Report from Santa Fe; Doug Preston

music Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Taos, New Mexico. I'm Lorraine Mills and welcome to Report from Santa Fe. I am so excited today. Our guest is Doug Preston. Thank you so much for joining us. Well, it's great to be here, Lorraine. Well, you are a New York Times bestselling author. You co-write these wonderful pen-aggressed series of mysteries with Lincoln Child. You've got about 20 of those. I think they're called techno-thrillers. Oh, they're techno-thrillers, exactly. And then you've got five that you've written by yourself. It started back with Relic a long time ago, and then it goes through this one of your nonfiction ones, Cities of Gold. We'll talk about your nonfiction a little later. This is just one of the many pen-aggressed mysteries. They're just thrilling.

And one of my favorites, The Monster of Florence. This is a nonfiction book that will probably blow your mind. This is what happened when the author lived in Italy. Mysteries come to him. He doesn't have to find them. But we're here today because you've just completed work on this extraordinary excavation of a previously undiscovered site in Honduras. You've got a very exciting upcoming event. Very soon, October 20th, at the Atlantic Theater in Santa Fe, I have been after you for months because this story's been embargoed. And now you get to tell us about it. It's a benefit for the School of Advanced Research. First tell me who they are and why you're hooked up with them. Well, the School of Advanced Research is one of Santa Fe's great, great institutions. It's been here for over 100 years. And they do very high-level research and anthropology and archaeology. And they also support Indian artists. It's a great institution.

And so I'm very happy to be doing a benefit lecture. This is the first time these images will be seen in public and the last time, because I'm not going to be giving any more lectures like this. So I'm pretty excited. So the title of the lecture has the City of the Monkey God been revealed highlights from a Honduran rainforest expedition. And in support of that, and the reason we can finally do this, this is the October 2015 National Geographic. And you have written this extraordinary story with extraordinary pictures called The Lure of the Lost City. So we'll talk to me about going there. We've got a lot of history to do. We've got a lot of things to talk about. But so how did you get involved with this? You wrote about it for the New Yorker. You wrote about it for National Geographic. How did you get involved with this expedition? Well, 20 years ago, I met Steve Elkins, who was the expedition leader, and he had become obsessed with finding this famous legendary lost city in the Honduran jungle.

Sometimes called Ciudad Blanca, the white city, and sometimes called the Lost City of the Monkey God. One thing about lost cities for political correctness, they say we're not supposed to say we can in talking, but officially it's a politically incorrect term to say lost city. We're supposed to say previously undocumented sight. That's right, because of course these cities aren't lost. Many of them are known to the indigenous people who've known them for centuries. So the only discovery is us discovering it, they're not really being discovered. But I used the word term lost city because it's simple. This is a lost city, and it is lost, and it was a city. Well, one of the things about National Geographic in the whole era, a hundred years ago, there was so much passion in Britain and in America for these discoveries. There was Hiram Bingham discovered Machu Picchu in 1912, and then the two artists, Stevens and Cart.

Catherwood. Catherwood found Copan, this incredible Honduran ruin with stelae and temples and thrones. And then of course the famous one Howard Carter with King Tutts, Tomb. So people were just passionate about this. Of course the most famous fictional adventurer and explorer would be Indiana Jones, but when you hear lost city, when you talk about these cities, that passion that we all have for these discoveries just rises up. So let's talk a little about the history of this location. There was, like you said, the legend of Ciudad Blanca, the white city, but in the forties of the famous explorer, Theodore Mord had gone there. He found some interesting artifacts, and he called it the lost city, the monkey god, but he didn't give any coordinates, he didn't say where it was. No, he didn't. He emerged from the jungle and the New York Times reported in a big headline, you know, lost city of the monkey god located.

