The Lost City of the Monkey God – myth or reality? From 1927 to 2017, the changing narratives of the experts, explorers and enterprising book writers [3]

The Lost City of the Monkey God – myth or reality? From 1927 to 2017, the changing narratives of the experts, explorers and enterprising book writers [3]

‘Sites in almost every valley’: Rather than being a lone citadel in an untrammeled jungle or some mysterious civilization forgotten to time, almost “every river valley will typically have some archaeological find” in Mosquitia, Begley said. Begley welcomed the ways Lidar and new technology will help home in on new sites, but said that indigenous people such as the Pech provide invaluable knowledge in explaining ancient life. “It’s like driving versus flying, or walking versus flying,” he said. “You see all these connections that you’d miss if you’d just gone in on a helicopter. On the ground, they always say there’s another place we can see just around the bend, just a few days more.” “People might say we’re sour grapes, but I think none of us was contacted because most of us object to this kind of presentation,” Begley added. “This time we decided we’re going to call this out.” “If you asked the Pech, ‘Did you know about this lost civilization?’ they’d say, ‘Well, no, but we know about the ones our ancestors built,’” Begley said, adding that he thought them the likely descendants of people who were eventually scattered by factors including disease, war and slavery brought by the Spanish. Here, the usefulness and the real key-role played by the local people are implied. Actually, the local people, particularly, the old ones know much than the others. The oral tradition passed on from one generation to another has been an important one. Some people preserve some antiques also as a memento.

Not Mayan, but who?: With the Pech, Begley has documented many similar sites to those reported by National Geographic last week: communities, dating back from 800AD to 1200AD[1], somewhere between villages, towns and cities, with ballcourts, terraces, large structures and locations at a “cultural crossroads” of the Americas. So while the identities of who built the new sites remains a mystery pending excavation, clues abound, the archaeologists said. Many of Honduras’ ancient sites feature Mayan-like ballcourts, paved roadways and large public buildings, but the people who lived there seem to have lacked the Maya’s intense hierarchy of kings and elites, Joyce and Henderson said. In some of these settlements, artwork and Spanish documents suggest women were as likely as men to have held positions of power, Joyce theorizes. In contrast to Mayan society where men had authority in most roles, women sometimes appear on the ceremonial jaguar benches (whose effigies represented spiritual power), denoting status as “ritual specialists, with knowledge of the supernatural, or healing,” she said. Joyce also said colonial texts describe men and women both playing the region’s ancient ballgame and that the surfeit of intricate artwork suggests a prosperous society in which relatively wealthy elites could sponsor craftsmen, in a system not unlike medieval Europe or ancient Greece – without feudal lords or the idea of states. “It’s like a chain of smaller cities where institutionalized power had not excluded so many people,” she said. “And you look at the Maya and ask how did they manage to do this trick, getting the general population to support such inequality and hierarchy – a question which obviously has relevance today.” “One of the things that fascinate me about all this is how it’s driven by not having a label for these settlements,” Henderson said. It is intriguing to note only patriarchal issue has been taken to differentiate, instead of taking the mathematical, astronomical and other excellence of the Aztec, Maya and Inca civilizations.

City or not city, another debate: “They’re not Maya so they must be unknown, is the thinking, but the category of Maya really constrains how we think about these questions.” Nearly all the anthropologists and archaeologists expressed high hopes for increased research in Central America, concern for the deforestation that threatens sites there, and wishes that the steady drain of funding for universities and grants stops and reverses soon. All agreed that it would take years more research, teamwork and debate to find answers to their questions, although they sometimes disagreed how they should work in those years to come. “Archaeology has a real problem because our funding is drying up, and science, in general, has a huge language issue because we’re not communicating very well why our work is important,” Fisher said. “If someone wants to argue with me about the definition of a city, great, I’ll buy them a beer and we’ll talk for hours,” he said. “But this is such a reminder that there’s so much out there that’s still unknown and waiting for us to find out.” So, if the experts have their own status problem, professional bias, social snobbery etc., then, others cannot do anything. Instead of taking them to remote places to discover cities, they can be taken to bars in their own cities.

Archaeologists cringe for good reason: The Verge reported, “Until recently, many archaeologists were shockingly insensitive and arrogant in the way they conducted fieldwork, riding roughshod over the feelings, religious beliefs, and traditions of indigenous people[2]. They dug up burials without permission, put human remains and sensitive grave goods on public display in museums, hauled off sacred objects to which they had no legal right of ownership[3]. Today the profession has reacted against this dark history and tried to make fundamental changes in the way they conduct fieldwork and work with local people”. In other words, unofficial and illegal excavations have been going on in these areas for various vested interests[4]. Others have also expressed their concern over such activities[5]. If no observer is there or the excavations are monitored and videographed, anybody can claim anything and what they destroyed, recovered and carried away also not known. Moreover, for selling their books, if the authors adapt and adopt such strategies, no real research would be there.

