We declare that the location of the sacred places of the Muskitia, as
would be Ciudad Blanca, Apalka, Raiti, among others that still have not
been "officially discovered", never have been unknown to the children
of the Muskitia, who have received that knowledge as a form of ancestral
knowledge from our grandparents and so we assure the inviolability of
these sacred places by looters.
The representatives of one of the largest indigenous groups in eastern Honduras have weighed in on the hottest Honduran news story of the new year; and their commentary should be blistering the skin of the President of the country and officials in the government responsible for management of cultural heritage.
The announcement was made by President Juan Orlando Hernández himself: a new expedition was headed to the archaeological site in eastern Honduras which was widely promoted last year as a newly discovered "lost city", supposedly representing an "unknown civilization", and identified with the traditional cultural heritage site of the Pech and Miskito people, called Ciudad Blanca in Spanish.
Hernández himself accompanied the new expedition, whose goal was described as to extract (sustraer) carved stone objects that had been observed on the surface-- a typical pattern for the many sites professionally studied in the region. Among those commenting on the spectacle was the US Ambassador, James Nealon, who professed to be fascinated by the sculptures.
Speaking archaeologically, there is a well-understood history of interpretation of similar objects in sites documented across the region. They have actually been studied since the 18th century, as some of the earliest, if not the earliest, Honduran antiquities exhibited in the British Museum and contemplated by European scholars.
Last year, an international group of scholars (including the authors of this blog) raised concerns about the outdated presentation of archaeology in the original expedition. An open letter to the sponsor and original publisher of the reports stressed that the area is not abandoned, but is actually the territory of indigenous people who surely include the descendants of the site's builders. These people, we warned, were effectively being erased from their own history and territory in the service of a more exciting story.
Now, the political representatives of one of these indigenous groups have weighed in on the new expedition-- and they are not pleased. The full statement by MASTA--composed of twelve territorial councils of Miskitu people-- shows that they are particularly disturbed that the expedition has not consulted with them, and that objects are being removed from their territory to a distant city.
But they also object to the presentation of the expedition as discovering a city unknown to them; and to the press giving the city a nickname they identify as "racist" and "denigrating".
Repeatedly, the Miskitu statement emphasizes that this area is their ancestral territory. They were autonomous allies of Great Britain, and when Great Britain gave up its foothold on coastal Honduras, the treaty it signed with Honduras included guarantees that Honduras would respect Miskitu territorial rights. Yet, they repeatedly note, no one consulted with them.
Perhaps the most striking thing in the statement is the use of the term looting for the current expedition, undertaken without consultation. For the Miskitu people, these sites, they say, are sacred, are a patrimony, and the knowledge of their locations and the responsibility for the protection has been a legacy.
That last may seem like a grand claim, except that it is true: the remarkable presence, visible on the surface, of dozens of great works of stone sculpture at archaeological sites in the Mosquitia seems incredible, even to experienced archaeologists who aren't familiar with this area of Honduras. Why have they not been looted before? The local people know they are there-- that is how archaeologists have been led to sites for decades. But the local indigenous people have left them in place.
And now, the government of Honduras is removing them as a staged spectacle intended to promote tourist visitation. But the Miskitu people are not letting this happen without fighting back. They are demanding the implementation of an indigenous model of management and protection; they specifically condemn the example of Copan, where indigenous people have no voice in management of the site created by their ancestors. They demand museums in their territory to conserve their material heritage, and training in anthropology and history to facilitate their management of these sites in accordance with their own world view.
And they label as unauthorized any publication of the works being removed from the site without their permission.
This is not how archaeology is supposed to go in the 21st century, where the watch words are community engagement and collaboration. In 19th century archaeology, no one paid attention to local people, certainly not to indigenous people, but that changed in the second half of the 20th century. When 21st century expeditions recreate 19th century practices, indigenous people know their rights, and no longer stay silent.
Here's our translation of the full statement:
We, the children of the Muskitia, constituted in 12 representative Territorial Councils and the social base of MASTA, based on our respect for the spiritual, ancestral, and cultural heritage of our ancestors; aided by Article 346 of the Constitution of the Republic of Honduras; Articles 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 15 and 35 of ILO Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries; Articles 3, 4, 11, 12, 25 and 26 of the Declaration of the UN on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; Article 8J of the Convention on Biodiversity, the framework that constitutes the principles of international law recognized by the international community and that Honduras adopted through Article 15 of the Constitution of the Republic; by this means COMMUNICATE to the national and international community concerning the case of the so-called "Ciudad Blanca", on the following points:
First: The State of Honduras received the territory of the Honduran Muskitia from the United Kingdom of Great Britain, through the signing of the Cruz-Wyke treaty celebrated in the city of Comayagua, in the month of December of 1859, in which the government of Honduras made a commitment not to violate the ancestral territorial rights of the Miskitu People (see Article III of the Cruz-Wyke Treaty).
Second: The government of Honduras, with the support of the National Geographic, has carried out the identification of the geographic location of Ciudad Blanca, also known as the lost city, and in mass media as the city of the "monkey king". The location of the said "Ciudad Blanca" is encountered in the territory demonstrated on the map embedded in the first paragraph [of the PDF statement], recognized by the State of Honduras as the "Mosquito Coast", territory pertaining historically and ancestrally to the Miskitu Indigenous People.
Third: The Government of the Republic has authorized, without consultation of the corresponding entities, the publicizing, excavation, and extraction of the archaeological objects encountered in the said city and that they then will be taken to some city in the department of Olancho. In none of the processes authorized by the government, referring to: the search, exploration, geographic location, excavation, extraction and movement to another site, have the Indigenous People of the Muskitia been consulted, demonstrating a failure of interest by the government in respecting the rights of the original peoples in a process of prior consultation for their consent, as is established in the Biocultural Protocol of the Miskitu People.
Fourth: We indigenous peoples, historically have been the object of constant violations of our rights by foreign interference, a product of the lack of clear and effective regulatory policies of the government relative to the protection and preservation of the inventions, patents, authorial rights, traditional practices and security of the indigenous population. A documented example is the case of the massacre of women in the community of Awas by the DEA in 2012.
On the basis of everything explained above, and in the framework of the rights of the Indigenous People of the Honduran Muskitia, we, the children of Tunkur, Truksulu, Waylang and Miskut, in the full enjoyment of our rights, communicate before the national and international community the following:
1. We demand the application of Article III of the Cruz-Wyke Treaty, which established that "the Government of Honduras will respect the possession of whatever land the Mosquito Indians have in the territory called the Mosquito Coast" (See annex: Cruz-Wyke Treaty).
2. We declare that the location of the sacred places of the Muskitia, as would be Ciudad Blanca, Apalka, Raiti, among others that still have not been "officially discovered", never have been unknown to the children of the Muskitia, who have received that knowledge as a form of ancestral knowledge from our grandparents and so we assure the inviolability of these sacred places by looters.
3. We demand the application of the international agreements related to the process of prior consultation, free and informed, by the Muskitia, with the goal of formalizing a model of protection and conservation proposed by the Indigenous People. We do not want to have succeed in the various sacred sites of the Muskitia what has occurred in the Ruins of Copan.
4. We demand the creation of indigenous museums in the Muskitia, in sites duly and conveniently identified by the Miskitu People, where archaeological objects that are part of our sociocultural, historic, and present patrimony can be kept and promoted.
5. We demand that the Government of Honduras, that the National Geographic and/or any institute or university respect the ancestral rights of the Miskitu People, denying authorization for any publication in any medium, relating to the sociocultural patrimony, without the required consent of the Miskitu Indigenous People by means of its representative organization.
6. We demand of the Government of Honduras, the development of local community capacity in the area of anthropology or history for the management of the Miskitu sociocultural riches and patrimony.
7. We clarify for the Government of Honduras, that the Muskitia has a millenial history related to its own culture, values, traditions, and natural riches; these form part of the patrimony and ought to be given protection, conservation, and traditional use for their continuity (for their natural and spiritual coexistence).
8. We demand of the Government of Honduras, the creation of a bureau concerning matters of anthropology, rights of authorship, traditional and innovative practices, with the full and effective participation of the Miskitu people, in keeping with the worldview of the miskitu people and in compliance
with Decree No. 262-2013 in the framework of the Plan de Nacion.
9. All the administrative or legislative decisions about the development of any activity in the territory of the Muskitia should be in full compliance with the commitments acquired before the international community which are: the declaration of the UN on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; the ILO Convention 169 on Indigenous and Tribal Peoples in Independent Countries; the Convention on Biological Diversity; the Nagoya Protocol; the Directive Akwe-Kon; Directive of the UN about the free consent, prior and informed; the recommendations of UNESCO about the conservation of the Reserva del Hombre and Rio Platano Biosphere, among others.
