Pre-Columbian Cultures

By RICARDO P. MADRID M.
Special to Honduras This Week

The legend of the pre-Columbian city commonly known as "Ciudad Blanca" or White City is very old. The ruins of this city reportedly exist near large deposits of white sand, from which it derived its name.

This capital city of the kingdom of Tlapalan, also known as "The ancient place where the aurora originates", is mentioned in Toltec and Mayan texts as most probably existing in northeastern Honduras in what is today known as La Mosquitia.

According to these ancient writings, Ciudad Blanca is the origin of the human deity called Quetzalcoatl by the Toltecs and Kukulkan by the Mayas and revered for having bestowed wisdom and knowledge on these cultures. This man-god and his disciples were said to have come from a race of white-skinned people. Who knows, maybe they were survivors of the lost continent of Atlantis or their descendants or ancient European explorers such as the Vikings.

In 1544 Cristobal Pedraza, Bishop of Honduras and protector of the Indians, wrote an account of his expedition east of Trujillo and sent it to the King of Spain. The bishop communicated that from a mountaintop vantage point he observed large Indian settlements in the flat lands of the Sico and Black river basins. His native guides said that east of the San Pablo Sierra existed a land called Veragua whose main city had skilled goldsmiths who cast gold artifacts, including gold plates from which the lords and nobles of this land ate. This account seems to initiate the legend of a mysterious lost city filled with treasure.

In 1939, U.S. explorer Theodore Morde claimed to have found the ruins of the lost city, where he saw the remains of a temple dedicated to a monkey god. During a five-month expedition for the American Indian Museum of the Heye Foundation of New York, his expedition cut through dense vegetation and navigated miles of waterways in dugout canoes in this vast uncharted land.

Near their final destination was a waterfall and rapids, with pure white sand along its course. These explorers finally arrived at a site that they later called the Lost City of the Monkey God. The ruins were walled and covered a large area with remains of large buildings, so it once must of had a population of thousands.

A monkey appears to move across a bridge (or branch of life) from left to right in this petroglyph at a site in the Mosquitia called Wapulbansirpi (Small Written Stone). According to one theory, the curved lines to the left could represent the beginning of the world, while those to the right the end of the world. It could be that the monkey is entering the mythical Lost City of the Monkey God, also known as the Ciudad Blanca or White City. (Photo by Ricardo Madrid.)

Two large stone columns with carved monkey effigies marked the long paved access to the stairway of the main temple, according to Morde. This stairway was flanked by solid stone banisters, on the left one there was the image of a spider, while on the right there was the carved image of a crocodile. On top of the pyramid shaped building there was a huge carved statue of the Monkey God with an altar for sacrifices before it.

Theodore Morde kept the exact location a secret to keep looters at bay, but published The City of the Monkey God six years later in English and Spanish. This publication described the ruins he found and also compared the pre-Columbian American Monkey God with Hanuman, the Monkey God of India. These are the only two Monkey God cults known to man.

Morde was a serious explorer with many discoveries to his credit. He promised he would return to study and restore these ruins. However, this would require much money which the Heye Foundation could not provide. Morde went to London to get financial backing for his expedition. To get this sponsorship, he had to provide certain details of the location and show proof, such as artifacts.

One day, when he walked toward the well known institution that would sponsor his expedition, Morde was run over and killed by an automobile. Pure coincidence? His friends didn't think so. They speculated that those who now had some of the information were implicated. However, without Morde's Pech Indian guides finding the exact location of the ruins in La Mosquitia, which is rated as one of the most impenetrable places on earth, the British institution's expeditions that followed failed to reach their objective.

D.H. Williams, an engineer from New Orleans, who had worked on the construction of the Lake Yojoa highway around the 1940s, reportedly visited the ruins twice. The first time he was looking for petroleum in the Mosquitia when his small plane had engine problems and he made an emergency landing near the ruins. Later, he went back and filmed the ruins that were exactly as Morde described them. Williams showed this film only to people he could trust because he said he was afraid that looters would destroy these important ruins.

In the near future the "Ciudad Blanca" just may be discovered. History has shown that legends and myths cannot be just dismissed as pure nonsense. The "mythical" Greek city of Troy was discovered by Schliemann in 1870, while the legendary Inca lost city of Machu Picchu was discovered by Hiram Bingham in 1911. As in the proceeding two examples, the majority of the public was skeptical as it is today concerning the existence of the lost White City.

Ricardo Madrid is a biologist, explorer and owner of Adventure Expeditions.

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