EscucharTEGUCIGALPA - Hidden in a lost and abundant jungle in the northeast of Honduras, hundreds of archeological sites have been discovered. Constructed 6000 years ago by a pre-Columbian civilization they have aroused the unlimited popular imagination: people seek a lost city.
The last discoveries from among the dense vegetation of the Plátano River biosphere, which covers some 390,000 square hectares, were made last August and the earliest in 1985. The site has been strictly maintained as a reserve, according to U.S. archeological expert George Hasemann who works for the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History (IHAH in Spanish).
The organization has officially registered the sites with information from residents of the region, indigenous Tawahkas, ``but we have not excavated them in order to protect them because they are scattered throughout the zone'' and would be difficult to guard. The region borders Nicaragua.
The details were revealed by Hasemann after information was published in U.S., Italian, and French papers which accorded the discovery of traces from a brilliant pre Mayan civilization to the U.S. satellite photography expert Steve Elkins.
Based on their sources, the international press believed that this story had all of the elements of an ``Indiana Jones'' movie, complete with treasure hunters dashing off to kill and die.
An enigma had risen around these archeological sites, given the locals' history of talking about a ``lost city'' or ``white city'', so called because of the stones used in the construction of these sites.
There are some who affirm, inconclusively, that the ``white city'' has been distinguished, but it has not been located or seen; this only heightens the fantastic aura that envelopes the story.
Director of the IHAH, Olga Joya, said that ``some people have wanted to create a fantastic atmosphere about the project in order to find financing for our work, but we have rejected their offers.''
``Elkins came here asking about the white city, but that is part of the popular fantasy and we have a project to carry out,'' explained Joya.
Hasemann is in charge of the project and works with the support of Christopher Beagley who lives in the U.S..
``How many lost cities are there?'', asked Hasemann. ``I have received 20 or 30 reports of white cities but there are hundreds of scientists agreeing that such a pre Colombian culture is a part of the popular imagination.''
Dazzled pilots and residents of the area have arrived at the Institute, assured that they have seen the ``white city'', but when the scientists enter the forest covering the sites mentioned by the ecstatic, they find only rocks.
Tending to the claims of a ``white city'' the archaeologists have discovered vestiges of pre Colombian life hidden in hilly terrain covered by vegetation; but nothing of the giant sites like the monuments and architecture of the Mayan sites in Copán. There is pending work to determine to which society the artifacts belong.
However, according to linguistic studies, they consider the possibility of ancestors of the Mayans who lived from 3000 B.C. to 900 A.D. in the south of Mexico and parts of Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and western Honduras.
The recently discovered sites pertain to a civilization from around 4000 B.C.The explorations of the IHAH have gone on for 20 years ``in a scientific and professional manner, working seriously and systematically and without sensationalism.''
