Honduras * another lost city

[space otter]

reading this it struck me that any civilization with pyramids has vanished..hummmmmmmm




http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/have-archaeologists-discovered-the-lost-city-of-the-monkey-god/ar-BBic8oa


Have archaeologists discovered the 'Lost City of the Monkey God?'

Christopher Woolf, PRI's The World
5 hrs ago



© Credit: Doug Yoder/National Geographic A view of one of the unexplored valleys in the Mosquitia region of eastern Honduras, an area long rumored to contain a legendary "White City" or a "City of the Monkey God."   Archaeologists have just completed the first ground exploration of the ruins of a previously unknown city deep in the tropical rainforest of Honduras.

"The team was led to the remote, uninhabited region by long-standing rumors that it was the site of a storied 'White City,' also referred to in legend as the 'City of the Monkey God,'" according to National Geographic, which first reported the story on Monday and furnished these amazing photos.


© Doug Yoder/National Geographic   "Archaeologists surveyed and mapped extensive plazas, earthworks, mounds, and an earthen pyramid belonging to a culture that thrived a thousand years ago, and then vanished," wrote Douglas Preston for the magazine. "The team, which returned from the site last Wednesday, also discovered a remarkable cache of stone sculptures that had lain untouched since the city was abandoned.

"In contrast to the nearby Maya, this vanished culture has been scarcely studied and it remains virtually unknown. Archaeologists don't even have a name for it."

One of the leaders of the expedition, Bill Benenson, says "it's quite amazing to be able to say [the words] 'finding a lost city.' It's not something that rolls off your lips, or you often get a chance to say."

The site was first spotted from the air in 2012 during a survey that used Lidar — a kind of laser-based radar — to spot man-made anomalies beneath the jungle canopy. 

"Using the Lidar as a map, we went in, and went up to various buildings," Benenson says. "At the base of an earthen pyramid [we] found a cache, or a kind of intact ceremonial site, with over 50 pieces of art or artifacts left on the ground somehow for the last 400 to 600 years."

The survey also revealed this was not just a single town or temple complex: The entire valley was once densely populated by people. The explorers are calling it a lost civilization.

Honduras is full of ancient legends relating to lost cities in the Mosquitia region, the area where the ruined city was discovered. "The two major ones are the White City [or Ciudad Blanca,] and the City of the Monkey God," Benenson says. The former would have been made of blinding marble or limestone, while the latter would have featured a Monkey God statue atop a temple.

The only way in and out of the site was by helicopter. Benenson says the expedition hired three ex-British special forces soldiers to rappel into the brush and hack out a space for the helicopter to land. "There was absolutely no other way to get in or out," Benenson says. "The ocean was probably 50 miles away through one of the densest jungles any of our people had ever encountered, filled with way too many snakes of a highly deadly nature."

The region today is uninhabited, among the most pristine ecosystems on the planet. "It appears that there have been no human beings out there for 400 to 800 years, because the animals that we encountered — or rather, who encountered us, like the monkeys — ... just wandered into our camp," Benenson says. "The hummingbirds flew around the heads of our first group there, and the monkeys came down and kind of looked at us, and were throwing things at us. They had not seen or encountered human beings before." 

The site's precise location is not being disclosed to protect it from looters, but that's not the only threat to the site. Loggers and ranchers are encroaching on the Mosquitia region, and the Honduran government hopes to get international assistance to halt the process of deforestation.

[Pimander]

I'd absolutely love to visit some of these places.  The pristine nature alone is enough but to have the chance to be one of a handful of modern people to see an ancient civilisation would be the cream.  The only problem is I hate being eaten by insects.

[space otter]

now they are saying two cities...this is why I like three independent soucres on a story



Archaeologists find two lost cities deep in Honduras jungle

The Guardian
Alan Yuhas
12 hrs ago




Archaeologists have discovered two lost cities in the deep jungle of Honduras, emerging from the forest with evidence of a pyramid, plazas and artifacts that include the effigy of a half-human, half-jaguar spirit.

