Ancient Lost City Long Fabled to Reside in Honduras' Rainforest Possibly Found

Hidden beneath the thick canopy of trees of the Honduran rain forests, a team of researchers believe they have spotted what may be the remains of the fabled ancient city of la Ciudad Blanca – the White City.

References to the city date back at least as far as Hernan Cortes who, in a letter to the Spanish emperor Charles V in 1526, spoke of a hearing about a province located in the interior of Honduras, the riches of which exceeded Mexico.

In 1839, the American diplomat and aspiring archaeologist John Lloyd Sturges went in search of ruins in western Honduras where he found the Maya city of Copan, buying it from a local landowner for fifty dollars.

Stephens went on to explore other ruins in Central America and even went so far as to publish his discoveries in what became a lavish, best-selling coffee table book; however, while his findings were significant, the White City nevertheless eluded the explorer.

Since Stephens’ travels, researchers have determined that as early as 250 B.C. much of Mesoamerica south of Mexico was dominated by the Maya civilization up until its collapse in the 10th century.

However, for years scholars avoided the dense, dangerous jungles of areas east and south of Copan, deeming the people who lived there as “primitive.”

Still, however, rumor of lost cities – a rumor that later evolved into just one Lost City – continued. Now, almost 500 years after Cortes first heard of the great metropolis, scientists may finally have found it.

In a high-tech archaeological exploration including a team of University of Houston scientists along with documentary filmmaker Steven Elkins and underwriter Bill Benenson, the group combined their wide range of capabilities to scan the forest tops with laser-based equipment aboard a slow, low-altitude aircraft.

In doing so, they eventually identified what appear to be remnants of an entire world long forgotten – canals, ceremonial sites, terraced agriculture and all.

The process, according to an article in The New Yorker, made use of the imaging technique known as light-detection-and-ranging (lidar). which works by bombarding the terrain below with billions of laser pulses in order to gain an image of what lies beneath.

In all, it took the researchers months to map the hundreds of potential ruins at several sites in the target area, the results of which Elkins and his colleagues shared at a geophysical science conference in Cancun, Mexico.

Whether or not the city is, in fact, the “lost” one, is not yet clear: the team plans to explore the structures on the ground later this year.