Entering the ruins was a disappointment. If the Mosquitia jungle were superimposed on Times Square, the foliage would be so thick that you would have no inkling you were in the midst of a city. Even standing at the base of an earthen pyramid in the central plaza of T1, surrounded by earthworks, terracing, and mounds, I had not the slightest idea that this was the main public space of what had once been a thriving city of thousands. Only through technology did we know our location in the ruins. — the New Yorker
Douglas Preston discusses exploring an ancient city left untouched in the jungles of Honduras and rediscovered with LIDAR technology. The city was abandoned around 1500, devastated not by direct contact with Europeans but rather with the diseases they carried:
This inferno of contagion destroyed thousands of societies and millions of people, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, from California to New England, from the Amazon rain forest to the tundra of Hudson Bay. It was the greatest catastrophe ever to befall the human species. The death of T1 was but one tile in this vast mosaic of annihilation.
More on ancient cities:
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