The team of specialists in archaeology and other fields, escorted by three British bushwhacking guides and a detail of Honduran special forces, explored on foot a remote valley of La Mosquitia where an aerial survey had found signs of ruins in 2012.

Chris Fisher, the lead US archaeologist on the team, told the Guardian that the expedition – co-coordinated by the film-makers Bill Benenson and Steve Elkins, Honduras and National Geographic (which first reported the story on its site) – had by all appearances set foot in a place that had gone untouched by humans for at least 600 years.

"Even the animals acted as if they've never seen people," Fisher said. "Spider monkeys are all over place, and they'd follow us around and throw food at us and hoot and holler and do their thing."

"To be treated not as a predator but as another primate in their space was for me the most amazing thing about this whole trip," he said.

Fisher and the team arrived by helicopter to "groundtruth" the data revealed by surveying technology called Lidar, which projects a grid of infrared beams powerful enough to break through the dense forest canopy.
The dense jungle of Honduras. Photograph: Dave Yoder/National Geographic
That data showed a human-created landscape, Fisher said of sister cities not only with houses, plazas and structures, but also features "much like an English garden, with orchards and house gardens, fields of crops, and roads and paths."

In the rainforest valley, they said they found stone structural foundations of two cities that mirrored people's thinking of the Maya region, though these were not Mayan people. The area dates between 1000AD and 1400AD, and while very little is known without excavation of the site and surrounding region, Fisher said it was likely that European diseases had at least in part contributed to the culture's disappearance.

The expedition also found and documented 52 artifacts that Virgilio Paredes, head of Honduras's national anthropology and history institute, said indicated a civilisation distinct from the Mayans. Those artifacts included a bowl with an intricate carvings and semi-buried stone sculptures, including several that merged human and animal characteristics.

The cache of artifacts – "very beautiful, very fantastic," in Fisher's words – may have been a burial offering, he said, noting the effigies of spirit animals such as vultures and serpents.

Fisher said that while an archaeologist would likely not call these cities evidence of a lost civilisation, he would call it evidence of a culture or society. "Is it lost? Well, we don't know anything about it," he said.
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The exploratory team did not have a permit to excavate and hopes to do so on a future expedition. "That's the problem with archaeology is it takes a long time to get things done, another decade if we work intensively there, but then we'll know a little more," Fisher said.

"This wasn't like some crazy colonial expedition of the last century," he added.

Despite the abundance of monkeys, far too little is known of the site still to tie it to the "lost city of the monkey god" that one such expedition claimed to have discovered. In about 1940, the eccentric journalist Theodore Morde set off into the Honduran jungle in search of the legendary "white city" that Spanish conquistadors had heard tales of in the centuries before.

He broke out of the brush months later with hundreds of artifacts and extravagant stories of how ancient people worshipped their simian deity. According to Douglas Preston, the writer National Geographic sent along with its own expedition: "He refused to divulge the location out of fear, he said, that the site would be looted. He later committed suicide and his site – if it existed at all – was never identified."

Fisher emphasised that archaeologists know extraordinarily little about the region's ancient societies relative to the Maya civilisation, and that it would take more research and excavation. He said that although some academics might find it distasteful, expeditions financed through private means – in this case the film-makers Benenson and Elkins – would become increasingly commonplace as funding from universities and grants lessened.

Fisher also suggested that the Lidar infrared technology used to find the site would soon be as commonplace as radiocarbon dating: "People just have to get through this 'gee-whiz' phase and start thinking about what we can do with it."

Paredes and Fisher also said that the pristine, densely-wooded site was dangerously close to land being deforested for beef farms that sell to fast-food chains. Global demand has driven Honduras's beef industry, Fisher said, something that he found worrying.

