The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story (Book Review)

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Title: The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story
Author: Douglas Preston
Publication Date: 2017 (Grand Central)
Producer: Hachette Audio
Narrated by: Bill Mumy
Recording Time: 10 hours, 29 minutes

Summary

via wiki:

The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story is a 2017 nonfiction book by Douglas Preston. It is about a project headed by documentary filmmakers Steve Elkins and Bill Benenson that used LiDAR to search for archaeological sites in the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve of the Gracias a Dios Department in the Mosquitia region of eastern Honduras. The expedition was a joint Honduran-American multidisciplinary effort involving Honduran and American archaeologists, anthropologists, engineers, geologists, biologists and ethnobotanists.

Elkins’ search was inspired by rumors of La Ciudad Blanca, also known as the White City. Preston cites mentions by Spanish conquistadors and others. The title of the book derives from four expeditions launched in the 1930s by the Museum of the American Indian (Heye Foundation) in which Honduran informants described to explorers, including Theodore Morde, sensationalized stories of a lost city with a pyramid topped by a giant stone statue of a monkey god somewhere in the Mosquitia region. Preston’s book debunks Morde’s claim of having found a city.

After a privately funded lidar survey revealed complex archaeological sites under the rainforest cover, Preston accompanied a joint Honduran-American expedition to do ground truthing of the lidar results. They were able to confirm the presence of large abandoned prehispanic settlements and to document plazas, terracing, canals, roads, earthen structures including a pyramid, and concentrations of artifacts, among them decorated cylindrical stone vessels and metates, confirming the existence of an ancient city. The official name of the principal archaeological site that was mapped has been changed to the City of the Jaguar.

Preston also documents the travails of several members of the expedition who contracted severe cases of leishmaniasis, a disease caused by parasites that are transmitted by the bite of sandflies.

The book describes decades of exploration and archaeological surveys in the region as early as the 1920s, as well as the searches of early adventurers for the mythical lost city. Prior to the publication of the book, Preston reported the findings in the New Yorker magazine and National Geographic magazine. The discovery of the city generated criticism from some archaeologists who were not involved in the project.

The book was a number 1 bestseller on the New York Times bestseller list. It was named a notable book of the year by the New York Times and a best book of the year by National Geographic, the Boston Globe, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

THE REVIEW

Douglas Preston’s book is only partly abut the 21st century discovery of a long lost civilization in the remote rainforests of Honduras. Much of the rest of it is about the winding circumstances that led to the discovery and the various controversies that surrounded this achievement. It was fascinating to read about his trip into arguably the world’s most remote jungle, his encounters with monkeys who had never seen human beings and enormous venomous snakes (with Preston nearly dying more than once), and then his perspective as to the location of the site itself. It was equally fascinating to read about the history of Honduras, both ancient and more recent. He provides a detailed history lesson on the corrupt manner by which the United Fruit Company abused their local power and how that led to the use of the term “banana republic.” He also gives a more recent history lesson of how the government changing hands impacted their project.

A recurrent point of discussion in the book is the reaction to it by archaeologists who were not a part of the project. Keeping in mind that the expedition was done with the participation of archaeologist Dr. Chris Fisher, from Colorado State University, and the cooperation and participation of the government of Honduras, other archaeologists reflexively and viciously attacked Fisher, Elkins, and everyone involved in the project, its findings, and their motivations. They mounted actual protests. They wrote derisive articles. Despite that, Preston still consulted with some of the project’s biggest critics for their opinions on the findings and shares their opinions in the book.

One of the critics was Dr. John Hoopes from the University of Kansas. In a story that summarizes the knee-jerk antagonism of the project’s archaeological opponents, Preston recounts an incident wherein Hoopes mocked the size of the discovered settlement on Facebook, only to have it pointed out to him shortly after that he was reading the map scale incorrectly. The site was far larger than he realized. You might argue that Preston choosing to include this incident in the book is petty, however, Hoopes’ decision to lazily mock the project publicly might have earned the public rebuke. Justified or not, the back and forth illustrates the toxic environment of the field in general. If archaeology by its own nature functions as something of a gatekeeping discipline (authority for interpreting the past lends itself to that), and the gatekeepers do not share the same present-day perspectives, then the inevitable in-fighting is sure to be nasty.

Archaeology straddles the hard sciences and the social sciences, with much of the latter being heavily influenced by one’s present-day worldview. It is impossible not to bring oneself into the process of interpretation. The measurer cannot accurately measure him or herself. This is a problem that seems to have always affected archaeology. Earlier generations almost certainly had a too ethno-European bias toward their work and its interpretation, whereas there is an undercurrent today that might too reflexively label anything disagreeable as colonialist or racist – even if the project is controlled by local people as was the case here.