In conclusion, and in consequence of the above described:
We, the children of the Miskitu Indigenous People, declare ourselves totally in disagreement with the arbitrary and unilateral decision of the Government of the Republic, concerning the exploration, extraction, and illegal transfer of archaeological objects of Ciudad Blanca; so that, we demand the immediate return of the archaeological objects looted from our sacred site called "Ciudad Blanca". At the same time we demand the respect for the names that our ancestors gave to this sacred site for our people, and we energetically reject the term city of the "monkey king", which has resulted from the recent investigations, a name that we see as denigrating, discriminatory and racist, in detriment to our miskitu people.
With the authorized representation of the Miskitu People, we publish the present communique, with the formulation in Auhya Yari, on the 13th day of the month of January of the year 2016.
Showing posts with label Ciudad Blanca. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ciudad Blanca. Show all posts
Thursday, January 14, 2016
Sunday, March 15, 2015
Why Claims that Lost Cities exist in Abandoned Land are Dangerous for Indigenous Hondurans
The hype about the supposed "discovery" of Ciudad Blanca in eastern Honduras is dying down in English-language media.
A little good came out of this incident: a number of Honduran academics registered their skepticism about the claims. Honduran university students in the young Anthropology major held a public event to educate Hondurans about the reality of archaeology of Eastern Honduras. And a letter taking the National Geographic to task for publishing a sensationalized account, signed by an international group of archaeologists, got enough attention to warrant corrective reporting in some mainstream media.
Predictably there has been push back: don't be such kill-joys, isn't Indiana Jones the spirit of archaeology? and isn't this just another example of politically correctness?
The PC criticism suggests that scholars questioning the promotional stories' claims that the area was uninhabited because this ignores the indigenous people whose own oral histories are our best historical indication that eastern Honduras was once densely settled with larger towns cannot possibly actually be motivated by real people's real situations. It is just an attitude scholars adopted to look good.
Now, a new blog post by Chris Begley, an archaeologist who has one of the most extensive records of archaeological investigation in this area, addresses this question directly, and personally. We would love to reproduce his whole blog post, which you can find here; but short of that, pay attention to what he says:
A little good came out of this incident: a number of Honduran academics registered their skepticism about the claims. Honduran university students in the young Anthropology major held a public event to educate Hondurans about the reality of archaeology of Eastern Honduras. And a letter taking the National Geographic to task for publishing a sensationalized account, signed by an international group of archaeologists, got enough attention to warrant corrective reporting in some mainstream media.
Predictably there has been push back: don't be such kill-joys, isn't Indiana Jones the spirit of archaeology? and isn't this just another example of politically correctness?
The PC criticism suggests that scholars questioning the promotional stories' claims that the area was uninhabited because this ignores the indigenous people whose own oral histories are our best historical indication that eastern Honduras was once densely settled with larger towns cannot possibly actually be motivated by real people's real situations. It is just an attitude scholars adopted to look good.
Now, a new blog post by Chris Begley, an archaeologist who has one of the most extensive records of archaeological investigation in this area, addresses this question directly, and personally. We would love to reproduce his whole blog post, which you can find here; but short of that, pay attention to what he says:
The language used evokes a time where foreign explorers emphasized their superiority at the expense of local knowledge...there is a much more human and immediate cost, borne primarily by the most marginalized, least powerful folks in the region: indigenous people like the Pech who are descendants of those who built these sites.
I know this is not a ‘lost civilization’ because I am an archaeologist, and I’ve worked in this ‘unknown’ area for almost 25 years. I lived and worked with the Pech almost exclusively, because I thought it was the right thing to do, and because they know the region better than anyone. They have at least a thousand years of history there.
For the Pech, the past is absolutely essential to their future. Their history is not merely an interesting pastime; it creates and supports the present. They are curious about the archaeology. I’ve talked to impromptu community meetings, looked at artifacts they collected, and listened to their interpretations. I saw them make modern pottery look like the ancient pieces we find at archaeological sites, in a deliberate attempt to connect the past and the present.
I lived with the Pech at various times over the last two decades. We lived in small villages with no electricity or water. We spent all day, every day, together. We sat and talked every night. We played cards. We took trips through the forest for two or three weeks at a time, mapping archaeological sites along the way. All told, the Pech and I documented around 150 archaeological sites.
The Pech already knew where every large site was located. Every single one. They knew where fruit trees grew, or where the good fishing holes were. They could find the little trails that I could hardly see. Sometimes we followed an old trail by looking for grown over machete cuts on branches. They knew the forest like I know my hometown.
The Pech lived in these now remote places as recently as 150 years ago, and they return to hunt and fish, or to harvest sweetgum. They’ve lost traditional lands to encroaching farmers and cattle ranchers. They’ve been moved around, and now live mainly on the edge of the rain forest, in a handful of communities....
They showed me archaeological sites. They showed me features such as which hillsides had been reshaped by people, because they could tell and I couldn’t. They explained what they thought it meant. They critiqued my interpretations.
The Pech did all this while facing serious threats to their continued existence. They fought to keep what traditional land they still had, and to keep their language alive. They buried people killed by outsiders who wanted to bully them off their land. I hated those funerals, where those animated faces I knew were rigid. I hated seeing that. Sometimes I didn’t go.
So, what is the harm in this hype and sensationalism? What difference does it make if, in their ignorance, these ‘explorers’ proclaim that they discovered something nobody has seen in 600 years? What is the cost of these newcomers, with no real experience in this forest, claiming, disingenuously, to have discovered a ‘lost civilization?’ Why am I moved to spend a few hours writing something like this?
I write this because these false claims, hype and sensationalism invade one of the few remaining spaces in which the Pech, and folks like them, are powerful. These claims strip the Pech of their own history, and deny them the respect they deserve and the acknowledgement for their contribution to our understanding of the past. These sensational narratives, powerful because they are made by powerful people, further marginalize and disenfranchise people. In ignorance and bravado, and in pursuit of the unworthy goal of celebrity and attention, these faux discoverers make it hard to hear a crucial voice from some real experts.
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Honduran Archaeologists Criticize US Claim of Archaeological "Discovery"
The US team that has been promoting the idea that eastern Honduras is an impenetrable jungle where no archaeologist has gone before has released a new report, based on arriving at one of the sites LiDAR imagery showed.
Unfortunately, they continue to promote the idea that there was no previous research in the area; they use outdated and long-rejected ideas of "discovery" (ignoring indigenous people who contemporary archaeologists would acknowledge have their own knowledge of the landscape and what lies there), "lost cities", and new "civilizations" supposedly previously unknown.
The continued insistence on the narrative of discovery is especially egregious since the group has been told, repeatedly, about the modern work in the area, and has neglected to even contact the very much available expert in the region. It is almost the 100 year anniversary of the work of the first modern archaeologist who identified archaeological traditions typical of eastern Honduras, Samuel Lothrop.
This may be a newly identified site, but with over 200 sites, including large sites with stone architecture and ballcourts documented in the existing archaeological literature, that cannot be verified without engagement with the broader, knowledgeable archaeological community.
And that is precisely what Honduran archaeologists also had to say about the report in an article just published in La Prensa. These are all people fluent in English and Spanish, so a less lazy US news organization might talk to them directly; meanwhile, let's make sure their voices are heard, shall we?
Who are these Honduran skeptics? Eva Martinez was the former head of the division of the Institute of Anthropology that is supposed to be responsible for vetting new projects in order to ensure that Honduras' cultural patrimony is properly managed. Ricardo Agurcia is a former Director of the Institute.
Theirs are not the only Honduran archaeologist's voices being raised in protest of the misrepresentation both of the level of knowledge that already exists of their country's archaeological resources, and of the way that Honduran anthropological archaeology-- a discipline that only recently became a university-level major at the National University-- is being ignored. What they have to say is echoed by many others, nationally and internationally.
We have long known there were large cities in the eastern Honduran rainforest. We have long known that there were traditions of sculpture, closely related to those of Nicaragua and Costa Rica and therefore NOT "Mesoamerican" (contrary to what one US archaeologist quoted by La Prensa said). We have even known for decades that many of the larger sites in the Mosquitia include ballcourts-- which was a real discovery, when it was made in the 1990s by Chris Begley as part of his University of Chicago doctoral research, undertaken with the proper approval and support from Honduran archaeologists.
I was challenged for calling the current project "pseudoscience". It may not be pseudoscience as we normally think of it (aliens built the site! it represents the lost civilization of Atlantis! Lucifer fell to earth here!).
But it isn't science either. Science rests on the assumption that each new investigator acknowledges what previous researchers have done, engages with it, and contributes to a growing body of knowledge. In contemporary anthropological archaeology, that process has led us to reject notions of "lost civilizations" and mysterious cities as hype-- what I called the way this team promoted itself in 2012, and still a valid label today. And that process has made it indispensable to leave behind the colonial legacy of archaeology, to acknowledge the contributions of archaeologists from other countries and the knowledge of local people, including but not just limited to those who might be descendants of the indigenous people whose histories we are tracing.