And Mord refused to reveal the location because he was afraid of looting a natural fear. But he then went on, a World War II started, he was going to go back and excavate, he never did, he became actually involved as a spy. And then he hung himself, he committed suicide without ever revealing the location of the city. And no one has ever been able to find what city it was that he claimed to have found. So your friend, Steve Elkins, in 1994, let's talk about where this is. La Mosquita. La Mosquita. La Mosquita. It's a region of Honduras and parts of Nicaragua. It actually contains some of the last scientifically unexplored places on the surface of the earth. And the reason is because it's extremely mountainous. It's surrounded by impenetrable swamps. It's in a country with the highest murder rate in the world, extremely dangerous.

And these jungle areas are extremely dangerous in and of themselves. They're full of poisonous snakes, jaguars, of tropical disease. And for this reason, I mean it's incredible to think that actually in the 21st century, one could actually find a lost city in these areas. And yet that's exactly what happened here. So in his first expedition in the 90s, he did find a huge carved rock with the image of a man wearing a headdress. But then he gave up. They weren't dug out canoes. They abandoned those. They were walking. Just they just ran out of time and money and I'm sure they were exhausted. But through talking about the new scientific discoveries that are taking a lot of that suffering and legwork out of exploring. Well that's right. Elkins learned on that first expedition that you can't find anything in the jungle just wandering around. I mean in 12 hours of hard travel, you're lucky to make one or two miles. I mean you literally have to physically cut your way through this jungle.

So he first he went to NASA and he got these NASA scientists who were looking at images from space. And he identified three target areas, which he called T1, T2 and T3, which had never been explored. Deep in the mountains and looked like they might be hiding ruins. But it wasn't until 2010 that he discovered a new technique called LIDAR, which is light detection and ranging. And this technique actually allows you to see what's on the ground under the thickest triple canopy jungle foliage. And so in 2012 he launched the LIDAR expedition. I was on this expedition where they brought a plane down from the University of Houston from the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping. And they flew it in a lawnmower pattern over these three target areas. And I never forget on May 5th the imagery was processed. It was uploaded to Houston and then downloaded to a laptop computer and under us. And there it was and we're looking at in T1 an obvious city.

There was a pyramid, more than one pyramid, there were plazas, there were irrigation canals. You could see mounds and linear, I mean it was just an extraordinary experience. So instantly to find a lost city and in T3 they found an even larger lost city, which by the way has not yet been visited. And so as soon as that occurred, Elkins immediately began planning a ground expedition because there is this thing in archaeology called Ground True Thing. It's not really a discovery until you go there on the ground. And that expedition I was on and that was accomplished in February of this year. And it was amazing. We went in and we were able to confirm everything we saw from the air. And we made some wonderful, wonderful discoveries on top of that. Well, let's take a minute and look at this video clip, starring Steve Elkins. And it's just a short clip, but what I want our audience to understand, we're here in New Mexico and the denseness of rainforests, of this kind of tropics.

You can see it in this clip, let's just take a minute and have a look at it. There's a heap. There are inscriptions right here. There are? Yes. We hit Peter, guys. Wow, this is awesome. I've been doing this for almost 20 years. This project captured my imagination. And to me, it's a privilege and very exciting to be able to discover something new and increase our knowledge of the planet that we live on. What could be better? I'm definitely planning on going back. I mean, how could you not go back? We made this great discovery and we have to follow through it. So we hope to go at either the end of this year or the beginning of next year and try and figure out exactly what's going on there. When we go back, we're definitely bringing a team of top archaeologists to excavate some of the things that we found and try and get a better understanding of what exactly was going on in the past. We're going to be working with the hunter and government.

They've been great. They've really been supportive and they're very interested in doing this the correct way. We're also getting support from National Geographic and private entities here in the United States. In five to ten years, it is my hope that there will be some kind of a scientific research station built at the first site that we've been looking at. This will enable scientists around the world of all different disciplines to come to study. This very unique ecosystem as well as the cultural patrimony. I think this will be a great benefit for Honduras as well as the whole world at large. Well, that gives you just a hint of what you went through. What I want you to tell me is what was it like when you were in the helicopter for the first time going into this tropical rainforest? The only way to get in there is by helicopter. It was a joint Honduran-American expedition. The Honduran military were helping out. But I'll never forget flying into this valley.