The lost city of white or Monkey God by Charles Lindbergh forgotten.

The lost city Monkey God discovered by Theodore Morde was forgotten.

Now, a city of Jaguars has been found!

The Lost City of the Monkey God changed to the City of the Jaguar: A True Story is a 2017 nonfiction book by Douglas Preston. It is about a project headed by documentary filmmaker Steve Elkins that used lidar to search for archaeological sites in the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve of the Gracias a Dios Department in the Mosquitia region of eastern Honduras. The expedition was a joint Honduran-American multidisciplinary effort involving Honduran and American archaeologists, anthropologists, engineers, geologists, biologists and ethnobotanists. Elkins’ search was inspired by rumours of La Ciudad Blanca, also known as the White City. Preston cites mentions by Spanish conquistadors and others. The title of the book derives from four expeditions launched in the 1930s by the Museum of the American Indian (Heye Foundation) in which Honduran informants described to explorers, including Theodore Morde, sensationalized stories of a lost city with a pyramid topped by a giant stone statue of a monkey god somewhere in the Mosquitia region. Preston’s book debunks Morde’s claim of having found a city. After a privately funded lidar survey revealed complex archaeological sites under the rainforest cover, Preston accompanied a joint Honduran-American expedition to do ground-truthing of the lidar results. They were able to confirm the presence of large abandoned prehispanic settlements and to document plazas, terracing, canals, roads, earthen structures including a pyramid, and concentrations of artefacts, among them, decorated cylindrical stone vessels and metates, confirming the existence of an ancient city. The official name of the principal archaeological site that was mapped has been changed to the City of the Jaguar. So, the “Monkey God” myth has to be buried again, that is all. But, Preston too confirms that there was a city, but, it is named after Jaguar, as “the city of Jaguar”!

Conclusion: Whether Charles Lindbergh lied or Theodre Morde announced wrongly to suppress his gold hunt or otherwise, the US media has downplayed many details from 1020s to 2017. Jason Colavito concludes everything that is not comfortable to them has been dubbed as myth[6]. His small book on the “America,” refuting the discovery of city hypothesis and theories, is not convincing at all. If anything that is connected with India, the US experts need not be allegertic, as facts have to be accepted. Waddell, Mackenzie and others have already pointed out that there were connections between the Indian and the Aztec-Maya-Inca civilizations of the Americas. Even ordinary tourists or common-men, who happen to see the sculptures of these civilizations, they could easily find out the similarity. Such resemblance, likeness and comparison have been natural without any hint or suggestion. As day by day, the evidences of the ancient civilizations have been disappearing, vandalized and destroyed, it is an honest duty of any historian, archaeologist or researcher to preserve that is available today. The US and the other central and South American states may have other problems of emigration, drug mafia, antique smuggling, gold hunting and so on and they need not be mixed with the academician. If the academicians, archaeologists, explorers and historians have also been biased, accusing each other and producing such literature, then, the people of other countries, cultures and heritages may suffer heavily in getting reliable data and information. After all, now, a situation has come that knowledge is open to all. Therefore, there should be honesty in such areas of revealing, preserving and exchanging data and information for researchers. Whether the US writers have been producing books for sensation to support their business, business promotion and future enterprises, the researchers of other countries are not worried, but, all need not be mixed together to affect others adversely.

© K. V. Ramakrishna Rao

22-05-2020

[1] It is surprising that these notations are still used instead of CE.

[2] The Verge, Finding a lost city, and also a flesh-eating illness, with Douglas Preston- Abandoned cities, deadly snakes, and flesh-eating diseases, By Andrew Liptak, Feb 4, 2017, 10:00 am EST.

[3] https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/4/14502606/the-lost-city-of-the-monkey-god-interview-honduras-civilization

[4] Business Insider, People hadn’t set foot in this ancient ‘lost city’ in the Honduran jungle for 500 years – until now, Erin Brodwinmar 7, 2017, 00:51 IST

[5] https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/people-hadnt-set-foot-in-this-ancient-lost-city-in-the-honduran-jungle-for-500-years-until-now/articleshow/57503708.cms

[6] How the myth was developed is explained here –

http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/on-the-development-of-the-ciudad-blanca-myth

The Lost City of the Monkey God – myth or reality? From 1927 to 2017, the changing narratives of the experts, explorers and enterprising book writers [1]

The Lost City of the Monkey God – myth or reality? From 1927 to 2017, the changing narratives of the experts, explorers and enterprising book writers [1]