"I keep thinking of those monkeys looking at me not having seen people before. To lose all this over a burger, it's a really hard pill to swallow."


http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/archaeologists-find-two-lost-cities-deep-in-honduras-jungle/ar-BBihP4l

[space otter]

but  barring the three sources the original  is a good  source


http://news-beta.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/150302-honduras-lost-city-monkey-god-maya-ancient-archaeology/


Exclusive: Lost City Discovered in the Honduran Rain Forest


In search for legendary "City of the Monkey God," explorers find the untouched ruins of a vanished culture.


A "were-jaguar" effigy, likely representing a combination of a human and spirit animal, is part of a still-buried ceremonial seat, or metate, one of many artifacts discovered in a cache in ruins deep in the Honduran jungle.
 
Photograph by Dave Yoder, National Geographic

By Douglas Preston
PUBLISHED March 02, 2015

An expedition to Honduras has emerged from the jungle with dramatic news of the discovery of a mysterious culture's lost city, never before explored. The team was led to the remote, uninhabited region by long-standing rumors that it was the site of a storied "White City," also referred to in legend as the "City of the Monkey God." 

Archaeologists surveyed and mapped extensive plazas, earthworks, mounds, and an earthen pyramid belonging to a culture that thrived a thousand years ago, and then vanished. The team, which returned from the site last Wednesday, also discovered a remarkable cache of stone sculptures that had lain untouched since the city was abandoned.




Honduran troops lead a convoy through a town that served as the base for helicopters ferrying members of the expedition to a location in the Mosquitia rain forest where they examined ruins of an ancient city.
 
Photograph by Dave Yoder, National Geographic

In contrast to the nearby Maya, this vanished culture has been scarcely studied and it remains virtually unknown. Archaeologists don't even have a name for it.

Christopher Fisher, a Mesoamerican archaeologist on the team from Colorado State University, said the pristine, unlooted condition of the site was "incredibly rare." He speculated that the cache, found at the base of the pyramid, may have been an offering.

"The undisturbed context is unique," Fisher said. "This is a powerful ritual display, to take wealth objects like this out of circulation."

The tops of 52 artifacts were peeking from the earth. Many more evidently lie below ground, with possible burials. They include stone ceremonial seats (called metates) and finely carved vessels decorated with snakes, zoomorphic figures, and vultures.

The most striking object emerging from the ground is the head of what Fisher speculated might be "a were-jaguar," possibly depicting a shaman in a transformed, spirit state. Alternatively, the artifact might be related to ritualized ball games that were a feature of pre-Columbian life in Mesoamerica.

"The figure seems to be wearing a helmet," said Fisher. Team member Oscar Neil Cruz, head archaeologist at the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History (IHAH), believes the artifacts date to A.D. 1000 to 1400.

The objects were documented but left unexcavated. To protect the site from looters, its location is not being revealed.



A stream winds through part of an unexplored valley in Mosquitia in eastern Honduras, a region long rumored to contain a legendary "White City," also called the City of the Monkey God.
 
Photograph by Dave Yoder, National Geographic
Stories of "Casa Blanca" and a Monkey God
The ruins were first identified in May 2012, during an aerial survey of a remote valley in La Mosquitia, a vast region of swamps, rivers, and mountains containing some of the last scientifically unexplored places on earth.

For a hundred years, explorers and prospectors told tales of the white ramparts of a lost city glimpsed above the jungle foliage. Indigenous stories speak of a "white house" or a "place of cacao" where Indians took refuge from Spanish conquistadores—a mystical, Eden-like paradise from which no one ever returned.

Since the 1920s, several expeditions had searched for the White City, or Ciudad Blanca. The eccentric explorer Theodore Morde mounted the most famous of these in 1940, under the aegis of the Museum of the American Indian (now part of the Smithsonian Institution).




Former British Special Air Service (SAS) soldiers prepare a helicopter pilot for liftoff from a landing zone cleared for a team of scientists surveying a secret location in the Mosquitia jungle. The helicopter ferried people and supplies from its base.
 
Photograph by Dave Yoder, National Geographic


Morde returned from Mosquitia with thousands of artifacts, claiming to have entered the City. According to Morde, the indigenous people there said it contained a giant, buried statue of a monkey god. He refused to divulge the location out of fear, he said, that the site would be looted. He later committed suicide and his site—if it existed at all—was never identified. 

