the rest of Tibet,'' said Peissel, who has been exploring the Himalayas for 37 years.

``These unusual dwellings could be remnants of the semi-mythical pre-buddhist kingdom of Shang Shung which scholars have been trying to locate for more than a century,'' he said.

Peissel said the mud brick hives were located at altitudes of up to 5,000 metres (16,500 ft) high in Changtang, which he visited to record and study prehistoric caves and ancient salt routes.

He said barely a dozen Europeans had visited the virtually desert region, where it freezes 280 days a year.

It was populated by huge herds of antelopes, gazelles and stripeless zebras as well as wolves, lynx, snow leopards, giant wild yaks and the rare Tibetan grizzly bear, he said.

In his 26 expeditions to the Himalayas, Peissel has reported cracking last year the 2,500-year-old mystery of ``gold-digging ants'' reported by Greek historian Herodotus and vainly sought by Alexander the Great.

He said they were in fact marmots burrowing in gold-bearing sands high in the Karakoram mountains of Baltistan, a Himalayan region disputed by India and Pakistan.

Peissel discovered the source of the Mekong river in Tibet three years ago and a previously unknown breed of small and primitive forest pony in a remote part of Tibet two years ago.

He is a Fellow of Britain's Royal Geographical Society and a member emeritus of the New York Explorers Club.