The Lost White City

The lost city of Honduras featured in Douglas Preston's bestseller, "Lost City of the Monkey God", was not built by Mayans, but by an unknown people the Hondurans have named, the People of the Jaguar.

Since the time of the Spanish explorer Cortes, tales have circulated among the indigenous tribes of Honduras of the ancient City of the Jaguar, a city of white walls in the mountainous interior of the country. Their ancestors fled to it, to escape the Spanish. Tribal folklore also preserves a warning to those who would seek the hidden ruins. All who trespass on the property of the "White City", will fall ill and perish.

It was not until 2012 that the city was rediscovered, deep in the jungle known as La Mosquitia. In a survey bankrolled by documentary filmmaker Steve Elkins, it was pinpointed by the use of LIDAR, which is a method of mapping from the air. From a moving plane, rays of infrared are bounced off the terrain below. Through the spaces between the leaves of the forest canopy, the light reflects off the ground. A computer is used to remove the canopy, revealing the earth at surface level.

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Three years later, Elkins had raised enough money to finance an expedition. Because of the thickness of the jungle, the area could not be reached by foot. The Honduran Army dropped soldiers into La Mosquitia, to clear a small landing area for the expedition helicopters to land.

The first night on site brought a poisonous snake into camp, the Fer de Lance viper. The six-foot snake was poised to strike unsuspecting journalist Douglas Preston, author of The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story. While archaeologists distracted it with flashlights, the leader of the expedition, British military veteran Andrew Wood, trapped the viper with a seven foot forked stick. He wrapped his fingers around its neck. The fangs of the Yellow Beard spewed venom into the air, landing on the back of Woody's hand, instantly raising blisters, before he was able to part the head from the rest of its body.

The people of the Jaguar dominated a valley of ten thousand square miles, a region just outside the territory of the Mayans. But after the collapse in 900 A.D. of its nearest neighbor, the Mayan city of Copan, the population rose sharply in the White City. Perhaps they welcomed the Mayan refugees from Copan. Perhaps they were on the losing side of a battle with Mayan warriors.

They adopted Mayan culture, building a pyramid and playing the Mesoamerican ball game, where two teams competed in a narrow court with sloping sides. The goal was to keep a solid rubber ball in play. The ball was heavy, ten pounds, and in certain ceremonial circumstances the losing team was executed.

Lacking a local quarry to provide stone for their pyramid, a pre-existing hill was carved into a pyramid base. On top of this base they continued construction, with a massive framework of the hardwood Mahogany. The Jaguar people were master weavers. Thus was the pyramid's wooden superstructure wrapped with thousands of yards of multicolored fabric.

The archaeologists made a significant discovery at the base of the pyramid, where they found fifty-two statues half buried in mud. It was a cache of sacred objects, of sculptures idolizing the monkey, the snake, the vulture, and of course the jungle cat. Some also bore the carvings of a language never before seen.

When the expedition was over, its members gathered at the pool of their hotel for celebration and beer. Woody proposed a toast of gratitude in thanks to god, that none of the team had been injured or killed by snakes or jungle cats, and that nobody got sick.

Six weeks later mysterious wounds appeared, in two thirds of the expedition. Antibiotics had no effect. The disease was diagnosed as Leishmaniasis, also known as "White Leprosy". It was transmitted by insect bites from sand fleas in the jungle, and infected the white blood cells of its victims.

Because white blood cells are the warriors of the human immune system, White Leprosy has no cure. If left untreated, Leishmaniasis becomes a flesh-eating disease. Fortunately there are modern drugs which bolster the immune system, and which will keep the disease from progressing... in most cases.

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