Introduction: The story of the discovery of “The Lost city of the Monkey God,” could naturally evoke an Indian, after going through the narratives, pictures and the books. The pictures of Virgil Finkay[1] (1914-1971) captured the imagination of many and started believing that there was such a city existed in the Central America. However, after reading the data and information available, it is found that the US explorers, experts, archaeologists and writers have been changing their narratives from 1927 to 2017 from their reports. For the reasons known to them, they have been sensationalized, theologized and ideologized also. Though, the experts involved have been supposedly interested in bringing out the truth about the lost city, have abruptly stopped their explorations and abandoned their “discovered city.” As they started accusing each other, attributing other factors, the bias exhibited has been open. Thus, all the narratives have been compiled and put together in the context of bringing out the facts. Some comments have been added in between for clarification and understanding.

Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974) found the “Lost city of Monkey God”: In 1927 / 1929, aviator Charles Lindbergh reported seeing a “white city” while flying over eastern Honduras. Some of his aerial photographs were also published. The news appeared on the first page of “the New York Times” in detail. Later, it was pointed out that Lindbergh must have misunderstood the Yucatan, British Honduras (Belize), and other Central American locations, where he identified several hitherto unknown Maya sites. However, this flight, under the auspices of the Carnegie Institution, was one of the first successful demonstrations of aerial reconnaissance in archaeology. In 2015, “The Independent” described, “The mossy carving had lain undisturbed for up to a millennium in some of the remotest jungle on Earth. It is a powerful effigy of a “were-jaguar” but also the pristine legacy of a vanished and – until now – unknown civilisation. National Geographic has reported that an archaeological expedition to Honduras[2] has emerged from the depths of a Central American wilderness to declare the discovery of the ruins of a lost culture sought by explorers since Cortes and hitherto known only by the slightly preposterous title of City of the Monkey God[3]. Although supposedly spotted from the air in the 1920s by Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974) and the subject of repeated attempts to reach it, no-one had offered irrefutable proof of the existence of the mythical Ciudad Bianca or White City and some archaeologists had dismissed it as the wishful imaginings of gentleman explorers”[4]. In 1997, “The New Yorker” reported an expedition to the “unknown, vanished, mysterious” civilization of Mosquitia[5]. So from 1939 to 1997 what happened, none knew or knows and none had gone on an expedition searching for gold or written any books.

Theodore Morde (1911-1954) claimed to have located the White City in 1939: American adventurer Theodore Morde claimed to have located the White City in 1939 – but died before he could reveal its whereabouts. Of course, it was called as La Ciudad Blanca, the Lost City of the Monkey God and so on. Virgilio Paredes Trapero, director of the Honduran Institute for Anthropology and History (IHAH), said: “If we don’t do something right away, most of this forest and valley will be gone in eight years. The Honduran government is committed to protecting this area, but doesn’t have the money. We urgently need international support.” The confirmation of the existence of the mystical City of the Monkey God is the culmination of centuries of on-and-off endeavour by explorers to locate remains which the Spanish explorer Hernan Cortes predicted in 1526 would “exceed Mexico in riches”. In 1939, a swashbuckling American adventurer called Theodore Morde claimed to have finally located the White City and said he had been told by indigenous Indians that a giant statue of a monkey was buried there. He then died in a car crash before revealing its location. The final discovery was made possible after an American film-maker and amateur archaeologist raised £980,000 from private backers in 2012 to fund mapping of the forest using state-of-the-art technology which bombarded the canopy with lasers and revealed the unmistakable straight lines of human construction. Now that the site has been “ground-truthed” by the expedition further work is being planned to secure its contents while its location is kept secret to protect it from looters. Mark Plotkin, the expedition’s ethnobotanist, said: “This is clearly the most undisturbed rain forest in Central America. The importance of this place can’t be overestimated.” Note, here it has been mentioned that, “He then died in a car crash before revealing its location”!

July 12, 1940 – ‘City of the Monkey God is believed located: Expedition reports success in Honduras exploration: The headline in the New York Times was tantalisingly mysterious: ‘City of the Monkey God is believed located: Expedition reports success in Honduras exploration’. If readers were a little puzzled as to the huge significance of this announcement, they were soon put right by the man who had made it. The date was July 12, 1940, and American explorer Theodore Morde had just emerged from the darkest jungles of Central America with an incredible story about what he’d found there. Morde, a real-life Indiana Jones who later became a wartime U.S. spy, had been recruited by the founder of New York’s prestigious Museum of the American Indian to try to find a mythical lost ‘White City’ dripping in gold that had been founded by a mysterious civilisation as great as the Aztecs and the Mayans. Adventurers had been searching for La Ciudad Blanca for centuries, ever since Spanish conquistador and explorer Hernando Cortes conquered Central America in the early 16^th century and heard rumours of its riches. But it remained hidden for hundreds of years until Morde insisted he had found it deep in the rain forests of Mosquitia, more than 32,000 square miles of hellishly inhospitable wilderness in Honduras and Nicaragua. He described how, armed only with a revolver and a machete, he and a companion named Lawrence Brown had spent four months hacking their way through ‘almost inaccessible’ jungle, swamps, rivers and mountains before coming upon a hidden valley that contained the remains of a white-stoned, walled city.

