The Lost City of the Monkey God

by Douglas Preston

The myths of the White City, the City of the Monkey God, a Casa Blanca or Kaha Kamasa, have a similar arc: There was once a great city in the mountains struck down by a series of catastrophes, after which the people decided the gods were angry and left, leaving behind their possessions. Thereafter it was shunned as a cursed place, forbidden, visiting death on those who dared enter. A legend, certainly, but legends are frequently based on the truth, and this one, so persistent and long-lasting, is no exception. To dig the truth out of the myth, we have to go back in time, to the discovery of the New World by Europeans. In October of 1493, Columbus set sail on his second voyage to the New World. This expedition was very different from the first. That one, with three ships, had been a voyage of exploration: This one was primarily aimed at subjugation, colonization, and conversion. Columbus’s enormous flotilla on that second voyage consisted of seventeen ships carrying fifteen hundred men and thousands of head of livestock, including horses, cattle, dogs, cats, chickens, and pigs. But on board those ships was something far more threatening than soldiers with steel arms and armor, priests with crosses, and animals that would disrupt the New World ecology. Columbus and his men unwittingly carried microscopic pathogens, to which the people of the New World had never been exposed and against which they had no genetic resistance. The New World was like a vast, tinder-dry forest wai...