This ain't science, so give me a better work than pseudoscience: adventurism?
see the complete article in Spanish here
Unfortunately, they continue to promote the idea that there was no previous research in the area; they use outdated and long-rejected ideas of "discovery" (ignoring indigenous people who contemporary archaeologists would acknowledge have their own knowledge of the landscape and what lies there), "lost cities", and new "civilizations" supposedly previously unknown.
The continued insistence on the narrative of discovery is especially egregious since the group has been told, repeatedly, about the modern work in the area, and has neglected to even contact the very much available expert in the region. It is almost the 100 year anniversary of the work of the first modern archaeologist who identified archaeological traditions typical of eastern Honduras, Samuel Lothrop.
This may be a newly identified site, but with over 200 sites, including large sites with stone architecture and ballcourts documented in the existing archaeological literature, that cannot be verified without engagement with the broader, knowledgeable archaeological community.
And that is precisely what Honduran archaeologists also had to say about the report in an article just published in La Prensa. These are all people fluent in English and Spanish, so a less lazy US news organization might talk to them directly; meanwhile, let's make sure their voices are heard, shall we?
Ciudad Blanca is a myth for Honduran archaeologists
The publication by National Geographic that Ciudad Blanca has been discovered in the Honduran rainforest wakened unease and incredulity in experts in the country.
Since decades ago, scientific expeditions have explored the legend of the lost city in the Mosquitia, discovering that it is a region rich in archaeological building remains, and according to archaeologists that is what the new reporting by the magazine is showing....
It isn't a discovery...
Ricardo Agurcia, noted Honduran archaeologist, questions the possible discovery that would rise to a world-wide level because the investigation team that was formed, he says, is not well known, and nor does he know the institutions that participated and if there are Honduran experts involved. "What I have been able to see has very little scientific merit. What I find strange as well is that news of this type comes out first published outside Honduras".
He notes that what the magazine shows doesn't have the features of the legend mentioned, and it is not unknown that there are many archaeological settlements in the Mosquitia. "What they encountered is a city? A city is archaeologically defined as a site of human occupation with a population larger than 10,000 inhabitants."
"This is verified with field archaeology and registering of houses. Is it white? I don't see it that way in any of the photos."
"In the legend of the White City (Ciudad Blanca) that I know there should be a monkey statue made of gold. If this is Ciudad Blanca, where is that monkey? I see a lot of tinges of adventure, of Hollywood fils, as it it were from an Indiana Jones movie. That is not science" pointed out Agurcia.
The Honduran archaeologist Eva Martinez agrees with Agurcia that this does not constitute a discovery and that Ciudad Blanca continues to be a myth.
"The Honduran Mosquitia has been studied by archaeologists for decades. The place that the National Geographic mentions could be one of the sites already recorded in the National Institute of Anthropology and History (IHAH)."
The faculty member in the Anthropology major of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Honduras says that the international publication lacks credibility.
"Any archaeological site in the Mosquitia could be given that name. Ciudad Blanca is a myth, a legend. The publication is not an academic investigation and it gives us a mistaken idea of the work of archaeology" she affirmed.
Martinez recommended that the Government should follow the legal and normal process of the IHAH and solicit a proposal for archaeological investigation, since the goal of the fieldwork that [the US institution involved] has, or if this is a preliminary step, is unknown. Before spreading news of a supposed discovery she thinks that the government ought to shield the Mosquitia from the looting of archaeological objects, which has already been happening and could grow.
Who are these Honduran skeptics? Eva Martinez was the former head of the division of the Institute of Anthropology that is supposed to be responsible for vetting new projects in order to ensure that Honduras' cultural patrimony is properly managed. Ricardo Agurcia is a former Director of the Institute.
Theirs are not the only Honduran archaeologist's voices being raised in protest of the misrepresentation both of the level of knowledge that already exists of their country's archaeological resources, and of the way that Honduran anthropological archaeology-- a discipline that only recently became a university-level major at the National University-- is being ignored. What they have to say is echoed by many others, nationally and internationally.
We have long known there were large cities in the eastern Honduran rainforest. We have long known that there were traditions of sculpture, closely related to those of Nicaragua and Costa Rica and therefore NOT "Mesoamerican" (contrary to what one US archaeologist quoted by La Prensa said). We have even known for decades that many of the larger sites in the Mosquitia include ballcourts-- which was a real discovery, when it was made in the 1990s by Chris Begley as part of his University of Chicago doctoral research, undertaken with the proper approval and support from Honduran archaeologists.
I was challenged for calling the current project "pseudoscience". It may not be pseudoscience as we normally think of it (aliens built the site! it represents the lost civilization of Atlantis! Lucifer fell to earth here!).
But it isn't science either. Science rests on the assumption that each new investigator acknowledges what previous researchers have done, engages with it, and contributes to a growing body of knowledge. In contemporary anthropological archaeology, that process has led us to reject notions of "lost civilizations" and mysterious cities as hype-- what I called the way this team promoted itself in 2012, and still a valid label today. And that process has made it indispensable to leave behind the colonial legacy of archaeology, to acknowledge the contributions of archaeologists from other countries and the knowledge of local people, including but not just limited to those who might be descendants of the indigenous people whose histories we are tracing.
This ain't science, so give me a better work than pseudoscience: adventurism?
see the complete article in Spanish here
Monday, August 6, 2012
Cultural Policy in Honduras
A while back, I was invited to speak in Honduras on the topic of "the challenges and advances in the investigation of Ciudad Blanca", as part of the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History (in Spanish the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, or IHAH).
My already existing summer research plans precluded my accepting the invitation. I toyed with writing the remarks I would have made in the requested "pequeña ponencia" (brief talk) as a blog post here. But there were, frankly, more important things to do.
Now, as Adrienne Pine notes at Quotha, Virgilio Paredes, in charge of IHAH, has written a letter to El Heraldo, thanking them for their contribution to his project of publicizing "Ciudad Blanca", reproduced by that paper in a self-congratulatory ad about their coverage of the supposed discovery.
And that inspires me to follow through on the invitation I received, albeit a couple of weeks later than proposed, in this virtual forum.
What does the present head of IHAH mean when he writes about "los vestigios arqueologicos de la zona de la Mosquitia hondureña, de una civilizacion que puede haber sido la denominada Ciudad Blanca" [the archaeological vestiges in the Honduran Mosquitia, of a civilization that could have been that called Ciudad Blanca"]?
For an archaeologist, that sentence is painful to read. We are long past the time when we spoke in terms of "civilizations"; for us, the question of the archaeology of the Mosquitia is that of cultures represented, histories to be told, and social relations to be understood. Civilizations, unfortunately, can still be "discovered" and "explored"; social relations, histories, and cultural traditions need to be investigated and understood.
The LiDAR imagery produced undoubtedly shows evidence of past inhabitation of the Mosquitia. That is neither surprising nor particularly news. All of Honduras produces evidence of human occupation prior to the arrival of Spanish colonizers in the sixteenth century. The relatively low population of the Mosquitia today is an outcome of colonization and its aftermath. Knowing the reality of past habitation in the region requires us to ask what historical, political, and economic processes have disadvantaged the population in recent centuries.
Like much of the pre-hispanic past of Honduras, knowledge of the original distribution of towns and villages in the Mosquitia has been slow in developing, primarily due to over-valuation, both in Honduras and outside it, of the Classic Maya "civilization". This over-valuation of a Maya past became a shared obsession in North America and Honduras in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For North Americans, the Maya offered a civilization as "advanced" as the ancient Greeks-- a way to establish an advanced past in the Americas independent of that of the Classical world. For Central American elites, the Maya could provide antecedents for new nations, antecedents that were cultivated, desirable, and above all, up to the standards of global cultural centers.
The shared obsession with a purely Maya past led to a history of archaeological investigation that focused on the extreme western edge of the country; that normally asked-- and still too often asks-- the question "how were these other societies or cultures related to the Classic Maya?"; and that marginalizes the histories of the majority of the Honduran territory while generalizing the cultural tradition of the extreme margin of the country.
Against this background of "mayanization", attention to the archaeology of eastern Honduras should be welcome. But instead of building knowledge, the recent dramatic publicity about a supposed "discovery" of "Ciudad Blanca" takes refuge in tales of mystery with no basis in historical fact. As we have previously discussed, the legend of Ciudad Blanca is a modern fabrication, extending to false claims about the content of sixteenth-century Spanish documents.
Actual archaeological work conducted in the Mosquitia was ignored in the original publicity and continues to be ignored by the head of the IHAH. That research is of interest itself, because what it showed was an unexpected number of large sites occupied at the same time as Copan, and in some cases later. Some of these sites included architectural features recognizable as ballcourts, the kind of spaces where people from as far north as Arizona through Mexico and Guatemala played games using rubber balls. Not just significant as a sign of cultural identification with the zone to the north, but also socially significant as evidence of a practice through which different, independent towns participated in inter-site political, religious, and social relations, ballcourts had, until the early 1990s, been thought to be limited to the western edge of Honduras.
