Pleased to have Fisher on board, Elkins sent him the lidar maps. Fisher spent six months studying them. In December, in a meeting in San Francisco, he presented his findings to the expedition team. While T1 was imposing, Fisher believed T3 was even more impressive.

The two ruins were definitely not Maya. They belonged to an ancient culture all of its own that dominated Mosquitia many centuries ago. He concluded that the ceremonial architecture, the giant earthworks, and the multiple plazas revealed in the images suggested that both T1 and T3 were ancient “cities,” as defined archaeologically. He cautioned that this was not necessarily how the average person might define a city. “A city,” he explained, “is a complex social organization, multifunctional; it has a socially stratified population with clear divisions of space, intimately connected to the hinterlands. Cities have special functions, including ceremonial, and are associated with intensive agriculture. And they usually involve major, monumental reconstruction of the environment.”

“There is a big city here [in T3],” Fisher said in the meeting. “It’s comparable in geographic area to the core of Copán,” the Maya city in western Honduras. He displayed a map of the central area of Copán, superimposed on the lidar map of the unknown city in T3; both covered about two square miles. “The scale of the site is amazing,” he told the audience. “These are data that would have taken decades to gather in traditional archaeology.” After further examination of the lidar images of T1, Fisher identified nineteen connected settlements strung along several miles of the river, which he believed were part of a chiefdom ruling the valley.

Later, Fisher told me the two cities appeared to be larger than anything previously found in Mosquitia. In the images he also identified several hundred smaller sites, from farming hamlets to monumental architecture, canals and roads, and signs of terraced hills. “Each of these areas was once a completely modified human environment,” he said. T2 also presented many intriguing features that were harder to interpret.

These two cities were not unique. They were similar to other major sites found in Mosquitia, such as Las Crucitas de Aner, the largest ruin in Mosquitia. T1, however, is at least four times bigger than Las Crucitas (based on published maps), and T3 is several times larger than that. (T1 is at least five times larger than Stewart’s site of Lancetillal.) But that, he explained, wasn’t saying much, since no site in Mosquitia had ever been mapped in its entirety. The lidar picks up details, such as terracing and ancient canals, that would be extremely difficult to see any other way, which naturally would make T1 and T3 appear bigger than Las Crucitas—a lidar image of Las Crucitas might show that the city extended over a much larger area than previously known. The lidar maps of T1 and T3 hinted that many Mosquitia sites, almost all of which had been poorly mapped if they had been mapped at all, could be far larger than previously thought: The lidar maps proved that the unnamed civilization that had built T1 and T3 had been widespread, powerful, and successful. Also of immense significance, he said, and extremely rare, was that T1 and T3 gave every appearance of being completely undisturbed and unlooted.

Fisher noted that, unlike ancient cities such as Copán and Caracol, which were built around a central core, the Mosquitia cities were spread out, “more like LA than New York.” He added, “I hear myself saying this stuff, and I know, I just know, that there’s going to be a firestorm of criticism. But I’ve taught myself how to analyze these data. There aren’t yet a lot of archaeologists who have experience working with lidar.” But in ten years, he predicted, “everyone will be using it.”

I asked Fisher whether the White City had finally been found. He laughed. “I don’t think there is a single Ciudad Blanca,” he said. “I think there are many.” The myth, he said, is real in the sense that it holds intense meaning for Hondurans, but for archaeologists it’s mostly a “distraction.”

Professor Joyce was right about one thing: A site is not really “found” until it is ground-truthed. Elkins and Benenson immediately began planning an expedition to explore either T1 or T3. Fisher lobbied hard for T3, but Elkins felt T1 offered a more compact, complex, and interesting site. The truth was, he had been trying to get into T1 for twenty years; he was not going to stop now.

Elkins and Benenson spent the next two years organizing the expedition to T1 and securing the exploration and filming permits. In 2014, when President Pepe Lobo’s term was up, the former president of Congress, Juan Orlando Hernández, was chosen in fair and monitored elections. Luckily, he was on the same page as his predecessor about the importance of Elkins’s project; if anything, he was even more enthusiastic and made the exploration of the ruins one of the top priorities of his new administration. The permitting process, while as crazy as ever, came to a successful conclusion. Once again Benenson put up his own money—another half million. Most of these funds were to pay for helicopters, the only feasible (and safe) way to travel into the valley of T1. The team then began planning a scientific expedition into one of the most dangerous and remote places on earth. I was fortunate to be invited to join the team, this time as a correspondent for National Geographic magazine.

CHAPTER 13

It has been observed to squirt venom over six feet from its fangs.

Our expedition to explore the valley of T1 assembled in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, on Valentine’s Day, 2015. Tegucigalpa lies in the southern highlands of Honduras. It is a dense city of crooked little neighborhoods and slums clinging to steep hills, tin roofs glittering in the sun, surrounded by dramatic volcanic mountains. A smell of cooking fires hangs in the air, combined with diesel fumes and dust. Toncontín International Airport is infamous for its steep and tricky approach and its undersized runway, which pilots say make it one of the most difficult commercial aviation landings in the world.