Chris Fisher greeted President Hernández on the landing pad with an urgent gift: a brand-new pair of snake gaiters to put on before he went any farther. We stood by while the president cheerfully wrapped them around his calves, chatting in English with Steve, Chris, and the ambassador. Dressed in a guayabera shirt and a Panama hat, Hernández was not a tall man; he had a friendly, boyish face, and carried himself without any of the stiffness or pomp one might expect from the country’s leader. Indeed, I had noticed that when people entered the T1 valley, a place so completely cut off from the world, distinctions and hierarchical divisions seemed to fall away. I found myself, for example, rolling up my sleeve and comparing my leishmaniasis scars with those of Lt. Col. Oseguera.
I followed as the president and his entourage began the hike up to the site, toiling up the earthen staircase and piling into the cache area, hemmed in by jungle. Chris’s police tape was soon ignored and everyone crowded into the excavated area, tromping about and posing for photographs. I could see Chris trying to maintain his cool, a nervous smile plastered on his face.
The president was energized. This was more than an official duty. The first object to be removed, the stone vessel with the vulture heads, had been left in situ, on a pedestal of earth—exactly as it had been set in place as an offering five hundred years before. The president knelt next to it, along with Chris Fisher, Steve, Ramón Espinoza, and Virgilio. Steve placed his hand on the jar and said a few words. “It’s been a long twenty-three years for this moment—finally! And it will probably be another two hundred years to find what’s here.” Chris and President Hernández then grasped the lugs on the massive vessel as the cameras flashed, dislodged it from its bed of centuries, and lifted it from the shallow hole.
While the artifacts were being packed for their trip out, I interviewed Hernández, who spoke with enthusiasm about the discovery and what it would mean for Honduras. As a child he had heard legends of Ciudad Blanca and had been moved by the news in 2012, when he was president of the Honduran Congress, that our shot-in-the-dark lidar survey of Mosquitia had turned up not one but two lost cities. “This is an archaeological and historic event,” he said. “This culture is fascinating, but we’ve got a lot to learn, and it’s going to take some time.” He added, proudly, “We are happy to share this knowledge with the world.” I thought about Juan Carlos’s observation that Hondurans lacked a strong national identity and a sense of their own history. Perhaps we all shared a hope that this discovery might change that.
When the artifact was packed and ready, the archaeologists and soldiers carried it down the narrow jungle trail, a person at each corner, mimicking the litter technique used by Howard Carter at King Tut’s tomb. The two artifacts, the jar and the were-jaguar metate, were stored aboard a helicopter.
Though I had anticipated a slightly longer stay, as I watched these activities I was suddenly told my ticket out of the jungle was the third helicopter, departing within the minute. Once again I had to seize my pack and scramble out of T1 in a hurry, with little time to wax sentimental. Soon we were aloft, sweeping above the treetops, heading for Catacamas. It would be my last visit to the valley.
When we arrived at the airstrip, everything was set up for an important national ceremony. A tent was pitched behind the lab, with chairs, loudspeakers, wide-screen televisions, and food. The informality of the jungle vanished in a sea of military officers, dignitaries, ministers, and press. With pomp and fanfare the crates were taken out of the helicopters and carried down the tarmac, parade-style, between lines of Honduran press and distinguished guests. As a flat-panel screen played a stirring video, Chris and an assistant, wearing latex gloves, unpacked the two artifacts and arranged them in museum cases on the stage, specially built to receive them. The were-jaguar metate sat on one side and the vulture jar on the other. When they were fixed in their cases and the glass tops put back on, the audience applauded the artifacts.
Chris gave a short speech, talking about how important it was to preserve the site and the surrounding rainforest and warning about the grave threat of the encroaching clear-cutting. “For the first time,” he told the audience, “we are able to study this culture systematically.”
President Hernández then gave a brief but moving speech, and his words took on an almost religious feeling. “God has blessed us to be alive in this moment so special in the history of Honduras,” he said, adding that everyone assembled there had “great expectations of what this will mean for Honduras and the world.” The discovery of T1, he said, was important beyond the benefit to archaeology. He outlined a vision of what it meant to Hondurans: Not only would it encourage tourism and help train a new generation of Honduran archaeologists; it also spoke to the very identity of the country and its people. Later he would build a special room in the presidential palace to display some of the artifacts.
Honduras is a spectacularly interesting country, whose people have a bifurcating history that goes back to both the Old World and the New. While the Spanish history of Honduras is well known, its pre-Columbian history (beyond Copán) is still an enigma. People need history in order to know themselves, to build a sense of identity and pride, continuity, community, and hope for the future. That is why the legend of the White City runs so deep in the Honduran national psyche: It’s a direct connection to a pre-Columbian past that was rich, complex, and worthy of remembrance. Five hundred years ago, the survivors of the catastrophe at T1 who walked out the city did not just disappear. Most of them lived on, and their descendants are still part of the vibrant mestizo culture of Honduras today.
Hernández closed out his speech with one final, dramatic proclamation. The city in T1 would henceforth be given a real name: La Ciudad del Jaguar, the City of the Jaguar.
CHAPTER 27
We became orphans, oh my sons!
When humans first walked into the Americas over the Bering Land Bridge fifteen to twenty thousand years ago,* our species existed everywhere as small, wandering bands of hunter-gatherers. There were no cities, no towns, no farming or animal husbandry. We were spread out and moving all the time, only rarely encountering other groups. The low population densities prevented most potential diseases from gaining a foothold. People suffered from parasites and infections, but they did not get most of the diseases so familiar in recent human history—measles, chicken pox, colds, the flu, smallpox, tuberculosis, yellow fever, and bubonic plague, to name only a few.
In the last ten thousand years, as human population densities increased, disease moved into center stage of human affairs. Pandemics changed the very arc of human history. Despite our dazzling technology, we are still very much at the mercy of pathogens, old and new.