The Lost City of the Monkey God

by Douglas Preston

  The American Archaeology reporter pointed out that Begley himself had for years been leading filmmakers and celebrities to sites in Mosquitia, that he had earlier publicized his own search for Ciudad Blanca and the “Lost City,” and that an article on his website referred to him as the “Indiana Jones of archaeology.” How was that any different? Begley responded: “I am not against popular media. I do it, but I do it differently.” He said about the expedition: “That kind of treasure-hunting, lost-city-finding mentality puts archaeological resources at risk.” Begley went on to complain about the expedition in his blog, comparing it to “children playing out a movie fantasy” and saying that “most scholars are disgusted” by the “colonialist discourse.”

  The ten PhD scientists who had taken part in the expedition were stunned. The vociferousness of the criticism went far beyond the usual academic tiff or a dispute over language, and they were amazed that these scholars, who had never been to the site and had no idea where it was, would make claims like these with such certainty. But they understood that a letter signed by two dozen professors and students, including respected scholars like Joyce and Hoopes, had to be taken seriously. Seeing that the letter contained errors of fact, Juan Carlos, Chris Fisher, and Alicia González drafted a FAQ about the expedition, trying to respond to their critics. “The ultimate goal of our work is to highlight the rich cultural and ecological patrimony of this endangered region so that international cooperation and resources can be brought to bear to help initiate effective conservation… The team urges those archaeologists and others concerned about Honduras and its unique cultural patrimony to please join us in this crucial effort, which will take the synergy of collaboration and goodwill among all involved.” The letter noted that none of the sites found in T1 or T3 had been “previously registered with the Honduran Government in its database of cultural patrimony.”

  A number of news outlets, including the Washington Post and the Guardian (UK) ran articles on the controversy that repeated the charges and quoted Begley and others questioning the significance—and even the very existence—of the find. “Interestingly,” Chris wrote me, “many reporters, after I made them aware of the FAQ, were uninterested in reading it. They only wanted salacious quotes from everyone involved to help ‘fuel’ a controversy.”

  “I feel as though we’re on trial,” Alicia González wrote me. “How dare they? Rubbish!”

  Chris Fisher told American Archaeology that the charges were “ridiculous.” “Our work has resulted in protection for the area. We’re preparing academic publications on the material. The map digitizes the archaeological features we saw. The overarching goal was to confirm what we saw on the lidar. I don’t think that’s adventuring.” He was particularly dismayed that Begley had called him a “treasure hunter,” the dirtiest insult in archaeology. Chris said to me, “Where are Begley’s peer-reviewed publications? Where’s his scholarship? I can’t find a single peer-reviewed article he’s published. And if he claims he’s visited these ruins, where’s the map? Where’s the site report?” Chris continued: “When you do archaeology, you survey, you make maps, you take photos, notes, et cetera. If he [Begley] had those locations they should have been turned over to the IHAH, as it is their cultural patrimony. To not do so is colonial and unethical.” But in the past twenty years, according to IHAH, Begley had not deposited any reports of his work, in violation of Honduran regulations.

  The National Geographic Society posted the expedition’s response: “We hope our colleagues will realize the enormous contribution and attention that this project has brought, not only to the academic community working in the area but to the people and government of Honduras, and we hope that together we will be able to foster and encourage greater academic research in the area.”

  Virgilio Paredes, in his capacity as director of IHAH, wrote a letter of support that the expedition posted with the FAQ. In private he was upset at the academic attacks. He told me that he had checked IHAH records and they showed that, indeed, Begley hadn’t pulled an archaeological permit in Honduras since 1996, even though he continued to “illegally” conduct research and exploration, as well as guide celebrities, filmmakers, journalists, and adventure-tourists to remote archaeological sites for pay. When I gave Begley an opportunity to refute that serious charge, in an exchange of e-mails he was unwilling or unable to do so, saying only that I was “being misled.” He wrote in his defense: “All of my trips to Honduras have either had necessary permission or they did not involve any activities that legally or by the regulations of the IHAH would require a permit.” He declined to provide any specifics, and he would not clarify the nature of his work in Honduras since 1996—whether it was archaeological, commercial, or touristic. He shut down our e-mail correspondence by writing: “I hope that this can put an end to this line of inquiry… That is really all I have to say on this matter.”

  “They criticized,” Virgilio said to me, “because they were not involved. Come on! They should be saying, ‘How can we get involved and help?’ This is a project for my country, Honduras—for my children’s children.”

  Juan Carlos Fernández mused, drily: “They’re upset because we invaded their sandbox.”

