The team included filmmakers, scientists, a lidar engineer, jungle warfare survival specialists and more than a dozen Honduran special forces soldiers providing security, National Geographic reported that year (opens in new tab). Digital 3D maps of the ground then removed the tree cover to show the hidden shapes more clearly, revealing what appeared to be building foundations, agricultural terraces, roads and canals, Live Science reported in 2013.Įlkins then filmed the arduous 2015 expedition to the site.

As the survey plane flew over the jungle, laser pulses pinged off the ground and measured the heights of structures that were hidden beneath dense jungle cover, so that engineers could reconstruct the topography in 3D. In 2012, using a technique called light detection and ranging, or lidar, Elkins found further clues about the possible location of an ancient city in a large depression in a forest surrounded by mountains. 'Who would have gone to the trouble to make such an exquisite carving on a boulder if there was nothing going on in this area?' That detailed petroglyph, he said, suggested that there were once human settlements in the area, even if no sign of them was presently visible. 'The rainforest was so thick, you could barely see more than 20 feet in front of you,' Elkins said.

'We were up in the mountains, many days by canoe ride from civilization, and we stumbled upon this huge boulder with a petroglyph: a man with a mask or helmet on, holding a stick and a sack with what looked like seeds coming out of it,' he said. During subsequent visits to Honduras, he saw evidence in the jungle that further piqued his interest. In the 1940s, an American explorer named Theodore Morde returned from an expedition to La Mosquitia with thousands of artifacts he declared that he had discovered the legendary city and that Indigenous people described an enormous statue of a monkey god that had been buried there, according to National Geographic (opens in new tab).Įlkins' fascination with the White City began in the 1990s, when he first heard about the city while working as a television producer. Elkins was part of the team that discovered the ruins of what is thought to be the White City, in collaboration with the government of Honduras and Honduran scientists. However, the region is currently threatened by illegal logging and wildlife trafficking, creating serious risks not only for local habitats and biodiversity but also for the preservation of important archaeological sites that could become vulnerable to looting, filmmaker and explorer Doug Elkins told Live Science.

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