Steve Glassman retraces John Lloyd Stephens' 1839 route, visiting the same archaeological sites, towns, markets, and churches and meeting along the way the descendants of those people Stephens described, from mestizo en route to the cornfields to town elders welcoming the Norte Americanos. Glassman's work interlaces discussion of the history, natural environment, and architecture of the region with descriptions of the people who live and work there. Glassman compares his 20th-century experience with Stephens's 19th-century exploration, gazing in awe at the same monumental pyramids, eating similar foods, and avoiding the political clashes that disrupt the governments and economies of the area.
"Steve Glassman retraces Stephens's route, visiting the same archaeological sites, towns, markets, and churches and meeting along the way the descendants of those people Stephens described from a mestizo en route to the cornfields to town elders welcoming the norteamericanos. Glassman compares his 20th-century experience with Stephens's 19th-century exploration, gazing in awe at the same monumental pyramids, eating similar foods, and avoiding the political clashes that still disrupt the governments and economies of the area."--Jacket.
The #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, named one of the best books of the year by The Boston Globe and National Geographic: acclaimed journalist Douglas Preston takes readers on a true adventure deep into the Honduran rainforest in this riveting narrative about the discovery of a lost civilization -- culminating in a stunning medical mystery. Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and they warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God-but then committed suicide without revealing its location. Three quarters of a century later, bestselling author Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest. In 2012 he climbed aboard a rickety, single-engine plane carrying the machine that would change everything: lidar, a highly advanced, classified technology that could map the terrain under the densest rainforest canopy. In an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, that flight revealed the unmistakable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing evidence of not just an undiscovered city but an enigmatic, lost civilization. Venturing into this raw, treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful wilderness to confirm the discovery, Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quickmud, disease-carrying insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. But it wasn't until they returned that tragedy struck: Preston and others found they had contracted in the ruins a horrifying, sometimes lethal-and incurable-disease. Suspenseful and shocking, filled with colorful history, hair-raising adventure, and dramatic twists of fortune, THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD is the absolutely true, eyewitness account of one of the great discoveries of the twenty-first century.
The acclaimed chronicle of the discovery of the legendary lost civilization of the Maya. Includes the history of the major Maya sites, including Palenque, Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Tuloom, Copan, and more. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Illustrated with a map and more than 100 images. In 1839, rumors of extraordinary yet baffling stone ruins buried within the unmapped jungles of Central America reached two of the world’s most intrepid travelers. Seized by the reports, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood—both already celebrated for their adventures in Egypt, the Holy Land, Greece, and Rome—sailed together out of New York Harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rainforests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. What they found would upend the West’s understanding of human history. In the tradition of Lost City of Z and In the Kingdom of Ice, former San Francisco Chronicle journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist William Carlsen reveals the remarkable story of the discovery of the ancient Maya. Enduring disease, war, and the torments of nature and terrain, Stephens and Catherwood meticulously uncovered and documented the remains of an astonishing civilization that had flourished in the Americas at the same time as classic Greece and Rome—and had been its rival in art, architecture, and power. Their masterful book about the experience, written by Stephens and illustrated by Catherwood, became a sensation, hailed by Edgar Allan Poe as “perhaps the most interesting book of travel ever published” and recognized today as the birth of American archaeology. Most important, Stephens and Catherwood were the first to grasp the significance of the Maya remains, understanding that their antiquity and sophistication overturned the West’s assumptions about the development of civilization. By the time of the flowering of classical Greece (400 b.c.), the Maya were already constructing pyramids and temples around central plazas. Within a few hundred years the structures took on a monumental scale that required millions of man-hours of labor, and technical and organizational expertise. Over the next millennium, dozens of city-states evolved, each governed by powerful lords, some with populations larger than any city in Europe at the time, and connected by road-like causeways of crushed stone. The Maya developed a cohesive, unified cosmology, an array of common gods, a creation story, and a shared artistic and architectural vision. They created stucco and stone monuments and bas reliefs, sculpting figures and hieroglyphs with refined artistic skill. At their peak, an estimated ten million people occupied the Maya’s heartland on the Yucatan Peninsula, a region where only half a million now live. And yet by the time the Spanish reached the “New World,” the Maya had all but disappeared; they would remain a mystery for the next three hundred years. Today, the tables are turned: the Maya are justly famous, if sometimes misunderstood, while Stephens and Catherwood have been nearly forgotten. Based on Carlsen’s rigorous research and his own 1,500-mile journey throughout the Yucatan and Central America, Jungle of Stone is equally a thrilling adventure narrative and a revelatory work of history that corrects our understanding of Stephens, Catherwood, and the Maya themselves.
