words in scarlet ink

The Lost City of the Monkey God is a 2017 non-fiction book by Douglas Preston (who also wrote The Monster of Florence, which I didn’t realize until recently) about the efforts to discover La Ciudad Blanca in Honduras.

Legends of La Ciudad Blanca go back centuries, with stories circulating as far back as the era of the conquistadors of Spain. Naturally, La Ciudad Blanca is supposedly a civilization of legendary wealth, and people have been exploring the Honduras and Nicaragua jungles for decades, looking for the ancient ruins of the city (and probably hoping to find lots of gold). Archeologists, anthropologists and the other ‘ists’ who study these things now believe that while it’s likely such a settlement did exist, it was probably a larger civilization over a larger area that just one specific city.

Preston’s book takes on one such effort to locate what’s left of the civilization. The book debunks claims to have found such a city in the 1930s (when these exploration expeditions were quite common). Those 1930s expeditions are where the book gets its name from, though.

Preston ends up joining a joint Honduran & American expedition to a previously unsearched area, where lidar technology indicates extensive archaeological sites hidden by the rainforest. The site ends up being a large pre-Hispanic settlement – with plazas, terracing, canals, roads, etc… The site indicated that in this area once was an extensive, fairly advanced civilization. It was also determined to be abandoned approximately 500 years ago. While this city was an invaluable find, the existence of La Ciudad Blanca remains uncertain. The city Preston’s expedition found is modernly called ‘City of the Jaguar.’

Preston’s book was quite interesting and I learned a lot from it (I don’t know that much about South America, so it’s not surprising I learned a lot). In addition to the discovery of the abandoned settlement, Preston recounts the history and geography of the area, mostly remote tropical rainforest, as well as the trials and tribulations of the expedition – dehydration, mud, parasites, poisonous snakes. So, you know, all everyone’s favorite things.

The book was interesting and I learned a lot. Would recommend.