  Originally it seemed that the contretemps came from a concern about academic purity and incorrect assumptions, whether willful or not, about where the site was located. But I eventually learned that there were deeper reasons for the academic rhubarb, unwittingly revealed to me by one of the letter signers, who asked to remain anonymous. Many of the signatories had been supporters of the Zelaya administration. After Zelaya was deposed in the 2009 military coup, the new government removed the previous director of IHAH, Dario Euraque, and replaced him with Virgilio Paredes. The source complained to me that, because of the coup, the present government of Honduras is illegitimate and Virgilio Paredes “is in charge illegally” and “I will not work with him.” Euraque, who teaches at Trinity College in Connecticut, was one of the leading critics and complained to the Guardian that the expedition was “irrelevant,” a publicity stunt, and he claimed it had “no archaeologists of any name.”

  All this made it clear that the protest letter was, in part, a proxy attack on the present Honduran government, an example of how the coup and its aftermath left the Honduran archaeological community angry and divided. We would see more evidence of this when excavations began the following year, reigniting the controversy. Many of the letter signers have found it difficult to let go of the dispute and continue to disparage the project.

  CHAPTER 20

  The key in tying together the Americas

  Our too-short exploration of the ruins was only the beginning of understanding the significance of the site and its treasures. The excavation of the cache—and the revelation of its secrets—would come only once the team was able to return to the jungle during the following year’s dry season. But before we could understand the importance of the city itself, we needed to answer the more immediate question: Who were the people who built it? A hint of the answer lies in the stupendous Talgua Caves in the Agalta Mountains north of Catacamas.

  In April 1994, two Peace Corps volunteers living in Catacamas, Timothy Berg and Greg Cabe, heard about some caves along the Talgua River, in the mountains about four miles outside of town. The caves were a popular picnicking spot with the locals, and the men were curious to explore them. Joined by two Honduran friends, Desiderio Reyes and Jorge Yáñez, Berg and Cabe hitched a ride to the end of the closest road and hiked up the river. The four stopped to explore the largest cave, a giant cleft in the limestone cliffs a hundred feet up. An underground stream tumbled out of the opening, dropping in waterfalls to the river below.

  The friends climbed up to the cave and ventured inside with flashlights, walking in the shallow stream. The cave was broad and spacious, with a flat floor, offering an easy hike deep into the mountain. About half a mile in, one of them spied a ledge about twelve feet above the cave floor, which looked like it might lead somewhere. They
boosted a person up to take a look, and he hauled up another.

  To their surprise, the two young men found the ledge littered with pre-Columbian artifacts, including broken pottery. It seemed no one had climbed up there before, at least in recent history. As they searched around for more pottery pieces, they spied another ledge, twenty feet higher up. Beyond that, there appeared to be an enigmatic opening.

  Returning three weeks later with a ladder and ropes, they reached the higher ledge. It was indeed the gateway to a new cavern system. And as they stood on its threshold they beheld a mind-boggling sight. As Berg wrote later, “We saw many glimmering bones scattered along the floor of the passageway, most of them were cemented in place, and a number of ceramic and marble vessels. This was all complemented by many spectacular formations, hidden crevices filled with more bones and of ceramics shards in piles of fine dust.” The skulls were strangely elongated and frosted like sugar candy, covered with glittering crystals of calcite.

  They had discovered a spectacular ancient ossuary, which would turn out to be one of the most important archaeological finds in Honduras since the discovery of Copán.

  By sheer coincidence, the discovery had happened back when Steve Elkins was in Honduras with Steve Morgan, filming and searching for the White City. At that moment, they were shooting the excavation of an archaeological site on a Honduran island called Santa Elena, adjacent to Roatán. Elkins received a radio call from Bruce Heinicke, who had gotten word of the discovery through his grapevine. On the way back from the island in a boat, Elkins and his team excitedly discussed what the crystal-covered skulls might mean. Steve Morgan coined a name for the site: the “Cave of the Glowing Skulls.” Even though it wasn’t entirely accurate (the skulls do not actually glow), once the name was suggested it stuck, and that is how the site is known today.

  The young discoverers reported the find to George Hasemann, the director of IHAH at the time. Hasemann had been working with Elkins on the White City project, and the two discussed what to do. Elkins, who by this time was on his way back to LA, wired money to IHAH so that the institute could hire security for the cave to prevent looting and conduct a preliminary exploration. When Hasemann got inside, he too was stunned by what he saw. He and Elkins contacted a renowned Maya cave archaeologist named James Brady. Together, Hasemann and Brady organized a joint Honduran-American exploration of the necropolis, which commenced the following September in 1995, with Brady as the lead archaeologist.

  Brady and his team explored the ossuary, which occupied a labyrinth of holes, alcoves, and side caves packed with bones. Deep in the complex, they spied yet another hole in the ceiling of one chamber, climbed up to it, and entered what appeared to be the central burial chamber. It was a cavern one hundred feet long, twelve feet wide, and twenty-five feet high. As they played their lights around the chamber, they saw a breathtaking space of intricate stalactites, dripstone, and translucent sheets of calcite hanging like drapery from the ceiling. Every ledge, crack, and shelf was stacked with human bones and gaping skulls, covered with a hoarfrost of dazzling white crystals. Bones rarely survive long in the tropics, but in this case the coating of calcite had preserved them. “We have never before seen or heard of skeletal material preserved on such a tremendous scale,” Brady wrote. “The archaeological record is laid out like an open book for us to read.”