Yet the archaeology of the Mosquitia also showed abundant evidence of relations further south, to the societies of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama. In some ways this was unsurprising: people in Nicaragua and Costa Rica valued the beautiful marble vases carved in the Ulua valley, and emulated the painted pottery of the Ulua tradition in their own locally made ceramic vases. But the modern history of archaeological research in Honduras had, since at least the 1930s, emphasized a break between western Honduras, connected with the Maya and other societies west and north, and the peoples of southern Central America.
What the archaeology undertaken in the 1990s (with little institutional backing or financial support) in the Mosquitia-- and in the department of Yoro, and more recently, in Olancho and the Jamastran valley-- demonstrated was that the old model of two blocs separated by a "frontier" was untenable. Instead, Honduran sites further east than the so-called "frontier" expanded our understanding of the geographical scope of travel, exchange, and knowledge, showing that before colonization by the Spanish, all of Mexico and Central America constituted an active chain of interconnected societies, ultimately linked north to the pueblos of the US Southwest and south into the mountains of Colombia, and perhaps beyond.
These were cosmopolitan peoples. Renewed investigation of the Mosquitia has the promise to remind us of this, and enforce real attention to the mechanisms through which this chain of societies were connected over their long histories.
Unfortunately, there is little likelihood that the present campaign by the IHAH will yield reliable knowledge, even if an expedition is mounted to the sites located through LiDAR imaging. Knowledge is not the same thing as discovery. Knowledge comes from building on what went before; the relentless promotion of the new data as unprecedented stands in the way of trying to honestly compare these sites to those known from the region, and across Honduras. The desire to link these real places to a modern myth, with its highly marketable narrative of lost cities of gold, has already distorted the process of archaeological research. How, in this time of high politicization of archaeology in Honduras, could any government-sponsored expedition dispute the claim that this is the discovery of a lost "civilization", Ciudad Blanca, and instead acknowledge that these sites are like those already known from previous research in the Mosquitia?
The greatest promise of following up on the new LiDAR imagery might be the potential to renew archaeological research outside the Copan zone. The greatest challenge presented is a fact cited by the manager of the Institute in his letter to El Heraldo. Paredes writes:
What is wrong here?
The mission of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History is not to exploit sites of cultural and historical importance for economic development. That would be a reasonable statement of the mission of the Institute of Tourism. This passage shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the mission of IHAH. And that lack of understanding of the mission of the Institute, on the part of the person appointed to direct it, is the greatest challenge for any archaeology in Honduras today.
The law governing the Institute of Anthropology and History, established in 1968 and revised in 2008, says that its purpose is
Nothing there, or in the articles that follow, about economic development. Indeed, article 26 explicitly enjoins against approving exploration for any reason other than "scientific investigation":
Under the law, sites are supposed to be of interest for one of two reasons: due to their relation to the "social and political history" of the country; and for their "exceptional artistic or architectural value that they characterize as an exemplar of national culture". Again, no mention of economic exploitation.
Also relevant to this discussion of the challenges to an "archaeology of Ciudad Blanca" is the Law for the protection of the Cultural Patrimony. Passed in 1997, it sets out at the beginning the value of the cultural patrimony:
The cultural patrimony law repeatedly cites the role of the Institute of Anthropology and History in the protection of the cultural patrimony-- not in its exploitation for economic ends.
In theory, there is no contradiction between sponsoring research-- the job of the Institute of Anthropology-- and contributing informed understanding to the development of historic and archaeological sites for visitation that is at one and the same time of economic benefit and a means to educate the public about the Honduran past.
In theory.
In practice, when economic development trumps scientific investigation and dissemination of historical knowledge, as clearly is the case in the unfounded promotion of sites in the Mosquitia as the mythical Ciudad Blanca, the interests of the Honduran people in real knowledge about the past are submerged under the desperate pursuit of money.
My already existing summer research plans precluded my accepting the invitation. I toyed with writing the remarks I would have made in the requested "pequeña ponencia" (brief talk) as a blog post here. But there were, frankly, more important things to do.
Now, as Adrienne Pine notes at Quotha, Virgilio Paredes, in charge of IHAH, has written a letter to El Heraldo, thanking them for their contribution to his project of publicizing "Ciudad Blanca", reproduced by that paper in a self-congratulatory ad about their coverage of the supposed discovery.
And that inspires me to follow through on the invitation I received, albeit a couple of weeks later than proposed, in this virtual forum.
What does the present head of IHAH mean when he writes about "los vestigios arqueologicos de la zona de la Mosquitia hondureña, de una civilizacion que puede haber sido la denominada Ciudad Blanca" [the archaeological vestiges in the Honduran Mosquitia, of a civilization that could have been that called Ciudad Blanca"]?
For an archaeologist, that sentence is painful to read. We are long past the time when we spoke in terms of "civilizations"; for us, the question of the archaeology of the Mosquitia is that of cultures represented, histories to be told, and social relations to be understood. Civilizations, unfortunately, can still be "discovered" and "explored"; social relations, histories, and cultural traditions need to be investigated and understood.
The LiDAR imagery produced undoubtedly shows evidence of past inhabitation of the Mosquitia. That is neither surprising nor particularly news. All of Honduras produces evidence of human occupation prior to the arrival of Spanish colonizers in the sixteenth century. The relatively low population of the Mosquitia today is an outcome of colonization and its aftermath. Knowing the reality of past habitation in the region requires us to ask what historical, political, and economic processes have disadvantaged the population in recent centuries.
Like much of the pre-hispanic past of Honduras, knowledge of the original distribution of towns and villages in the Mosquitia has been slow in developing, primarily due to over-valuation, both in Honduras and outside it, of the Classic Maya "civilization". This over-valuation of a Maya past became a shared obsession in North America and Honduras in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For North Americans, the Maya offered a civilization as "advanced" as the ancient Greeks-- a way to establish an advanced past in the Americas independent of that of the Classical world. For Central American elites, the Maya could provide antecedents for new nations, antecedents that were cultivated, desirable, and above all, up to the standards of global cultural centers.
The shared obsession with a purely Maya past led to a history of archaeological investigation that focused on the extreme western edge of the country; that normally asked-- and still too often asks-- the question "how were these other societies or cultures related to the Classic Maya?"; and that marginalizes the histories of the majority of the Honduran territory while generalizing the cultural tradition of the extreme margin of the country.
Against this background of "mayanization", attention to the archaeology of eastern Honduras should be welcome. But instead of building knowledge, the recent dramatic publicity about a supposed "discovery" of "Ciudad Blanca" takes refuge in tales of mystery with no basis in historical fact. As we have previously discussed, the legend of Ciudad Blanca is a modern fabrication, extending to false claims about the content of sixteenth-century Spanish documents.
Actual archaeological work conducted in the Mosquitia was ignored in the original publicity and continues to be ignored by the head of the IHAH. That research is of interest itself, because what it showed was an unexpected number of large sites occupied at the same time as Copan, and in some cases later. Some of these sites included architectural features recognizable as ballcourts, the kind of spaces where people from as far north as Arizona through Mexico and Guatemala played games using rubber balls. Not just significant as a sign of cultural identification with the zone to the north, but also socially significant as evidence of a practice through which different, independent towns participated in inter-site political, religious, and social relations, ballcourts had, until the early 1990s, been thought to be limited to the western edge of Honduras.
Yet the archaeology of the Mosquitia also showed abundant evidence of relations further south, to the societies of Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and Panama. In some ways this was unsurprising: people in Nicaragua and Costa Rica valued the beautiful marble vases carved in the Ulua valley, and emulated the painted pottery of the Ulua tradition in their own locally made ceramic vases. But the modern history of archaeological research in Honduras had, since at least the 1930s, emphasized a break between western Honduras, connected with the Maya and other societies west and north, and the peoples of southern Central America.
What the archaeology undertaken in the 1990s (with little institutional backing or financial support) in the Mosquitia-- and in the department of Yoro, and more recently, in Olancho and the Jamastran valley-- demonstrated was that the old model of two blocs separated by a "frontier" was untenable. Instead, Honduran sites further east than the so-called "frontier" expanded our understanding of the geographical scope of travel, exchange, and knowledge, showing that before colonization by the Spanish, all of Mexico and Central America constituted an active chain of interconnected societies, ultimately linked north to the pueblos of the US Southwest and south into the mountains of Colombia, and perhaps beyond.
These were cosmopolitan peoples. Renewed investigation of the Mosquitia has the promise to remind us of this, and enforce real attention to the mechanisms through which this chain of societies were connected over their long histories.
Unfortunately, there is little likelihood that the present campaign by the IHAH will yield reliable knowledge, even if an expedition is mounted to the sites located through LiDAR imaging. Knowledge is not the same thing as discovery. Knowledge comes from building on what went before; the relentless promotion of the new data as unprecedented stands in the way of trying to honestly compare these sites to those known from the region, and across Honduras. The desire to link these real places to a modern myth, with its highly marketable narrative of lost cities of gold, has already distorted the process of archaeological research. How, in this time of high politicization of archaeology in Honduras, could any government-sponsored expedition dispute the claim that this is the discovery of a lost "civilization", Ciudad Blanca, and instead acknowledge that these sites are like those already known from previous research in the Mosquitia?
