The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story(80)
While Dave light-painted and photographed the artifacts, one of his assistants filmed the site from above using a drone, which buzzed about the jungle like some giant Cretaceous insect. Chris paced about the site, giving instructions on locking it down to protect it during the president’s visit the next day. The work involved shoring up the edges of the excavation pit with pieces of plywood to reinforce them against trampling feet, as well as stringing police tape in an effort at crowd control. He did not want people walking among the artifacts. Chris had carefully choreographed the visit and had a clipboard with a list of the select few who would be allowed inside the yellow tape for the photo op.
He was not in a good mood. He had not been happy to learn that a curious soldier the previous month had innocently dug up a couple of artifacts, including the famous jaguar head, to see what they looked like underneath. (No looting, however, had taken place, contrary to Sully’s prediction.) A perfectionist obsessed with his work, he did not welcome the potential threat to the integrity of the site even by the president of the country. On top of that, he was worried about his looming deadline. It was now clear to him that it would be impossible to finish excavating, stabilizing, and conserving the artifacts by February 1, when his grant ran out and he had to return to the States to resume teaching. The cache was huge—much bigger than could be seen on the surface.
On a professional level he was also distressed by a lack of support from his university. His participation in the identification and excavation of T1 had garnered significant media attention for Colorado State, with Chris being featured in both the New Yorker and National Geographic and highlighted in the CSU alumni magazine. His work at Angamuco was also well known and respected. For the 2015 expedition the university required Chris to “buy out one of his classes”—that is, he had to come up with the money himself to hire an adjunct to teach his classes while he was away in Honduras, with the other class being taught on an accelerated schedule. Steve Elkins had given the university an eight-thousand-dollar gift out of his own pocket to help make it possible.
During the 2016 excavation, the department required Chris to teach the first two weeks of his classes online—from the jungle—which often meant flying in a helicopter to Catacamas, where there was an Internet connection. The department chair asked him to confine his field research from then on to the summer months, when there are no classes. The summer, however, is the rainy season in Honduras and in Mexico, a period when it is difficult to do archaeological excavation.
Despite these frustrations, the difficulties of being an impecunious and underappreciated archaeologist were, for a long time, more than compensated by the chance to participate in a remarkable, once-in-a-lifetime discovery. From the beginning, Chris had been a driving force of energy and enthusiasm on the team, a devoted professional so eager to explore this untouched landscape that on our first trip into the ruins he had forged ahead, leaving me and Woody in the dust, snakes and jungle dangers be damned. Yet as reckless as he was with his own safety, he was fiercely protective of his team. When the near-miss helicopter accident that threatened his archaeologists was followed by several cases of leish after this second trip to the jungle, Chris concluded it was simply too dangerous to send any more people into T1. “The takeaway from this,” he said, “is very clear—the risk of working at the site is simply too great.” After this second month at the site, he would direct no more archaeology at T1.
As the group worked the site, my gaze drifted toward the earthen pyramid, whose jungled form loomed above the cache site. Three monstrous trees grew in a cluster just above the cache, and beyond that the actual form of the pyramid vanished in a mass of vegetation. I wondered if the pyramid remained the same. Past the worksite, I climbed past the great trees and soon found myself in the emerald twilight of virgin rainforest. I was glad to see it had remained untouched since the year before. At the top of the pyramid I halted, breathing in the fecund smell and trying to connect with the city as it may have been at its apex, before its abrupt and tragic end. The density of vegetation still shut out any hint of the city’s layout or size. Even at the summit I was still buried in shaggy giants that towered a hundred feet or more above my head, draped with tree-killer vines and creepers. I could not see the archaeologists working below, but their voices filtered up through the leaves, distorted and unintelligible, sounding like the murmuring of ghosts.
I focused my attention on the ground at the summit. It was exactly as it had been a year ago when we first climbed up. There was one vague, rectangular depression and other lumps that must have been the remains of a small temple or structure. This would be another place to excavate, to try to understand the ancient rituals of this vanished people, but a part of me hoped it wouldn’t happen, that this spot might never lose its mystery. I wondered what ceremonies had taken place here. The Maya and other Mesoamerican cultures engaged in human sacrifice, presenting the gods with that most sacred and precious nourishment—human blood. The priest would either decapitate the victim or split the breastbone and yank out the still-beating heart, offering it to the sky. These sacrifices were often conducted at the top of a pyramid in view of all. Did the Mosquitia people also conduct such rites? When the city at T1 was swept by epidemics, and the people felt they had been abandoned by their gods, I wondered what ceremonies they might have performed in a desperate effort to restore the cosmic order. Whatever they did, it failed; feeling cursed and rejected by the gods, they left the city, never to return.