Tales and rumors of ancient cities that are lost or buried in the vast jungles and rain forests of Central and South America have lured legions of both archaeologists and adventurers to the dangers of untamed and unknown parts of the Americas since the time of Columbus. Most of the explorers, it is reasonable to say, came up short; that is, if they survived their ordeals.
Fast forward to the 21st century, when, author Douglas Preston writes in The Lost City of the Monkey God, we have a modern technology called LIDAR, or “’light detection and ranging,” which can expose terrain through thick jungle foliage. In 2013, for the first time, LIDAR revealed a city in the scientifically unexplored Mosquitia mountains of Honduras. In our exciting book for June, Preston tells us that the city was ”in an absolutely intact, undisturbed pristine state, buried in a rain forest so remote and untouched that the animals there appeared never to have seen people before.”
In 2015 a joint Honduran-American archaeological expedition, protected by three British jungle-warfare specialists tasked with keeping the party alive, arrived to explore the site on the ground. The thrill of the finds – close to 500 sculptures, bowls, effigies, thrones, dating as far back as 1000 AD – definitely outweighed the anxiety produced by poisonous snakes, the possible slip of a machete, insatiable insects, unseen but ever-present night-stalking animals and, ultimately, the horrid, life-threatening parasitic disease that felled many in the group, requiring immediate and lengthy treatment.