T1 is truly a lost world. It's completely ringed by impenetrable mountains. There's only one way in which the notch in these mountains that the river flows out of. The helicopter flew through this notch and these incredible mountains all around and all of a sudden you're in this gorgeous valley. It looks like a tropical paradise. You can see egrets flying below. You can see the treetops thrashing with the movement of monkeys. And it's sunny. The light was gleaming off the the sinuous bends of the river. Well, we have a picture of this river. This is just one of them. This is an unknown river very close to the site. That's right. That's the river exactly. And you can see it's gorgeous and there was no sign of any human entry in there. No roads, no trails, no smoke coming up from the trees, nothing like that. Here you are, our explorer in the river.

It's actually an easier way to get around in the river than on land to the jungle. Well, it is. In fact, the rivers are the highways of the Mosquedia jungle. You're crazy to try to go over land. You simply wait up the rivers. And some of them are, that river was fairly tough. There was waterfalls and rapids and things like that. So you say the preferred means of transit is the helicopter? That's it. And that's our landing zone. It's a little area right on the banks of the river. In fact, right behind that helicopter where those trees are is where the lost city is. And it's just hidden in those trees. You described what they had cut down. Tell us a little about the background of all that field of flowers that were cut. Birds of paradise. That's right. Well, it's a strange story because just as we were about to take off one of the hundred and air force pilots at home, my grandmother used to talk about that legendary city. And she said that the Spanish actually found it.

But they made a mistake. They picked the flowers and they all died. He said, don't pick any flowers. And they said, no, I'm not going to pick any flowers. But the landing zone for the helicopter had been a field of heliconia flowers. These lobster claw bird of paradise that they'd mischetted. So the helicopter is actually landing on an entire strewn area of flowers. And I saw that and I thought, oh, we are in trouble. Yes, yes, yes. Then after you landed, you all started moving toward the ruins. And one of the things that so many people complemented this expedition was it was really multidisciplinary. You had your archaeologists. You had ethnobotnists. And you were the writer. We have to explain what your role was in this. Well, I was the writer. I was working for National Geographic magazine. And yes, it was. It was truly remarkable.

They had three archaeologists, a Honduran archaeologist and two American archaeologists. We had ethnobotnists because they wanted to examine what plants were growing. Because it's very, you know, this city was abandoned probably five, six hundred years ago. But they thought that there might be many useful plants that might still be growing that they could see. So that way we had to do. What possible curative properties these plants might have? Yeah, exactly. And we had an anthropologist who went and spoke with indigenous people living in the area. Although in this valley, there were no indigenous people, but you went outside the valley. And then there were, of course, Honduran soldiers who were with us protecting us carrying automatic weapons. Not that we were going to run into anybody in this valley, but just in case. Well, I have a picture here of one of the sites that you've found. There was a place where it was apparently an offeratory where there were these beautifully carved.

And they're half buried here. You can just see that there's seeking out, but some of the design motifs are amazing. They're all marked with crime tape. And there's guards around it so that nobody messes with it. That's right. It was amazing. Across the river, the first day we were there, we waited across the river and cut a path up into the pyramid that we'd found. And I just have to tell you, the jungle is so thick that you can't see anything. I mean, standing at the base of this pyramid, you would not have known it was a pyramid. All you know is that the ground suddenly slopes upward at a very steep angle. Well, we climbed the pyramid. We got to the top. Again, you can't see anything. But the archaeologist confirmed it was indeed an earthen pyramid. And then we came down the pyramid into the plaza, the main plaza of the city, which was so thick again, you can't see anything at all. But the archaeologists had GPS machines. They had downloaded all the light our imagery so they knew where we were. They were able to map everything.