More recently, documentary filmmakers Steve Elkins and Bill Benenson launched a search for the lost city.


They identified a crater-shaped valley, encircled by steep mountains, as a possible location.


To survey it, in 2012 they enlisted the help of the Center for Airborne Laser Mapping at the University of Houston. A Cessna Skymaster, carrying a million-dollar lidar scanner, flew over the valley, probing the jungle canopy with laser light. lidar—"Light Detection and Ranging"—is able to map the ground even through dense rain forest, delineating any archaeological features that might be present.

When the images were processed, they revealed unnatural features stretching for more than a mile through the valley. When Fisher analyzed the images, he found that the terrain along the river had been almost entirely reshaped by human hands.



huge double page image..go to the link for photo and text[/color]


The evidence of public and ceremonial architecture, giant earthworks and house mounds, possible irrigation canals and reservoirs, all led Fisher to conclude that the settlement was, indeed, a pre-Columbian city.


Threatened by Deforestation


An archaeological discovery isn't confirmed until it has been "ground-truthed." The ground exploration team consisted of American and Honduran archaeologists, a lidar engineer, an anthropologist, an ethnobotanist, documentary filmmakers, and support personnel. Sixteen Honduran Special Forces soldiers provided security. The National Geographic Society sent a photographer and a writer.


The expedition confirmed on the ground all the features seen in the lidar images, along with much more. It was indeed an ancient city. Archaeologists, however, no longer believe in the existence of a single "lost city," or Ciudad Blanca, as described in the legends. They believe Mosquitia harbors many such "lost cities," which taken together represent something far more important—a lost civilization.

more photos


The valley is densely carpeted in a rain forest so primeval that the animals appear never to have seen humans before. An advance team clearing a landing zone for helicopters supplying the expedition noted spider monkeys peering down curiously from the trees above, and guinea hen and a tapir wandering into camp, unafraid of the human visitors.


"This is clearly the most undisturbed rain forest in Central America. The importance of this place can't be overestimated.
"
Mark Plotkin, ethnobotanist


"This is clearly the most undisturbed rain forest in Central America," said the expedition's ethnobotanist, Mark Plotkin, who spent 30 years in Amazonia. "The importance of this place can't be overestimated."

The region also is gravely threatened. Deforestation for ranching has checkerboarded the jungle to within a dozen miles of the valley. Huge swaths of virgin rain forest are being cut illegally and burned to make way for cattle. The region has become one of the biggest beef-producing areas in Central America, supplying meat to fast-food franchises in the United States.




In addition to looting, another threat to the newly discovered ruins is deforestation for cattle ranching, seen here on a hillside on the way to the site. At its present pace, deforestation could reach the valley within a few years.
 
Photograph by Dave Yoder, National Geographic


Virgilio Paredes Trapero, the director of the IHAH, under whose auspices the expedition operated, spent several days at the site. He concluded: "If we don't do something right away, most of this forest and valley will be gone in eight years." He spread his hands. "The Honduran government is committed to protecting this area, but doesn't have the money. We urgently need international support."


The expedition was made possible with the permission, partnership, and support of the government of Honduras; Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández Avarado; Virgilio Paredes Trapero, director of the Honduran Institute for Anthropology and History (IHAH); Oscar Neil Cruz, Chief of the Archaeology Division of IHAH, as well as Minister of Defense Samuel Reyes and the Armed Forces of Honduras under the command of Gen. Fredy Santiago Díaz Zelaya, with Gen. Carlos Roberto Puerto and Lt. Col. Willy Joel  Oseguera, and the soldiers of TESON, Honduran Special Forces.


Douglas Preston writes about archaeology for the New Yorker and other publications. His account of Coronado's search for the Seven Cities of Gold was recently issued as an e-book.

http://news-beta.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/150302-honduras-lost-city-monkey-god-maya-ancient-archaeology/

[Pimander]

So if you Americans cut back on burgers the site might be safe.

