Rating: 8.3/10.
Book about a recent expedition to explore a lost city in the jungles of Honduras. In 2015, a group of explorers and archaeologists discovered ancient ruins that were previously unknown to Europeans and had been abandoned for around 500 years; this book describes how this place was discovered, the expeditions to first study it using remote sensing then a ground expedition to confirm its findings, and how everyone got sick from tropical diseases.
There are quite a few Mayan ruins that were discovered by Europeans throughout the ages of exploration in Honduras. Copán was the Mayan site that was discovered in the 1830s, but there were rumors of a “White City” further east that led to a lot of speculation among European explorers. Morde and Bram claimed in 1940 to have found a lost city, but a more detailed investigation of their journal revealed that they were actually looking for gold and the lost city narrative was fabricated. Elkins (the project lead of the current expedition) in 1997 he combined old exploration notes and LIDAR imagery to find signs of an ancient city in a region of Honduras called Mosquitia (named for its Miskito people, not for its mosquitoes). The area specifically is named T1 and is in a remote jungle likely untouched by humans for hundreds of years. However, Honduras was hit by a large storm in 1998, canceling all hopes of the expedition as the economy collapsed and, in general, the country became dangerous and unstable for a number of years.
The situation changed around 2010 when the process was expedited by a new Honduran president who took a personal interest in the project and ensured that it proceeded smoothly. The team starts work in Honduras and sets up a base on an island off the coast to evade dangerous drug trafficking routes – it is not allowed to store jet fuel on the island to make it a less attractive target for drug smugglers. They map the jungle with helicopter and lidar equipment, discovering exactly where the archaeological ruins are located. Challenges include the expense of operating the helicopter, and at one point, the lidar machine breaks down and an engineer is immediately sent from Canada to fix it. Specialists review the data and confirm that it is legitimate, although some criticize it for being overhyped and reading too much into limited data. Therefore, they plan another ground expedition to confirm the lidar findings on the ground, which is the gold standard for archaeological legitimacy.
The second ground expedition begins in 2015 with a larger group of scientists, including journalists and photographers, and is accompanied by the Honduran military for security. They arrive at the site by helicopter and set up camp near the landing site; the first night the author encounters a large poisonous snake. The survival guide Woody kills the snake with a knife and displays its body as a warning to the other members. They reach the archaeological site and confirm its significance from the ground. At this point, enough people know about the location of the site so that it is at risk of looting by locals who might take artifacts and sell them, creating an urgency for a follow-up expedition to finish the work yet care is needed to properly follow archaeological procedures and avoid destroying any evidence by excavating too quickly. The Honduran government steps in and leads the excavation process, clearing the area for easier access and the president of the country performed a ceremonial unearthing of the first artifacts.
Net, the author shifts to an explanation of what happened. The people of Mosquitia were different from the Maya, whose frontier was at Copan, a few hundred kilometers to the northwest. Copan collapsed around 800 AD, leading many inhabitants to move to Mosquitia, which began to develop more Mayan traits until it also collapsed around 1500. They built with less durable materials than the Mayan ruins, so rather than the impressive stone ruins of Mayan cities, these remnants are less impressive looking today. What they left behind was a cache of objects, and analysis of the cache suggests that a large number of quite valuable objects were deliberately broken and abandoned around 1500 as part of a ceremony to abandon the city.
When Europeans came to the Americas, they brought a large amount of diseases like smallpox and measles; these diseases spread throughout the continent much faster than the European explorers themselves due to trade and contact between native groups. This killed an estimated 90% of the population throughout both American continents, and it was around this time that the Mosquitia cities were abandoned without any Europeans ever having visited them.
The final section of the book shifts to a different topic: disease. A few weeks after returning from the expedition, several members of the team began to develop rashes that would not go away. They were diagnosed with a disease called leishmaniasis, a parasitic disease that is rare in most Western countries but quite common historically and currently in tropical regions. It is poorly studied because most people who have this disease are poor and cannot afford expensive treatments, and available treatments are quite difficult and come with many side effects. Several members sought treatments from specialists, trying various drugs with differing outcomes, because the best-known drugs have severe side effects, including kidney damage. Research is ongoing but still experimental, and there is a research lab specifically dedicated to studying this disease. The book concludes with a reflection on disease and civilizations: just as old-world diseases destroyed many American civilizations, leishmaniasis brought down the expedition. The book, written in 2017, predicts that a pandemic affecting much of the world population is inevitable.
Overall, this book is well-written and provides a detailed account of many subjects, including archaeological techniques, the history and politics of Honduras, ancient American civilizations, and a discussion about parasitic diseases, making it quite a worthwhile read.
