Have They Found The Lost City of Gold, Ciudad Blanca?

Is it possible that they have found one of the legendary lost cities of gold? La Ciudad Blanca? The White City? Archaeologists from the University of Houston in conjunction with filmmakers, Bill Beneson and Steven Elkins, think they may have, and have been discussing their findings in Cancun, at the American Geophysical Union Meeting of the Americas (May 14-17).


Last year, Archaeologists, and filmmakers Beneson and Elkins, set out to find this lengendary city of gold in Honduras' Mosquitia region. An area that can only be accessed with any ease, by air or water. It is the location of one of the greatest lungs of the planet, the Biosphere Reserve of Rio Platano. Dense rainforest that is home to rare and protected species and many isolated indigenous tribes.

In the 1500's, infamous conquistador Hernando Cortes led an expedition into the La Mosquitia

jungle with little more than rumours at his back and a greed for gold in his heart, to find the famed golden city of Ciudad Blanca. Obviously, he failed. Had he been sporting the latest in LiDAR technology, he might not have, but of course, he was quite a few centuries too early for that. Thankfully.

LiDAR(Light Detection and Radar) technology, which uses laser pulses directing downward, allows for the low flying plane of these archaeologists and film makers to penetrate the dense canopy in order to map the ground topography below.

During their initial project last year, they flew over a site covering 120sq/km, mapping the entire

rainforest floor in that gridded zone with their small laser pulses until they came upon these exciting results. Seemingly manmade lineal features and mounds. The kind you won't usually find in nature. An obvious site of human ground disturbance.

But is it one of Cortes' lost cities of gold? Is this feature hidden beneath and within some of the world's thickest and most impenetrable rainforest, the White City?

This will be up for some hot debate after the findings are presented to the scientific community in Cancun this week.

From here, if it is decided this site is something worth throwing resources at, and I think we all can see that it is, then they will send an expedition team into the rainforest to investigate the features at ground level this year.

- MM

 

Image Sources - 

First Image: University of Houston Second Image: UTL Scientific