The Lost City of the Monkey God

by Douglas Preston

As it turned out, one of the answers to the mystery of the White City had been lying before us the whole time: The various myths of Ciudad Blanca, its abandonment and cursed nature, probably originated in this grim history. Viewed in the light of these pandemics, the White City legends are a fairly straightforward description of a city (or several) swept by disease and abandoned by its people—a place that, furthermore, may have remained a hot zone for some time afterward. We have few accounts giving the native point of view of these pandemics. One of the most moving is a rare contemporary eyewitness description, called the Book of Chilam Balam of Chumayel, which recalls the two worlds, before and after contact. It was written by an Indian in the Yucatec Mayan language: There was then no sickness; they had no aching bones; they had then no high fever; they had then no smallpox; no stomach pains; no consumption… At that time people stood erect. But then the teules [foreigners] arrived and everything fell apart. They brought fear, and they came to wither the flowers.