La Ciudad Blanca

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La Ciudad Blanca (pronounced [la sjuˈðað ˈblaŋka], Spanish for "The White City") is a legendary settlement said to be located in the Mosquitia region of the Gracias a Dios Department in eastern Honduras. It is also known by the Pech name Kahã Kamasa ("White Town"). This extensive area of rainforest, which includes the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, has long been the subject of multidisciplinary research. Archaeologists refer to it as being a part of the Isthmo-Colombian Area of the Americas, one in which the predominant indigenous languages have included those in the Chibchan and Misumalpan families. Due to the many variants of the story in the region, most professional archaeologists doubt that it refers to any one actual settlement, much less one representing a city of the Pre-Columbian era. They point out that there are multiple large archaeological sites in the region and that references to the legendary White City cannot be proven to refer to any single place.^[1][2]

Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés reported hearing "trustworthy" information on a region with "towns and villages" of extreme wealth in Honduras, but never located them. In 1927, aviator Charles Lindbergh reported seeing a "white city" while flying over eastern Honduras.^[3] The first known mention by an academic of the ruins under the name Ciudad Blanca (White City) was by Eduard Conzemius, an ethnographer from Luxembourg, in 1927. In his report on the Pech people of Honduras to the Society of Americanists, he said the ruins had been found about twenty-five years earlier by someone looking for rubber who got lost in the area between the Paulaya River and the Plátano River. He said it was called the White City because its buildings and a wall around it were white stone.^[4] (See Timeline below for a list of the many attempts to identify the White City.)

Interest in Ciudad Blanca grew in the 1990s as numerous explorers searched for it and news of archeological work in the area was chronicled in popular media. In 2009, author Christopher Stewart attempted to retrace the steps of Theodore Morde in 1940 with the help of archaeologist Christopher Begley. His book about the search, Jungleland, was published in 2013. In May 2012, press releases issued by a team led by documentary film maker Steve Elkins and by the Honduran government about remote sensing exploration using LiDAR renewed interest in the legend. The lidar mapping revealed not one but two large settlements, one of which was the size of the core of Copán.^[5] Discovery of Ciudad Blanca was asserted by the media yet again after a 2015 expedition explored one of the settlements discovered in the 2012 lidar survey, which expedition archaeologists determined was in fact a Pre-Columbian city.^[6] This work has also been met with both acclaim and criticism.^[7][8]

Only 200 archeological sites have been discovered and documented in all of Mosquitia during the twentieth century, ranging from large complex settlements to artifact scatters and petroglyphs. The ancient inhabitants of Mosquitia are one of the least-known cultures in Central America, with the most extensive building period being 800-1250 AD.^[9] However, only a few have been systematically mapped and scientifically investigated so far and large parts of the region remain scientifically undocumented. The legend of Ciudad Blanca, a popular element of folklore in Honduras, has been the subject of multiple films, TV programs, books, articles, and in 2010 the Honduran government inaugurated an eco-tourism route to take advantage of its popularity called Ruta "Kao Kamasa" (Route plus the Pech name for the White City) between Santa Maria de Real (Escamilpa in the conquest period), Olancho and going through the Pech villages and the town of Dulce Nombre de Culmí either to the southern entrance of the Rio Platano Biosphere or to the Sierra de Agalta National Park or the proposed Malacate Mountain Wildlife Preserve in the municipio or county of Dulce Nombre de Culmí, Olancho Department.