Described wildly about the cult of Monkey God: There, the local Indians told him (Morde), a long-vanished people, who were contemporaries of the Ancient Mayans, had once worshipped a strange Monkey God whose giant statue was still buried under centuries of vegetation. They made bloody human sacrifices to their simian deity, then ate the victims in an act of ritualised cannibalism. Morde said that on his own brief visit he had himself seen a disturbing rite in which local natives ritually slaughtered and ate monkeys in a twisted hangover from the cult. He has written all details published in “The Malkawakee Sentinel”. His observations about “Hanuman” and other details are also found[6]. However, in the US media, it was downplayed. To back his astonishing claims, Morde — who was only 29 but had already sailed around the world five times — brought back several thousand artefacts to America such as stone utensils and tiny carved monkey masks. He never revealed the precise location of the ruined city for fear it would be looted before he could go back. However, he never returned and died mysteriously in 1954, taking the secret of its location with him. Here, it is mentioned that he “died mysteriously”!

The archaeologists have surveyed and mapped ‘extensive plazas, earthworks, mounds and an earthen pyramid belonging to a culture that thrived 1,000 years ago, and then vanished’: It remained a compelling mystery, seemingly lifted from the pages of H. Rider Haggard.  Generations of adventurers plunged into the jungle to search for the city, and experts dismissed Morde’s discovery as a self-promoting fantasy. Explorers who reported glimpsing the tops of white buildings peeking through the forest canopy were told they were just limestone cliffs. But now the sceptics may have to eat their words. A team of U.S. and Honduran archaeologists have just returned from La Mosquitia. They have announced that — like Morde — they have discovered the remains of what they believe to be the City of the Monkey God, in a crater-shaped rainforest valley encircled by steep mountains. According to the National Geographic magazine, which accompanied the expedition, the archaeologists have surveyed and mapped ‘extensive plazas, earthworks, mounds and an earthen pyramid belonging to a culture that thrived 1,000 years ago, and then vanished’. The team also discovered a breathtaking collection of stone sculptures that had lain untouched since the city was abandoned. Christopher Fisher, an archaeologist from Colorado State University and team member, believes the sculptures — found at the base of the pyramid — may have been offerings to the Monkey God. The team first found the ruins nearly three years ago (2012) during an aerial survey using a high-tech scanner that was able to pierce the jungle canopy with laser light and reveal archaeological features. It showed ruins that stretched for more than a mile along a river through the valley. The remote, rugged area is a major cocaine smuggling route and the scientists, who were ferried to the site by helicopter, were accompanied by Honduran special forces and former members of Britain’s SAS.

© K. V. Ramakrishna Rao

22-05-2020

[1] Virgil Finlay (July 23, 1914 – January 18, 1971) was an American pulp fantasy, science fiction and horror illustrator. He has been called “part of the pulp magazine history … one of the foremost contributors of original and imaginative art work for the most memorable science fiction and fantasy publications of our time.” While he worked in a range of media, from gouache to oils, Finlay specialized in, and became famous for, detailed pen-and-ink drawings accomplished with abundant stippling, cross-hatching, and scratchboard techniques. Finlay created more than 2600 works of graphic art in his 35-year career.

[2] UNESCO has named the Río Plátano as a Biosphere Reserve, but it has been nibbled away by illegal logging and cattle ranching operations. It was placed on the UN’s “Danger List” in 2011. The southern border of the rainforest keeps shifting north as ranchers cut down the forest. Many said this was happening to produce beef for the US fast-food market.

https://blog.ted.com/mark-plotkin-shares-tales-of-the-lost-city-he-and-his-team-just-rediscovered/

[3] The Independent, The City of the Monkey God: Archaeologists claim to have found city lost for 1,000 years in remote Honduran jungle, Fabled ‘White City’ is now under threat from illegal cattle ranchers, Cahal Milmo @cahalmilmo, Tuesday 3 March 2015 19:33

[4] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/the-city-of-the-monkey-god-archaeologists-claim-to-have-found-city-lost-for-1000-years-in-remote-10083356.html

[5] The New Yorker, The Lost City, Douglas Preston, October 13, 1997; Published in the print edition of the October 20, 1997, issue. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1997/10/20/the-lost-city

[6] The Milwaukee Sentinel, September 22, 1940.