The greatest promise of following up on the new LiDAR imagery might be the potential to renew archaeological research outside the Copan zone. The greatest challenge presented is a fact cited by the manager of the Institute in his letter to El Heraldo. Paredes writes:
The government of the Republic presided over by Porfirio Lobo Sosa is working to fortify the economic development of the country through the Cultural Patrimony as a resource that should be used in a responsible and sustainable form, therefore, we do not doubt that the enhancement of such an important site will come to drive the economic development of the country without taking away from the natural and cultural riches that are encountered in the zone of the Mosquitia.
What is wrong here?
The mission of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History is not to exploit sites of cultural and historical importance for economic development. That would be a reasonable statement of the mission of the Institute of Tourism. This passage shows a fundamental lack of understanding of the mission of IHAH. And that lack of understanding of the mission of the Institute, on the part of the person appointed to direct it, is the greatest challenge for any archaeology in Honduras today.
The law governing the Institute of Anthropology and History, established in 1968 and revised in 2008, says that its purpose is
the defense, exploration, conservation, restauration, repair, recovery and growth, and scientific investigation of the archaeological, anthropological, historic and artistic treasures of the nation, as well as places of tradition and natural beauty.
Nothing there, or in the articles that follow, about economic development. Indeed, article 26 explicitly enjoins against approving exploration for any reason other than "scientific investigation":
Projects that could discover archaeological monuments, like the exploration of those already discovered, shall have the exclusive goal of scientific investigation, therefore, the Institute cannot concede permission to persons who are pursuing other ends.
Under the law, sites are supposed to be of interest for one of two reasons: due to their relation to the "social and political history" of the country; and for their "exceptional artistic or architectural value that they characterize as an exemplar of national culture". Again, no mention of economic exploitation.
Also relevant to this discussion of the challenges to an "archaeology of Ciudad Blanca" is the Law for the protection of the Cultural Patrimony. Passed in 1997, it sets out at the beginning the value of the cultural patrimony:
Cultural properties constitute one of the foundations of the culture of the people and acquire their true value when their origin, history, and context are known with precision and are disseminated for the knowledge of the population.
The cultural patrimony law repeatedly cites the role of the Institute of Anthropology and History in the protection of the cultural patrimony-- not in its exploitation for economic ends.
In theory, there is no contradiction between sponsoring research-- the job of the Institute of Anthropology-- and contributing informed understanding to the development of historic and archaeological sites for visitation that is at one and the same time of economic benefit and a means to educate the public about the Honduran past.
In theory.
In practice, when economic development trumps scientific investigation and dissemination of historical knowledge, as clearly is the case in the unfounded promotion of sites in the Mosquitia as the mythical Ciudad Blanca, the interests of the Honduran people in real knowledge about the past are submerged under the desperate pursuit of money.
Monday, May 28, 2012
El Mito de Ciudad Blanca
(Para nuestros lectores en Honduras...Traducido del Inglés)
(This is for our readers in Honduras....translated from our English post)
Con titulares como Honduras: Afirman haber encontrado Ciudad Blanda, y Con rastreo satelital comprueban la existencia de Ciudad Blanca, la prensa Hondureña comenzó a tocar la trompeta, una vez mas, el descubrimiento de la Ciudad Blanca, la Ciudad Blanca mítica supuestamente situado en algún lugar en el oriente de Honduras.
La última "revelación" de que Ciudad Blanca había sido localizado fue anunciado por Porfirio Lobo Sosa en una reunión de gabinete el martes pasado.
Un artículo de uno de los diarios describe que el supuesto lugar cubre 5 kilómetros cuadrados. Áfrico Madrid, el Ministro del Interior, dijo que el equipo alegando el descubrimiento podría haber encontrado el legendario (sus palabras) Ciudad Perdida o Ciudad Blanca en la región conocida como la Mosquitia, y que podría ser más grande que el sitio de Copán, en el oeste de Honduras.
Virgilio Paredes, quien dirige el Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, dijo:
Paredes también es citado diciendo:
"El mayor descubrimiento arqueológico del mundo en el siglo XXI"!
Ahora que ya ha escuchado la sensacional promoción, aquí están los hechos.
La fuente de tal emotividad es un comunicado de prensa por la UTL Scientific y el Gobierno de Honduras titulado The Government of Honduras and UTL Scientific, LLC Announce Completion of the Frist-Ever LIDAR Imaging Survey of La Mosquitia Region of Honduras.
Si usted lee el comunicado de prensa, usted encontrará que no tiene la pretensión de haber descubierto Ciudad Blanca.
LIDAR ("Light Detection and Ranging" en Inglés, "Detección Aérea de Luz y Medidas de Rango" en Español) rebota la luz de un láser desde un aeronave al paisaje y hace una imagen precisa tanto de la superficie del suelo y la vegetación en él. El procesamiento de las señales le permite quitar la imagen de la vegetación y obtener un modelo exacto de la topografía bajo ella.
Cuando esto se hizo con los nuevos datos de la Mosquitia hondureña, los analistas vieron algo que les parecía los restos arquitectónicos de antiguas ciudades, una serie de sitios arqueológicos.
El trabajo real del LIDAR fue hecho por el Centro Nacional para el Mapeo de láser aerotransportado (NCALM por sus siglas en Inglés), un laboratorio de instrumentación en la Universidad de Houston, financiado por la National Science Foundation de EE UU para ayudar a facilitar este tipo de estudios.
Por supuesto, el comunicado de prensa en realidad no viene de NCALM. Viene de UTL Científico, LLC.
UTL Scientific es una compañía de cine haciendo un documental. Se maneja la organización y la logística en Honduras para el reconocimiento de la superficie LIDAR. La gente de UTL, cuyas hojas de vida breves se incluyen en el comunicado de prensa, son cineastas, escritores y aventureros, pero no científicos.
El anuncio del martes no es el primer supuesto "descubrimiento" de la Ciudad Blanca por aventureros que utilizan la "ciencia".
En 2006, James Ewing, junto con Francis Yakam-Siman y Nezry Edmond, afirmaron haber descubierto Ciudad Blanca utilizando imágenes de la Mosquitia de la técnica Radar de Apertura Sintética (SAR por sus siglas en Inglés).
El resultado final de la utilización de SAR es similar a LIDAR, un modelo de la topografía de una región. El estudio de la SAR en 2006 también pareció de mostrar los restos arqueológicos bajo el dosel de la selva de la Mosquitia. Las características recientemente descubiertas podrían incluso ser los mismos fotografiados en ese entonces. No lo sabremos hasta que suelten las coordenadas geográficas de la región, este último proyecto de crear una imagen. Todo lo que sabemos es que el proyecto se centró en un área marcada en un mapa realizado por el fabricante del primer mapa de Honduras, Enrique Aguilar Paz, como la ubicación de la legendaria Ciudad Blanca.
Que los datos LIDAR muestran posibles sitios arqueológicos en la Mosquitia no debe ser una sorpresa para nadie. Los trabajos pioneros arqueológicos de Chris Begley en la Mosquitia mostraron que habían numerosos sitios a lo largo de los ríos, y que algunos de ellos eran bastante grandes.
Begley explica los rasgos del mito de Ciudad Blanca en su página web.
La historia de Ciudad Blanca se basa en tres puntos de referencia, dos de ellas supuestos menciones históricas, la tercera con raices en las tradiciones Pech y Tawahka.
Los dos documentos históricos fueron escritos por Hernán Cortés (en 1525) y Cristóbal de Pedraza (en 1544). Si bien presentadas como descripciones coloniales de Ciudad Blanca, pero en realidad no se refieren a una ciudad blanca, o una ciudad perdida.
Cortés escribió su famosa quinta carta a Carlos I de España después de regresar de su igualmente famoso viaje a Honduras. En su viaje a Honduras permaneció cerca de la costa, sin llegar más allá del este de la ciudad de Trujillo.
Al hacer una discusión del valor de control de Honduras para el imperio español, escribió:
La fuente de la riqueza de estas provincias y sus señores suele inferirse de la segunda fuente histórica citada, una cuenta de la colonia de Honduras por su nuevo obispo Cristóbal de Pedraza, en 1544. Allí, él escribió observando desde la cima de una montaña en algún lugar al este de Olancho:
"Veragua" se refería a la costa de Centroamérica, desde Nicaragua hasta el río Belén, en Panamá. Históricamente, este era un lugar donde trabaja la orfebrería precolombina.
