The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story

As the team heads to the site the second day, anthropologist Alicia González gets stuck and sinks into a mudhole, “like something straight out of a B horror film” (150), before they pull her out. They arrive at the site, where the team investigates, photographs, and shoots interviews during intermittent downpours. They venture to an earthen embankment near the camp that was probably a reservoir. They also explore a possible Mesoamerican ballcourt, suggesting a connection with the Maya culture to the north and west.

As they return to camp, they discover dozens of exquisitely carved stone sculptures, “like thrones or tables” (153), and stone jars, all with carved animal heads. Excavations of the area will later reveal hundreds of such artifacts, and this is known as a “cache” in archaeology. Such enormous surface caches are not characteristic of Mesoamerica but are known from the Mosquitia culture, though they have never been found intact before.

The helicopter flies in with a Honduran military officer and Virgilio Paredes, the chief of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology (IHAH).

The team explores the ruins again on the third and fourth day, venturing further into the bush. The group realizes how impossible it would have been to find and investigate the site without lidar and GPS, due to the thick vegetation.