The Lost City of the Monkey God
SynopsisPlot
Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and they warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God-but then committed suicide without revealing its location.
Story
About this book
For centuries, stories have described a wealthy city hidden deep in the interior of Honduras. Two names attach to it: the White City, and the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous accounts speak of ancestors who fled there to escape Spanish invaders, along with a warning that anyone entering the sacred place would fall ill and die.
In 1940 the journalist Theodore Morde came out of the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and the claim that he had found the site, then died by suicide without saying where it was. Roughly seventy-five years later, Douglas Preston joined a team of scientists carrying lidar, a laser mapping tool that can record ground shapes beneath thick forest canopy from the air.
Flown over an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains in 2012, the scans showed the outline of a large settlement under the trees. A ground expedition followed, through heavy rain, deep mud, biting insects, snakes, and jaguar country. Afterwards Preston and several others learned they had contracted a serious disease at the ruins, and the book follows that medical aftermath.