  Placed among the bones were gorgeous artifacts, including delicate marble and painted ceramic bowls and jars, jade necklaces, obsidian knives, and spearpoints. Some pottery bowls had holes punched in the bottom, which was a curious but widespread practice in pre-Columbian America, the ritual “killing” of an object placed in a grave to release its spirit so that it could follow its owner to the underworld.

  Brady and his team determined that these stacks of bones were secondary burials. The corpses of the dead had been interred elsewhere and then, when the flesh had decayed, the bones were removed, scraped clean, painted with red ochre, brought to the cave, and piled up with grave goods. Many of the artifacts were later additions, left years later as offerings to the dead.

  In the months between the discovery and Brady’s survey, despite security efforts, vandals and looters had decimated many of the deposits. “Even as we were trying to work there,” Brady told me recently, “they were going in and looting it. Each time we would go back, there were pretty dramatic changes in the amount of destruction. They’d been rooting through the skeletal material, breaking it up into little bits, looking for some kind of treasure.”

  As spectacular as this find was, the real shock came when the bones were carbon-dated. The oldest ones were three thousand years old, far older than anyone had assumed, and the burials had taken place over a period of a thousand years. That made the ossuary the earliest evidence of human occupation in Honduras and one of the oldest archaeological sites in Central America.

  As Brady recalled, a few days into their work “it dawned on me that this was not a Maya burial pattern.” Although the cave was situated on the Maya frontier, it appeared to belong to an entirely different and virtually unknown culture. While the Maya also buried their dead in caves, the way in which these bones were arranged and the kinds of artifacts that had been left with them were different from what one would expect from Maya cave burials. The ossuary was the work of a sophisticated, socially stratified, and artistically advanced culture, one that developed astonishingly early, even before the Maya. Said Brady: “If we only knew who these people were!”

  But the Maya and these unknown people, Brady said, did seem to share a similar cosmological view. In both cultures, “there is a focus on the sacred, animate earth, which is the most important force in the universe.” In contrast to the Old World idea that the dead live on in the heavens, in Mesoamerican belief the dead live within the earth and mountains. Caves are sacred, as they are a direct connection to that underground spiritual world. The ancestors living underground continue to take care of the living, watching over them. The living can contact the dead by going deep into the caves, leaving offerings, conducting rituals, and praying. The cave is a church, in essence, a place where the living come to petition their ancestors for favor and protection.

  The Cave of the Glowing Skulls and similar cave ossuaries discovered around the same time remain the earliest evidence of human occupation in Honduras. But were these people the actual ancestors of those who, a thousand years later, would build the cities in Mosquitia we had found at T1 and T3?

  “Shit, I don’t know,” Brady said. “We have very little knowledge in this sea of ignorance. And of course the Mosquitia is farther into the frontier, and it’s even less known.” Three to two thousand years ago, he said, we have the burials but not the settlements; and then a thousand years later we have the settlements but not the burials.

  After Talgua Caves, the archaeological record falls silent for a thousand years. People lived in eastern Honduras during that time, but no trace of them has yet been found.

  Following that thousand-year gap in our knowledge of Honduran prehistory, small settlements begin to appear in Mosquitia starting around AD 400 to 500. Archaeologists believe the people of Mosquitia spoke a dialect of Chibchan, a group of languages that encompasses Lower Central America down into Colombia. This suggests that Mosquitia was more connected to its southern neighbors than to the Maya, who spoke an unrelated set of languages.

  The major Chibchan-speaking civilization, the Muisca, lived in Colombia. It was a powerful chiefdom known for intricate goldwork. The Muisca confederation was the source of the El Dorado legends, based on a real tradition in which a new king, smeared in sticky mud and then covered with gold dust, would dive into Lake Guatavita in Colombia, washing off the gold in the lake as an offering to the gods.*

  The original people of Mosquitia may have come from the south or been influenced from that direction. But that southward orientation would change as the Maya city of Copán, two hundred miles west of Mosquitia, rose in power and prestige. The appearance of modest settlement
s in Mosquitia around AD 400 to 500 roughly coincides with the founding of the ruling dynasty of Copán. We don’t know whether the two events were linked. We do know a great deal about the establishment of Copán, one of the most studied cities in the Maya realm. The people of Copán achieved remarkable heights in art, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, and hieroglyphic writing, and the city’s magnificent public monuments contain many inscriptions telling the story of its founding and history. The influence of Copán would eventually reach into Mosquitia.