Laser Hunting the Lost City of Gold

With deference to Paul Simon, these are the days of lasers in the jungles, lasers in the jungle, somewhere. Using absurdly futuristic-sounding laser technology, researchers have discovered what looks to be an ancient lost city in the Honduran jungle, possibly untouched by humans for thousands of years. Flying high above the malaria, coral snakes and dense vegetation, which prohibit venturing into the jungles of the La Mosquitia region of Eastern Honduras on foot, American researchers created three-dimensional maps of the forest floor using “light detection and imaging," a type of optical radar called LiDAR. LiDAR works by shooting 125,000 laser pulses per second at the ground and measuring the speed at which they bounce back. The technology is so sensitive that it can pick up changes in height smaller than four inches. And while outfitting an airplane with LiDAR can cost $1.5 million, it holds the potential to replace costly, blind and groping expeditions into the jungle. That’s what Steve Elkins, an independent filmmaker and amateur archeologist, had planned on doing in Honduras before his expedition was washed out by Hurricane Mitch. Elkins had dreamed of searching for the legendary, lost Ciudad Blanca, the White City, for 20 years. People have searched for the Ciudad Blanca and its legendary gold, dating back to Hernán Cortés. One form of the legend—and there are legendary lost cities spanning mythologies of Mesoamerica—says the indiginous Pech people of Honduras lived in the Ciudad Blanca until they mistreated a Tawaka Indian man, who cursed the place while leaving. The curse led to disease and catastrophes and the Pechs had to clear out, reliquishing the city to the forest and legend. A scientist at NASA’s jet propulsion laboratory pointed out unusual features of this valley in La Mosquitia that might be hiding a city about 15 years ago. The valley was too remote for anyone to follow up on this lead until Elkins convinced the new National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping to give it a LiDAR scan. Researchers from the NCALM flew Cessna airplanes outfitted with LiDAR above a 60 square mile area of jungle over several days in 2012. “99 percent of what's reflected comes off leaves,” Douglas Preston, who covered the expedition for The New Yorker, told NPR. “But here and there, there are tiny gaps in the canopy where a laser beam can reach the ground, bounce off and go back up to the plane. And then with massive software processing, they're able to remove all the reflections from leaves, leaving only the ground.” The data was collected and sent to the University of Houston engineer Bill Carter, in West Virginia, to be analyzed. Within five minutes of looking at the data, Carter saw right angles and straight lines, telltale signs of human habitation. “He was thunderstruck,” Preston said. Carter “saw in this valley pyramids, structures, buildings, plazas, terracing, roads. He saw this incredible amount of archaeological features that he recognized immediately even though he's not an archaeologist.”

The network of plazas and pyramids spans three sites, the largest of which, T3, is a massive five square kilometers. The lead archeologists on the project, Christopher Fisher and Stephen Leisz of Colorado State University, told The Independent that the hidden city “was probably home to a sophisticated Mesoamerican society, with paved streets, parks, pyramids and an advanced irrigation system.”

To discourage looting or to keep ahead of would-be Indiana Joneses, researchers remain tight-lipped about where the site is exactly. After being untouched for a dozen centuries or so, scientists are eager to get to the sites before the loggers and looters do. Preston’s New Yorker piece notes that scientist might not reach the sites before the people who are illegally logging massive mahogany trees in La Mosquitia do. So they are planning to helicopter into the site in early 2014, although Elkins mentioned returning in the fall.

While Peru has transformed re-discovered lost cities (found cities?) into tourist attractions, the inhospitable La Mosquitia jungle surrounding the sites makes casts doubt on future vacations to the White City—if that’s even what this is.

@a_ben_richmond