But then the second day, an incredible discovery was made at the base of the pyramid was an enormous offering of stone sculptures. And just the heads were poking out of the ground. They were almost completely buried. And you can see, here's an example. This is so breathtaking to me. This is describing it. Well, this is a mysterious object that they call a matadi, which it's not what we know as matadi's here in New Mexico. It's a large stone throne decorated with an animal head. And that's a, the archaeologist believe that's a weird jaguar, as in a werewolf. But it's a shaman dressed in a jaguar skin who was entering an altered state, perhaps through drugs. And that's what that particular sculpture depicts. And that's a whole tradition in Central American shamanism, is that animal human transformation. They have, they adopt an animal form and they're able to conduct spiritual business or metaphysical business in that physical form. Exactly.

So this is one of the most thrilling ones. And I saw you can see as the liars and you can see that. I mean, it's just such a justification of all the effort that you had gone into this expedition. Yeah. And in fact, in this lecture I'm giving at the lens that I'll be showing photographs of this cache of objects, which have not yet been excavated. But there were enormous jars of snake motifs and vulture heads on them. There were these metadies, which are actually probably ceremonial thrones for royalty. And when they're excavated in January, probably underneath, they will find royal burials. So it's going to be really exciting in the next few months. Well, I've waited and waited, you know, for you to be able to talk about this. So I'll be there for sure. The issue of looters, you had armed guards. Obviously, there's nobody in there. And you can't publicize too much where this is because some tomb robbers will come and try to loot it. So I mentioned that it's left guarded.

And the president of Honduras, how did he react to this? Well, the Hondurans were very, very excited by this. This was, you know, front page news in Honduras. This is a country racked by violence, crime, and narco trafficking. And there isn't a lot of good news. And here was this wonderful news that this incredible ruin had been found. And it's something that, you know, connects Hondurans with their pre-Columbian past. And so it was very important to them. So the president of Honduras flew out to the site. He ordered the army in to protect it. They're still there now. And they've been incredibly supportive. I can't tell you how good it's been working with the Hondurans. You know, it's been quite a good experience. Well, you have family in Maine. Spent time in Maine. And I noticed that your hometown newspaper up there in Maine. The headline was, Maine journalist risks snake-infested jungle to find lost city. Now, the risk are huge.

You've always taken risks as a journalist. But let's talk about some of the risks that you faced. Particularly the snakes, of course. The Faradilans? That's right. Well, you know, when we were landing, I was looking down thinking, that's a garden of Eden down there. How beautiful is that? But once we were on the ground, you realize this is not only not a garden of Eden, but it's an extremely dangerous environment. I mean, first of all, you're assaulted by insects. And many of these are disease-carrying insects of severe tropical diseases. And then, the area is completely infested with Faradilans snakes, which are the deadliest snake in the new world. Kill more people than any other snake in the new world. They're very aggressive. They're not like rattlesnakes where you go to the hospital and you get some shots and you're okay. If you're bitten by a Faradilans, you're very likely going to die. At the very least, they're going to have to amputate the limb that it bit. And even though we had antivenom, there was just, you know, no way to evacuate someone to a hospital from this area quickly.

You know, there were much of the time fogged in. It was pouring rain. The helicopters couldn't get in to get you out. And so, and the first night we were there, in fact, I was the one who found it. I was, you know, we basically hadn't even set up camp. It was pitch black. And I was walking to my hammock with a flashlight. And here is this gigantic Faradilans coiled up in striking position, very aroused, very upset at us in its territory. I called out in one of the jungle, these SAS guys, who were sort of doing all the jungle logistics, came over and everyone came over. And he said, you know, good God, that's the largest Faradilans I've ever seen. He was British. And he said he was going to move it. He cut a stick, forked stick. He tried to move it, but it was huge. It was over six feet long. And he finally had to wrestle it to the ground and cut its head off. And meanwhile, the snake is spraying venom everywhere. And even after its head was cut off, it continued to bite. And the headless snake started crawling away.