En contraste, los sitios arqueológicos en Honduras, aunque han provisto muchos ejemplos de objetos de aleación de cobre, no eran por lo general fuentes de oro. Una figura de oro completa que se encontró en el valle del río Ulúa era claramente un objeto importado, hecho en la zona de Costa Rica-Panamá. Fragmentos de otra figura semejante fueron enterrados debajo de la Estela H de Copán. Sin embargo, la zona productora de oro fue a un largo camino desde Honduras. Lo que estos descubrimientos prehispánicos atestiguan es la existencia de una red de intercambio y de viajar desde Honduras a Panamá - la misma red que transmitió los informes sobre lejanas provincias ricas en trabajos de oro a Cortés y Pedraza.
Mientras que Pedraza recibió una descripción de una ciudad dedicada a la producción de objetos de oro no obtuvo una mención de una ciudad blanca o perdida.
Chris Begley ha escrito trabajos académicos sobre la leyenda Ciudad Blanca. En su articulo "Leyendo y Escribiendo la Leyenda de la Ciudad Blanca: Alegorías del pasado y futuro", publicado en 2007 en Southwest Philosophy Review, Begley y Ellen Cox apuntan que Begley habia recogido más de 5 menciones diferentes de las ruinas que los informantes (personas no indígenas) dijieron eran la Ciudad Blanca.
Este artículo también arroja luz sobre la tercera fuente citada por los aficionados que afirman haber encontrado o que diecen buscar la Ciudad Blanca. Begley cuenta que los pueblos Pech y Tawahka de Honduras tienen mitos sobre Wahai Patatahua ("lugar de los antepasados") y Kao Kamasa ("la casa blanca") en la cabecera de la confluencia de dos ríos, al lado de un paso a través de las montañas. En la mitología Pech, esta ubicación es el lugar donde los dioses se retiraron después de la llegada de los Españoles. Begley dice que el Pech identificaron este lugar con la parte remota de sus tierras en la Mosquitia.
Ciudad Blanca, en otras palabras, no es una ruina específica con una herencia que va desde las historias de la época colonial española hasta el presente. No hay un solo lugar que sea la Ciudad Blanca. Por el contrario, como Chris Begley ha demostrado a través de su intensa investigación, hay una serie de sitios arqueológicos por debajo de la densa selva en partes no desarrolladas de la Mosquitia. Eso no es sorprendente ni es noticia.
La SAR y LIDAR son herramientas maravillosas y costosos para la búsqueda de yacimientos arqueológicos. Tampoco están dentro del presupuesto que normalmente tienen disponibles los arqueólogos.
El estudio LIDAR que promociona el gobierno hondureño, pero observamos no por algun arqueólogo Hondureño o internacional, fue valorada en $ 1,5 millones.
La historia de "Ciudad Blanca" es una gran leyenda. Por lo que no es de extrañar que una empresa de filmación apoyaría la historia del descubrimiento y la (posible) tesoro que representa.
Sin embargo, el Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia debe proporcionar un conocimiento confiable sobre el pasado al pueblo hondureño, y las audiencias internacionales.
(This is for our readers in Honduras....translated from our English post)
Con titulares como Honduras: Afirman haber encontrado Ciudad Blanda, y Con rastreo satelital comprueban la existencia de Ciudad Blanca, la prensa Hondureña comenzó a tocar la trompeta, una vez mas, el descubrimiento de la Ciudad Blanca, la Ciudad Blanca mítica supuestamente situado en algún lugar en el oriente de Honduras.
La última "revelación" de que Ciudad Blanca había sido localizado fue anunciado por Porfirio Lobo Sosa en una reunión de gabinete el martes pasado.
Un artículo de uno de los diarios describe que el supuesto lugar cubre 5 kilómetros cuadrados. Áfrico Madrid, el Ministro del Interior, dijo que el equipo alegando el descubrimiento podría haber encontrado el legendario (sus palabras) Ciudad Perdida o Ciudad Blanca en la región conocida como la Mosquitia, y que podría ser más grande que el sitio de Copán, en el oeste de Honduras.
Virgilio Paredes, quien dirige el Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia, dijo:
"Sabemos que tenemos algo y que tenemos que ir a esta zona para saber lo que la cultura era lo que vivía allí".
Paredes también es citado diciendo:
Hemos encontrado lo que podría ser, según los arqueólogos e historiadores, lo que podría ser el mayor descubrimiento arqueológico en el mundo del siglo XXI, una ciudad perdida. No sabemos lo que es, no sabemos si se trata de una estructura (edificio), pero su estado afirmado por especialistas que conocen esta tecnología y la disposición de la tierra, que hay muchas estructuras artificiales.
"El mayor descubrimiento arqueológico del mundo en el siglo XXI"!
Ahora que ya ha escuchado la sensacional promoción, aquí están los hechos.
La fuente de tal emotividad es un comunicado de prensa por la UTL Scientific y el Gobierno de Honduras titulado The Government of Honduras and UTL Scientific, LLC Announce Completion of the Frist-Ever LIDAR Imaging Survey of La Mosquitia Region of Honduras.
Si usted lee el comunicado de prensa, usted encontrará que no tiene la pretensión de haber descubierto Ciudad Blanca.
LIDAR ("Light Detection and Ranging" en Inglés, "Detección Aérea de Luz y Medidas de Rango" en Español) rebota la luz de un láser desde un aeronave al paisaje y hace una imagen precisa tanto de la superficie del suelo y la vegetación en él. El procesamiento de las señales le permite quitar la imagen de la vegetación y obtener un modelo exacto de la topografía bajo ella.
Cuando esto se hizo con los nuevos datos de la Mosquitia hondureña, los analistas vieron algo que les parecía los restos arquitectónicos de antiguas ciudades, una serie de sitios arqueológicos.
El trabajo real del LIDAR fue hecho por el Centro Nacional para el Mapeo de láser aerotransportado (NCALM por sus siglas en Inglés), un laboratorio de instrumentación en la Universidad de Houston, financiado por la National Science Foundation de EE UU para ayudar a facilitar este tipo de estudios.
Por supuesto, el comunicado de prensa en realidad no viene de NCALM. Viene de UTL Científico, LLC.
UTL Scientific es una compañía de cine haciendo un documental. Se maneja la organización y la logística en Honduras para el reconocimiento de la superficie LIDAR. La gente de UTL, cuyas hojas de vida breves se incluyen en el comunicado de prensa, son cineastas, escritores y aventureros, pero no científicos.
El anuncio del martes no es el primer supuesto "descubrimiento" de la Ciudad Blanca por aventureros que utilizan la "ciencia".
En 2006, James Ewing, junto con Francis Yakam-Siman y Nezry Edmond, afirmaron haber descubierto Ciudad Blanca utilizando imágenes de la Mosquitia de la técnica Radar de Apertura Sintética (SAR por sus siglas en Inglés).
El resultado final de la utilización de SAR es similar a LIDAR, un modelo de la topografía de una región. El estudio de la SAR en 2006 también pareció de mostrar los restos arqueológicos bajo el dosel de la selva de la Mosquitia. Las características recientemente descubiertas podrían incluso ser los mismos fotografiados en ese entonces. No lo sabremos hasta que suelten las coordenadas geográficas de la región, este último proyecto de crear una imagen. Todo lo que sabemos es que el proyecto se centró en un área marcada en un mapa realizado por el fabricante del primer mapa de Honduras, Enrique Aguilar Paz, como la ubicación de la legendaria Ciudad Blanca.
Que los datos LIDAR muestran posibles sitios arqueológicos en la Mosquitia no debe ser una sorpresa para nadie. Los trabajos pioneros arqueológicos de Chris Begley en la Mosquitia mostraron que habían numerosos sitios a lo largo de los ríos, y que algunos de ellos eran bastante grandes.
Begley explica los rasgos del mito de Ciudad Blanca en su página web.
La historia de Ciudad Blanca se basa en tres puntos de referencia, dos de ellas supuestos menciones históricas, la tercera con raices en las tradiciones Pech y Tawahka.
Los dos documentos históricos fueron escritos por Hernán Cortés (en 1525) y Cristóbal de Pedraza (en 1544). Si bien presentadas como descripciones coloniales de Ciudad Blanca, pero en realidad no se refieren a una ciudad blanca, o una ciudad perdida.
Cortés escribió su famosa quinta carta a Carlos I de España después de regresar de su igualmente famoso viaje a Honduras. En su viaje a Honduras permaneció cerca de la costa, sin llegar más allá del este de la ciudad de Trujillo.
Al hacer una discusión del valor de control de Honduras para el imperio español, escribió:
He recibido noticias de las provincias muy grandes y ricos con los señores ricos, ricos asistieron, especialmente la que llaman Hueytapalan o en otro idioma, Xucutaco que yo ... han descubierto, por fin, ocho o diez días de marcha de Trujillo, que es decir, unos 50 o 60 leguas.La referencia es a las provincias, no a las ciudades. No hay mención de una ciudad blanca o perdida. Ya que Cortés no visitó la Mosquitia, lo unico que esta carta podría aportar son rumores acerca de las zonas más al este.
