Archaeology & History

Explorers discover lost city in Honduras

By T.K. Randall
March 3, 2015

Image: Amazon Rainforest in Tena, Ecuador
Credit: Jay / CC BY 2.0 (adapted) Found deep within a remote uninhabited region of the Honduras rainforest, the immaculately preserved ruins date back over one thousand years to a time when the people who built them thrived.

Despite living very near to the Maya civilization, very little is actually known about this mysterious and long lost culture. Scarcely studied, the people who lived in this forgotten city have never even been given a name and nobody knows why they disappeared.Within the ruins archaeologists discovered a cache of stone sculptures along with a variety of artifacts including finely carved vessels and the head of a figurine thought to be a "were-jaguar".

Due to the amount of work that still needs to be done to document the site however the location of the ruins has been kept a secret for the time being in an effort to deter looters from finding them.

"This is clearly the most undisturbed rain forest in Central America," said ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin. "The importance of this place can't be overestimated."

Source: National Geographic

Tags: City, Honduras, Rainforest