I mean, it was such a scene. The poor guy was covered with the snake's venom, which he had to get off himself right away, because it's a deadly poisonous. The snake's fangs were more than an inch long. Oh, my. It was a terrifying experience. And we saw Faradilans' every single day. It's a miracle that somebody wasn't bitten. Well, when you had told me that upon return, many of the people in this expedition became very ill, I thought it was like the curse of King Tut's tomb, and you shouldn't have been excavating these burial grounds. No, it's worse than that. Talk to me about what happened, because you were one of the 23 who got this. Yes, well, it's a, you know, when we got back out of the jungle, we thought, this is wonderful. We managed to get through this expedition. Nobody got hurt. Nobody was bitten by a snake. Nobody got sick. Well, about a month or two later, it turned out that we hadn't quite escaped so easily. It starts off as you're covered with bug bites

when you get out. Eventually, in about a month, they go away, but one bite was not going away, and it was getting worse, and it was starting to enlarge, and starting to become an open wound. And it eventually came out that we all had Leishmaniasis, which is of the deadliest parasitical disease in the world, second only to malaria. And we were, many of the expedition members were then treated at the National Institutes of Health, you know, down in Bethesda. And it turns out that we have the worst kind. It's a mucocutaneous Leishmaniasis. It's a variety called Leishmania, Braziliansis. And it's essentially, well, I mean, frankly, it's incurable, and they also call it white leprosy, because it attacks your nose and mouth, and eventually your face falls off. I'm laughing, you know. But, you know, we all got treatment at the NIH. We all are participating in a study,

because they're very interested in it. We have wonderful doctors down there. It's a wonderful example of our tax dollars being spent on something worthy that private industry cannot do, because Leishmaniasis is one of the most neglected tropical diseases in the world. It kills over 50,000 people a year, two million people get it, and yet the pharmaceutical company is not working on it, because the only people who get it are poor people in the tropics. Yeah. So the NIH has a huge lab devoted to studying the disease. They're breeding sandflies infected with Leish, and they're breeding mice infected with Leish, and they're looking for a way to create a vaccine. Well, I'm hoping for your speedy recovery. It might be a lifetime battle, isn't it? Well, you know, the treatment is quite horrible, but they allow your immune system to knock it down to the point where you feel fine and you are fine,

and hopefully it stays that way for the rest of your life. Well, I'm so grateful that you came today, and our guest today is Doug Preston. We have a chance to see these unseen photographs of these objects and everything. In Santa Fe, it's a benefit for the School of Advanced Research. It's October 20th, at 6.30, at the Lenswick Theatre. I have waited so long. I will certainly be there. Is there anything else that you want to tell us what... Oh, yes, the Explorer himself. Steve Elkins will be there. Oh, yes. Steve Elkins will be there, and he's going to come out on stage and answer questions. But also, and this is a surprise, the other filmmaker who financed the expedition, Bill Benson, is going to be there at a reception at La Fonda afterwards, which by the way, everyone is invited to. It's a $60 contribution to the school, but it's well worth it.

They'll be food. They'll be drinking. You'll be able to meet Bill Benson, who financed this whole thing. Well, I want people to go out and get the lure of the lost city in the latest national geographic. And there are many of your other books we didn't get to talk much about Montserrat Florence. But what are you working on now? Well, you know, I actually have a contract now to write a book about the lost city of the monkey garden, the search for it. And it's just such an interesting story. It stretches all the way back to the time of Cortez. There were rumors of this great, you know, rich provinces in the interior of Honduras. It's just a wonderful story. It's many layered. Yes. Well, thank you for sharing what you can with us today. I really appreciate it. And I'll see you at the Lansing. Well, Marina is really great. You've asked wonderful questions. Well, it's fun. But I think of those snakes and leash. I'm not ready for that. But I am ready to thank your audience for being with us today on report from Santa Fe. I'm Lorraine Mills, and we'll see you next week.

Past archival programs of report from Santa Fe are available at the website report from Santa Fe dot com. If you have questions or comments, please email info at report from Santa Fe dot com. Report from Santa Fe is made possible in part by grants from the members of the National Education Association of New Mexico, an organization of professionals who believe that investing in public education is an investment in our state's economic future. And by a grant from the Healey Foundation, Taos, New Mexico.