La fuente de la riqueza de estas provincias y sus señores suele inferirse de la segunda fuente histórica citada, una cuenta de la colonia de Honduras por su nuevo obispo Cristóbal de Pedraza, en 1544. Allí, él escribió observando desde la cima de una montaña en algún lugar al este de Olancho:
Vimos una muy parte de tierra de la otra parte della al este de muy grandes poblaciones y la tierra que nos parecia con muchos rios.Pedraza mandó llamar a algunos indios de la region para preguntarles sobre las tierras que habia visto:
y preguntandoles por nuestros naguatatos que quiere decir interprete que tierra era aquella respondieron que taguisgualpa, que quiere decir en su lengua donde se funde el oro | por respecto que en el pueblo mas principal della esta una casa de fundición, y vienen de muchas partes de la tierra a fundir oro y de aquellas sierras que dicen que son cerca de Veragua.La Provincia de Taguzgalpa corresponde a la parte oriental de Honduras. Fue ocupada por los Tawahkas, Pech, Misquitos y Sumos.
"Veragua" se refería a la costa de Centroamérica, desde Nicaragua hasta el río Belén, en Panamá. Históricamente, este era un lugar donde trabaja la orfebrería precolombina.
En contraste, los sitios arqueológicos en Honduras, aunque han provisto muchos ejemplos de objetos de aleación de cobre, no eran por lo general fuentes de oro. Una figura de oro completa que se encontró en el valle del río Ulúa era claramente un objeto importado, hecho en la zona de Costa Rica-Panamá. Fragmentos de otra figura semejante fueron enterrados debajo de la Estela H de Copán. Sin embargo, la zona productora de oro fue a un largo camino desde Honduras. Lo que estos descubrimientos prehispánicos atestiguan es la existencia de una red de intercambio y de viajar desde Honduras a Panamá - la misma red que transmitió los informes sobre lejanas provincias ricas en trabajos de oro a Cortés y Pedraza.
Mientras que Pedraza recibió una descripción de una ciudad dedicada a la producción de objetos de oro no obtuvo una mención de una ciudad blanca o perdida.
Chris Begley ha escrito trabajos académicos sobre la leyenda Ciudad Blanca. En su articulo "Leyendo y Escribiendo la Leyenda de la Ciudad Blanca: Alegorías del pasado y futuro", publicado en 2007 en Southwest Philosophy Review, Begley y Ellen Cox apuntan que Begley habia recogido más de 5 menciones diferentes de las ruinas que los informantes (personas no indígenas) dijieron eran la Ciudad Blanca.
Este artículo también arroja luz sobre la tercera fuente citada por los aficionados que afirman haber encontrado o que diecen buscar la Ciudad Blanca. Begley cuenta que los pueblos Pech y Tawahka de Honduras tienen mitos sobre Wahai Patatahua ("lugar de los antepasados") y Kao Kamasa ("la casa blanca") en la cabecera de la confluencia de dos ríos, al lado de un paso a través de las montañas. En la mitología Pech, esta ubicación es el lugar donde los dioses se retiraron después de la llegada de los Españoles. Begley dice que el Pech identificaron este lugar con la parte remota de sus tierras en la Mosquitia.
Ciudad Blanca, en otras palabras, no es una ruina específica con una herencia que va desde las historias de la época colonial española hasta el presente. No hay un solo lugar que sea la Ciudad Blanca. Por el contrario, como Chris Begley ha demostrado a través de su intensa investigación, hay una serie de sitios arqueológicos por debajo de la densa selva en partes no desarrolladas de la Mosquitia. Eso no es sorprendente ni es noticia.
La SAR y LIDAR son herramientas maravillosas y costosos para la búsqueda de yacimientos arqueológicos. Tampoco están dentro del presupuesto que normalmente tienen disponibles los arqueólogos.
El estudio LIDAR que promociona el gobierno hondureño, pero observamos no por algun arqueólogo Hondureño o internacional, fue valorada en $ 1,5 millones.
La historia de "Ciudad Blanca" es una gran leyenda. Por lo que no es de extrañar que una empresa de filmación apoyaría la historia del descubrimiento y la (posible) tesoro que representa.
Sin embargo, el Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia debe proporcionar un conocimiento confiable sobre el pasado al pueblo hondureño, y las audiencias internacionales.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
Mythical Ciudad Blanca
With headlines like Honduras asserts it has found the White City and With a satellite search they proved the existence of the White City, the Honduran press began trumpeting, yet again, the discovery of Ciudad Blanca, the mythical White City supposedly located somewhere in eastern Honduras.
The latest "revelation" that Ciudad Blanca had been located was announced by Porfirio Lobo Sosa in a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
One newspaper article describes the supposed site as being 5 square kilometers. Áfrico Madrid, the Interior Minister, said that the team claiming the discovery could have encountered the legendary (his words) Lost City or White City in the region known as the Mosquitia, and that it could be bigger than the site of Copan, in western Honduras.
Virgilio Paredes, who manages the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History, said:
Paredes also is quoted as saying:
"The biggest archaeological discovery of the world in the twenty-first century"!
Now that you've heard the hype, here's the facts.
The source of the excitement is a press release put out Tuesday by UTL Scientific and the Government of Honduras, titled The Government of Honduras and UTL Scientific, LLC Announce Completion of First-Ever LiDAR Imaging Survey of La Mosquitia Region of Honduras.
If you read the press release, you'll find it does not claim to have discovered Ciudad Blanca.
LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) bounces lasers off the landscape and makes an accurate image of both the ground surface and the vegetation on it. Processing of the signals allows you to virtually strip off the vegetation and get an accurate model of the topography underneath.
When this was done with the new data from the Honduran Mosquitia, the analysts saw something that looked to them like the architectural remains of old cities, a series of archaeological sites.
The actual LIDAR work was done by the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) an instrumentation lab at the University of Houston, funded by the National Science Foundation to help facilitate studies of this kind.
Of course, the press release doesn't actually come from NCALM. It comes from UTL Scientific, LLC.
UTL Scientific is a film company making a documentary. It handled the organization and logistics in Honduras for the LIDAR survey. The UTL people, whose brief biographies are included in the press release, are filmmakers, authors, and adventurers, but not scientists.
Tuesday's announcement is not the first purported "discovery" of Ciudad Blanca by adventurers using "science".
In 2006, James Ewing, along with Francis Yakam-Siman and Edmond Nezry, claimed to have discovered Ciudad Blanca using Synthetic Apeture Radar (SAR) images of the Mosquitia.
The end result of using SAR is similar to LIDAR, a model of the topography of a region. The SAR study back in 2006 also appeared to show archaeological remains beneath the forest canopy in the Mosquitia. The newly discovered features might even be the same ones imaged back then. We won't know until they release the geographic coordinates of the region the latest project imaged. All we know is that the project targeted an area marked on a map made by the first Honduran map maker, Enrique Aguilar Paz, as the location of legendary Ciudad Blanca.
That the LIDAR data shows possible archaeological sites in the Mosquitia should come as a surprise to no one. Pioneering archaeological work by Chris Begley in the Mosquitia showed that there were numerous sites along the rivers, and that some of them were quite large.
Begley outlines the myth of Ciudad Blanca on his website.
The Ciudad Blanca story rests on three points of reference, two of them supposed historical mentions, the third based in Pech and Tawahka tradition.
The two historical documents were written by Hernan Cortés (in 1525) and Cristobal de Pedraza (in 1544). While offered as colonial descriptions of Ciudad Blanca, neither actually refers either to a white city, or to a lost city.
Cortés wrote his famous fifth letter to Charles I of Spain after returning from his equally famous trip to Honduras. While in Honduras he stayed close to the coast, reaching no further east than the city of Trujillo. Making an argument for the value of controlling Honduras to the Spanish empire, he wrote:
The reference is to provinces, not cities. There is no mention of a white or lost city. Since Cortes did not visit the Mosquitia, all this letter could provide would be rumors about areas further to the east.
The source of the wealth of these provinces and their lords is usually inferred from the second historical source cited, an account of the colony of Honduras by its new bishop, Cristobal de Pedraza, in 1544. There, he wrote of standing looking east from the top of a mountain somewhere east of Olancho, Honduras:
He sent for some local Indians to ask about the lands that he saw:
The Province of Taguzgalpa, as it became known, corresponded to eastern Honduras. It was occupied by the Tawahka, Pech, Miskito, and Sumo.
"Veragua" referred to the lower Central American coast, from Nicaragua through to the Rio Belen in Panama. Historically, this was a location of Precolumbian goldworking.
In contrast, Honduran archaeological sites, although yielding many examples of copper alloy objects, were not generally sources of gold. One complete gold figure found in the Ulua River valley was clearly an imported object, made in the Costa Rica-Panama area. Fragments of another such figure were buried below Stela H at Copan. But the gold-producing area was a long way from Honduras. What these pre-hispanic discoveries attest to is a network of exchange and travel reaching from Honduras to Panama-- the same network that conveyed reports about distant wealthy provinces of gold workers to Cortes and Pedraza.
