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40 pages 1 hour read

Douglas Preston

The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2017

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Chapters 6-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 6 Summary: “The Heart of Darkness”

Morde’s lies created much public interest in the Lost City. Elkins learns about the legend from a marine salvager named Steve Morgan. They put together an expedition to La Mosquitia where they think the city may be found, documented by a film crew for a German TV show. They hire a colorful fixer named Bruce Heinicke to handle logistics and manage the local bureaucracy and criminals. They make a long and difficult journey through the bush on foot and by canoe, finally ending the expedition with nothing. However, Elkins decides that finding the White City will be his life’s mission.

Elkins realizes he must be more systematic in his search for the White City, and “he accomplishe[s] this with a two-pronged attack: historical research and space-age technology” (45). A geologist named Sam Glassmire previously claimed to have found the White City, and he clearly found a notable site with a large quantity of important artifacts—yet no clear evidence exists that the expedition ever took place. Elkins names the valley that probably contains Glassmire’s site Target Four (T4).

Elkins also works with Ron Blom at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to search for target areas using space-age technology. Infrared and visual light satellite imagery helps them find an unexplored area with “rectilinear and curvilinear shapes that [are] not natural” (49). Yet the resolution of this imagery is very low, so these features cannot be certain. This valley, with two rivers surrounded by steep mountain ridges, is named Target One, or T1. Several early accounts describe the Lost City as being situated between two rivers, so T1 looks promising.

Chapter 7 Summary: “The Fish That Swallowed the Whale”

Preston provides historical context on the political situation in Honduras. For over 100 years, the US government and American fruit companies have meddled in the Honduran economy and politics. Companies like the United Fruit Company and the Cuyamel Fruit Company have bought off numerous politicians. Samuel Zemurray, owner of the Cuyamel Fruit Company, even staged a successful coup in Honduras to avoid a banana tax that would have hurt his business. Such meddling by US interests has left Honduras with extreme political instability, violence, and a poor economy. Then in 1998 Hurricane Mitch destroys much of Honduras’s infrastructure and economy. This makes Steve Elkins’s planned expedition to T1 impossible, and he gives up on the Lost City.

Chapter 8 Summary: “Lasers in the Jungle”

Elkins spends the next 10 years chasing another archaeological legend, the Loot of Lima, “an alleged fortune in gold and gems” (60) that is apparently buried on Cocos Island in the Pacific Ocean. The planned expedition never comes to fruition. In 2010 Elkins reads about a technology called lidar (Light Detection and Ranging) that was used to map the ancient Maya site of Caracol in Belize. This is a new technological application in archaeology, in which a lidar device can scan the surface from a small plane. The technology is capable of penetrating the dense jungle canopy, providing detailed maps of the surface below and making archaeological features instantly noticeable. It is “the greatest archaeological advance since carbon-14 dating” (64). This is the tool Elkins needs to find the White City.

Chapters 6-8 Analysis

These chapter begin the narrative of Steve Elkins’s search for the White City. Preston’s brief description of Elkins’s first failed expedition highlights the themes of danger and isolation while also developing the idea of systematic, scientific investigation. Elkins only experiences success after learning from the failure of his poorly planned first expedition. The more systematic methods of historical research and satellite imaging employed during his later expeditions make them more fruitful. The scientific and systematic approach that Elkins takes from this point forward stands in stark contrast to the earlier foolhardy attempts made by himself and others. His changed approach also champions the methods of archaeology and other sciences, which is a central message of the book.

The success of new scientific methodologies is first highlighted by the cutting-edge technology of lidar. Preston describes its first archaeological use at Caracol to illustrate its revolutionary effectiveness. The technology is so effective at finding archaeological sites in the jungle that it makes decades of prior archaeological research almost meaningless. After so much effort and hardship to find the Lost City, lidar could make new expeditions comparatively effortless.

In Chapter 7 the narrative zooms out to provide expository information about the history of political and economic relationships between the United States and Honduras that have created a dangerous, chaotic political environment in Honduras. This makes archeological investigations in Honduras more difficult and more dangerous than those in other locations. While this discussion does work to increase the sense of danger and suspense in the story, Preston also includes it to educate the reader about the history of the United States’s exploitation of Latin America.

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