The ultimate guidebook for extraordinary adventures. This guide brings travelers up to date on the dizzying diversity of this tiny territory. Packed with practical advice and inspiration, this new guide facilitates free-spirited journeys from reef to rainforest, waterfall to winding jungle trails.
This complete guide to Guatemala includes special sections on family travel, Mayan history and culture, and detailed itineraries. Guatemala delivers what adventurous travelers dream of: exotic birds and wildlife, world-class caving, whitewater rafting, zip-lining through the jungle, fascinating Mayan ruins, vibrant cities, and riotous indigenous festivals and markets. Like Guatemala itself, this guide combines the best in adventure, nature, and culture to create indelible travel memories. Author Conner Gorry is a solo woman traveler, and that translates into insightful text that keeps an eye on travel safety issues. Detailed itineraries offer invaluable, road-tested advice, while comprehensive history and information on Mayan culture imbue your trip with context and meaning. Gorry covers the top tourist destinations with the knowledge only experience can bring; she also emphasizes sustainable travel options that support local communities and minimize environmental impact. Including sections on health, language, and traveling with children—everything you need to have a fun, adventurous, safe, and authentic travel experience is right here. More than 100 photographs and detailed maps round out the information, providing everything you need to make the most of your visit.
Completely updated, this insider's guide veers off the tourist trail for intrepid travelers to experience the local color, intrigue and charm of the Riviera Maya. For travelers in the know, Playa del Carmen is the little gem with all the beauty of white sand beaches that has drawn crowds from around the world to Cancun, with none of the high-rise overdevelopment. Playa remains a wonderful, sleepy town on a human scale, yet its discovery has resulted in a wide range of lodging and dining options. For families and adventurous travelers alike, there's something for everyone in this Mexican Riviera, known as the “Riviera Maya.” You can explore the fascinating Mayan ruins on the beach at Tulum, shop and have a fabulous lunch on the pedestrian area in Playa, stay in a full-service resort along Playacar, and go for some of the best fishing in the world near the famous Sian Ka'an biosphere in Punta Allen. The Riviera Maya is one of the true travel hot spots in the world today. Includes detailed info for eco-travelers, Maya culture buffs, anglers, foodies, and anyone needing respite on a sleepy beach. This is the definitive guidebook on Playa del Carmen. Distinctive for their accuracy, simplicity, and conversational tone, the diverse travel guides in our Explorer's Great Destinations series meet the conflicting demands of the modern traveler. They're packed full of up-to-date information to help plan the perfect getaway. And they're compact and light enough to come along for the ride. A tool you'll turn to before, during, and after your trip, these guides include chapters on lodging, dining, transportation, history, shopping, recreation, and more; a section packed with practical information, such as lists of banks, hospitals, post offices, laundromats, numbers for police, fire, and rescue, and other relevant information; maps of regions and locales, and more.
The work of Argentine photographer Leandro Katz is presented here in dialogue with the nineteenth-century artist Frederick Catherwood, whose images of Maya ruins have fascinated viewers for more than a century. Catherwood’s daguerreotypes and sketches, originally published to illustrate the travel narratives of John Lloyd Stephens, are among the most accurate depictions of important Maya sites before the advent of modern archaeology. Katz’s photos of the same sites, most of which are previously unpublished, are presented alongside Jesse Lerner’s essay, which explores their connections to the history of archaeology, their resonance in contemporary art, and the evolution of an artist who seamlessly integrates form and content.
Before massive deforestation began in the 1960s, the Lacandón jungle, which lies on the border of Mexico and Guatemala, was part of the largest tropical rain forest north of the Amazon. The destruction of the Lacandón occurred with little attention from the international press—until January 1, 1994, when a group of armed Maya rebels led by a charismatic spokesperson who called himself Subcomandante Marcos emerged from jungle communities and briefly occupied several towns in the Mexican state of Chiapas. These rebels, known as the Zapatista National Liberation Army, became front-page news around the globe, and they used their notoriety to issue rhetorically powerful communiqués that denounced political corruption, the Mexican government’s treatment of indigenous peoples, and the negative impact of globalization. As Brian Gollnick reveals, the Zapatista communiqués had deeper roots in the Mayan rain forest than Westerners realized—and he points out that the very idea of the jungle is also deeply rooted, though in different ways, in the Western imagination. Gollnick draws on theoretical innovations offered by subaltern studies to discover “oral traces” left by indigenous inhabitants in dominant cultural productions. He explores both how the jungle region and its inhabitants have been represented in literary writings from the time of the Spanish conquest to the present and how the indigenous people have represented themselves in such works, including post-colonial and anti-colonial narratives, poetry, video, and photography. His goal is to show how popular and elite cultures have interacted in creating depictions of life in the rain forest and to offer new critical vocabularies for analyzing forms of cross-cultural expression.