Preston eventually discusses his belief that the criticism of this project is motivated by a particular politic issue. He writes that the antagonistic wing of the archaeological community did not view the government of Honduras as legitimate, so they opposed the entire undertaking. The book gives voice to the concerns of both sides, and Preston seems to be sympathetic to both sides. Unfortunately, there are no easy answers and many of the people involved seem uninterested in middle ground.

Over the last ten to fifteen years, much of what archaeologists believed about the pre-Columbian Americas in the 20th century has been forced to change. The story from this book plays a role in those revisions. The technology of LiDAR has made it possible to find lost settlements in the densest jungles and rainforests on earth – including the one discovered and catalogued by this book. Preston tells a story of how documentary filmmakers had the idea to use LiDAR to scout the rainforest of Honduras for a fabled lost city. They not only uncovered a city, they uncovered an entire civilization. This discovery also cemented LiDAR as an invaluable tool for archaeologists and forced some of the more reluctant to start utilizing it.

The site, located in the remote Mosquitia region of eastern Honduras, revealed an advanced civilization that appeared to have stronger connections to Columbia, in South America, than its Maya neighbors to the immediate north. As a result, we now know with more certainty than before that the indigenous populations of the pre-Columbian Americas were far more interconnected than some may have previously believed. The site and its discovery also encourages belief in the possibility that more similar places may be hiding under the dense and overgrown rainforests of the Americas. In fact, subsequent to the publication of this book, archaeologists have begun to use the LiDAR technology described in the book to scan the Amazon rainforest, with discoveries announced even recently.

The Lost City and the LiDAR discoveries that followed also provide a dark implication. The native population was much larger when Columbus arrived than has long been believed. Where did they go and why did we not know about them? The answer is disease. The arrival of the Spanish unleashed an apocalypse of smallpox, measles, tuberculosis, and more that is almost incomprehensible. As the diseases often outpaced the Europeans as they traveled inland, entire civilizations were almost entirely wiped out in a matter of a few years. The civilization in Honduras, discussed herein, is one such place the Spanish never visited. Though it is not known for certain, the working hypothesis of The Lost City is that it was simply abandoned by its few remaining survivors. In a few years, the surrounding rainforest covered it up. As Preston notes, when the French and English arrived in the Americas a century after the Spanish, they encountered civilizations in a post / on-going Apocalyptic period. The diseases brought to the Americas by the Spanish wiped out huge populations of people in the southeastern part of North America, as well as huge populations in central and South America – much of which we do not yet even have a handle on and won’t until the Amazon has been much more fully studied. We may spend the next several decades revising upward the devastation wrought by disease.

As Preston notes, the Spanish chronicled this devastation. It appears though that their chronicles were dismissed to a great extent as exaggerations – at least until these recent proofs of population size may have caused re-thinking. Preston points out that the Spanish records indicate that they bemoaned the death they carried with them, though not for always altruistic reasons. Some of the Spanish may have planned to make slaves of the indigenous people but were unable to do so because they were dying. The death they carried with them was bad for business. Others tried to make sense of the apocalypse of death through a religious lens. However the Spanish viewed it though, the eventual cataclysm seems to have been inevitable. Europeans endured centuries of plagues leading up to Columbus’ voyage. They developed immunities to various diseases over a long span of time. The natives went through none of that. The moment contact was made – regardless of the intentions – the indigenous of the Americas were doomed to face centuries of various plagues, all at once.

The book in its last few chapters goes in yet another direction. After discussing history – both ancient and recent – as well as politics, and then the expedition itself, Preston spends the last few chapters writing about the physical toll the trip took on its members. Half of the group, including Preston, returned home with an incurable parasitic disease called leishmaniasis. The book details his symptoms, his difficulties getting a diagnosis, the history of the disease, the potential novelty of the strain he acquired, and the dangers of the imperfect treatments. If the idea of meeting a fer-de-lance snake does not put you off of wanting to make this journey yourself, then the parasitic disease spread by sand mites likely will.

Overall, I really enjoyed the book. Douglas Preston is an excellent writer – as you might expect from someone who writers for The New Yorker and National Geographic – and I also enjoyed the audio narration by Bill Mumy. The Lost City of the Monkey God utilizes a great adventure story to inform its readers on several other equally interesting topics that are intermingled with the discovery itself. I highly recommend it.

Have you read The Lost City of the Monkey God? If so, what did you think?