While Pedraza was given a description of a city focused on the production of gold objects (Cibola anyone?) he did not get a mention of a White or Lost City.
Chris Begley has actually written scholarly papers about the White City legend. In "Reading and Writing the White City Legend: Allegories Past and Future", published in 2007 in Southwest Philosophy Review, Begley and Ellen Cox note that Begley has been taken to more than 5 different sets of ruins that informants (non-indigenous people) said were the Ciudad Blanca.
This article also sheds light on what is usually the third source cited by enthusiasts claiming to have found or to be seeking Ciudad Blance. Begley recounts that the Pech and Tawahka people of Honduras have a myth about Wahai Patatahua ("place of the ancestors") and Kao Kamasa ("the white house") at the headwaters of the confluence of two rivers, by a pass through the mountains. In Pech mythology, this location is the place to which their gods retreated after the Spanish came. Begley says the Pech identified this location with the wild and remote part of their lands in the Mosquitia.
Ciudad Blanca, in other words, is not a specific ruin with a charter that runs from the colonial Spanish histories to the present. There is no single place that is Ciudad Blanca. Rather, as Chris Begley demonstrated through hard fieldwork, there are a series of archaeological sites underneath the heavy forest in undeveloped parts of the Mosquitia. That's neither surprising nor news.
SAR and LIDAR are wonderful and expensive tools for finding archaeological sites. Neither is within the normal budget of archaeologists.
The LIDAR study being touted by the Honduran government, but not, we note, by any Honduran or international archaeologists, was valued at $1.5 million.
The "Ciudad Blanca" story is a great legend. It is hardly surprising that a media company would support the storyline of discovery and (potential) treasure that it represents.
But the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History should be providing reliable knowledge about the past to the Honduran people, and international audiences.
The latest "revelation" that Ciudad Blanca had been located was announced by Porfirio Lobo Sosa in a cabinet meeting on Tuesday.
One newspaper article describes the supposed site as being 5 square kilometers. Áfrico Madrid, the Interior Minister, said that the team claiming the discovery could have encountered the legendary (his words) Lost City or White City in the region known as the Mosquitia, and that it could be bigger than the site of Copan, in western Honduras.
Virgilio Paredes, who manages the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History, said:
"We know that we have something and that we have to go into this zone to know what culture it was that lived there.
Paredes also is quoted as saying:
We have found what might be, according to archaeologists and historians, what might be the biggest archaeological discovery in the world of the twenty-first century, a lost city. We don't know what it is, we don't know if it is a structure (building), but its been affirmed by specialists who know this technology and the lay of the land, that there are many man-made structures.
"The biggest archaeological discovery of the world in the twenty-first century"!
Now that you've heard the hype, here's the facts.
The source of the excitement is a press release put out Tuesday by UTL Scientific and the Government of Honduras, titled The Government of Honduras and UTL Scientific, LLC Announce Completion of First-Ever LiDAR Imaging Survey of La Mosquitia Region of Honduras.
If you read the press release, you'll find it does not claim to have discovered Ciudad Blanca.
LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) bounces lasers off the landscape and makes an accurate image of both the ground surface and the vegetation on it. Processing of the signals allows you to virtually strip off the vegetation and get an accurate model of the topography underneath.
When this was done with the new data from the Honduran Mosquitia, the analysts saw something that looked to them like the architectural remains of old cities, a series of archaeological sites.
The actual LIDAR work was done by the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) an instrumentation lab at the University of Houston, funded by the National Science Foundation to help facilitate studies of this kind.
Of course, the press release doesn't actually come from NCALM. It comes from UTL Scientific, LLC.
UTL Scientific is a film company making a documentary. It handled the organization and logistics in Honduras for the LIDAR survey. The UTL people, whose brief biographies are included in the press release, are filmmakers, authors, and adventurers, but not scientists.
Tuesday's announcement is not the first purported "discovery" of Ciudad Blanca by adventurers using "science".
In 2006, James Ewing, along with Francis Yakam-Siman and Edmond Nezry, claimed to have discovered Ciudad Blanca using Synthetic Apeture Radar (SAR) images of the Mosquitia.
The end result of using SAR is similar to LIDAR, a model of the topography of a region. The SAR study back in 2006 also appeared to show archaeological remains beneath the forest canopy in the Mosquitia. The newly discovered features might even be the same ones imaged back then. We won't know until they release the geographic coordinates of the region the latest project imaged. All we know is that the project targeted an area marked on a map made by the first Honduran map maker, Enrique Aguilar Paz, as the location of legendary Ciudad Blanca.
That the LIDAR data shows possible archaeological sites in the Mosquitia should come as a surprise to no one. Pioneering archaeological work by Chris Begley in the Mosquitia showed that there were numerous sites along the rivers, and that some of them were quite large.
Begley outlines the myth of Ciudad Blanca on his website.
The Ciudad Blanca story rests on three points of reference, two of them supposed historical mentions, the third based in Pech and Tawahka tradition.
The two historical documents were written by Hernan Cortés (in 1525) and Cristobal de Pedraza (in 1544). While offered as colonial descriptions of Ciudad Blanca, neither actually refers either to a white city, or to a lost city.
Cortés wrote his famous fifth letter to Charles I of Spain after returning from his equally famous trip to Honduras. While in Honduras he stayed close to the coast, reaching no further east than the city of Trujillo. Making an argument for the value of controlling Honduras to the Spanish empire, he wrote:
I have received news of very large and wealthy provinces with wealthy lords, richly attended, especially the one they call Hueytapalan or in another language, Xucutaco which I....have discovered at last is eight or ten days march from Trujillo, that is to say, some 50 or 60 leagues.
The reference is to provinces, not cities. There is no mention of a white or lost city. Since Cortes did not visit the Mosquitia, all this letter could provide would be rumors about areas further to the east.
The source of the wealth of these provinces and their lords is usually inferred from the second historical source cited, an account of the colony of Honduras by its new bishop, Cristobal de Pedraza, in 1544. There, he wrote of standing looking east from the top of a mountain somewhere east of Olancho, Honduras:
We saw a large piece of land, and in the other part of it, to the east, with large towns (or populations) and the land with many rivers.
He sent for some local Indians to ask about the lands that he saw:
and asking through our interpreters what land it was, they replied that it was Taguisgualpa which in their language means the place where they smelt gold because in their most important city there is a gold work where they come from many parts of the land to smelt gold, and from the surrounding mountains that they say are close to Veragua.
The Province of Taguzgalpa, as it became known, corresponded to eastern Honduras. It was occupied by the Tawahka, Pech, Miskito, and Sumo.
"Veragua" referred to the lower Central American coast, from Nicaragua through to the Rio Belen in Panama. Historically, this was a location of Precolumbian goldworking.
In contrast, Honduran archaeological sites, although yielding many examples of copper alloy objects, were not generally sources of gold. One complete gold figure found in the Ulua River valley was clearly an imported object, made in the Costa Rica-Panama area. Fragments of another such figure were buried below Stela H at Copan. But the gold-producing area was a long way from Honduras. What these pre-hispanic discoveries attest to is a network of exchange and travel reaching from Honduras to Panama-- the same network that conveyed reports about distant wealthy provinces of gold workers to Cortes and Pedraza.
While Pedraza was given a description of a city focused on the production of gold objects (Cibola anyone?) he did not get a mention of a White or Lost City.
Chris Begley has actually written scholarly papers about the White City legend. In "Reading and Writing the White City Legend: Allegories Past and Future", published in 2007 in Southwest Philosophy Review, Begley and Ellen Cox note that Begley has been taken to more than 5 different sets of ruins that informants (non-indigenous people) said were the Ciudad Blanca.
This article also sheds light on what is usually the third source cited by enthusiasts claiming to have found or to be seeking Ciudad Blance. Begley recounts that the Pech and Tawahka people of Honduras have a myth about Wahai Patatahua ("place of the ancestors") and Kao Kamasa ("the white house") at the headwaters of the confluence of two rivers, by a pass through the mountains. In Pech mythology, this location is the place to which their gods retreated after the Spanish came. Begley says the Pech identified this location with the wild and remote part of their lands in the Mosquitia.
Ciudad Blanca, in other words, is not a specific ruin with a charter that runs from the colonial Spanish histories to the present. There is no single place that is Ciudad Blanca. Rather, as Chris Begley demonstrated through hard fieldwork, there are a series of archaeological sites underneath the heavy forest in undeveloped parts of the Mosquitia. That's neither surprising nor news.
SAR and LIDAR are wonderful and expensive tools for finding archaeological sites. Neither is within the normal budget of archaeologists.
The LIDAR study being touted by the Honduran government, but not, we note, by any Honduran or international archaeologists, was valued at $1.5 million.
The "Ciudad Blanca" story is a great legend. It is hardly surprising that a media company would support the storyline of discovery and (potential) treasure that it represents.
But the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History should be providing reliable knowledge about the past to the Honduran people, and international audiences.
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