[space otter]

I guess it wasn't that LOST....sigh




Truly An Ancient 'Lost City' Or Sensational Reporting? Scholars Claim Honduran Discovery Was Overhyped

The Huffington Post    |  By  Dominique Mosbergen   
Posted:  03/12/2015 4:01 am EDT    Updated:  03/12/2015 4:59 am EDT

A so-called "lost city" said to be home to a long-vanished civilization was reportedly found by a team of explorers in the rainforest of La Mosquitia, Honduras, during a recent expedition. The finding, which was first reported in National Geographic and picked up by other media outlets including The Huffington Post, has since generated a lot of buzz -- and criticism.

Earlier this month, more than two dozen archaeologists and anthropologists published an open letter, condemning the explorers, who were accompanied by a film crew, for making "exaggerated claims of 'discovery.'" Experts have also criticized National Geographic for sensationalizing the finding and employing a "colonialist discourse" in their report.

The National Geographic article, published March 2, began with these words:


An expedition to Honduras has emerged from the jungle with dramatic news of the discovery of a mysterious culture's lost city, never before explored. The team was led to the remote, uninhabited region by long-standing rumors that it was the site of a storied "White City," also referred to in legend as the "City of the Monkey God."



This report was problematic on several fronts, the scholars contend in their letter. For instance, the report is said to have ignored earlier research conducted in the region, which experts claim is not quite as untouched as the article seems to suggest, as well as indigenous knowledge of the area.

"Any words like 'lost' or 'civilization' should set off alarm bells," Rosemary Joyce, a signatory and a professor of anthropology at the University of California at Berkeley, told The Guardian.

Such terms revert to a "colonialist discourse" that is disrespectful and offensive, another signatory and University of Kansas professor John Hoopes told the news outlet.

According to The Star, experts have acknowledged that the archaeological finding may indeed be significant. However, the sensationalizing of such a discovery may be ultimately reductive and perhaps even harmful, they say.

"The motivating force behind this expedition ... is a production of a movie," Ricardo Agurcia, a Honduran archaeologist, told The Star. "It's adventure-seeking and it pretends to be looking at this myth of the great, lost White City in eastern Honduras. I think right there you're off on the wrong foot."

Chris Fisher, the lead American archaeologist on the Honduran expedition, said this week that he has been surprised by all the criticism.

"We never said it's Ciudad Blanca or the city of the lost monkey god," he told The Guardian. "The articles aren't scientific papers though, and we don't deny that local people might have knowledge of these sites. But the area was unoccupied and relatively undisturbed after all these centuries."

According to the National Geographic report on the discovery, the expedition team surveyed "extensive plazas, earthworks, mounds and an earthen pyramid" as well as "a remarkable cache" of more than 50 stone sculptures at the La Mosquitia site. Fisher told the magazine that the pristine condition of the ruins was "incredibly rare."

The site is estimated to date back to 1,000 to 1,400 A.D., and Fisher's team says it may have once been home to a now-vanished and largely unknown culture.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/03/12/honduras-lost-city-national-geographic-criticism_n_6852928.html?utm_hp_ref=science

[zorgon]

Apparently there are a lot more 'undiscovered' sites in Guatamala etc.  Well the looters know where they are but archaeologists work at a snails pace to uncover things in the fear they may damage something

In today's world seems to me would make more sense to put a rush on because while the scientists are dawdling war and looters are taking it all away and destroying it anyway


Lost Mayan City Of Mirador
Guatemala 2009



http://www.thelivingmoon.com/43ancients/02files/Mayan_Lost_City_of_Mirador.html


Credit: CNN
Dr. Richard Hansen in conclusion...
The hills in the distance are still more cities that have not yet been explored by archaeologists

This find includes a physical copy of the Popul Vu built with fountains and a pyramid built over top of an older pyramid. It a huge complex, touted as the meca of Mayan civilization  yet barely touched yet