A Lost Briefcase and a Fatal Mistake Having printed 30,000 rubles, Baranov went to Crimea to change them. At the central market of Simferopol, he bought tomatoes from his grandmother. While paying for the goods, I placed my briefcase with money at the tray and, absent-mindedly, simply forgot about it! Victor came to his senses

Monkeys Many acquaintances from Russia ask me to tell me about the animal world of India, in particular about elephants, monkeys, cobras and cows. I would like to dwell on monkeys (with cows, I think everything is more or less clear, but with cobras and elephants I somehow didn't have to very often

The lost place is called "City of the Monkey God"

An expedition to Honduras turned into an impenetrable mystery for seekers tropical jungle the exciting discovery of a lost city of a mysterious culture never previously studied by scientists. For tourists, the place is kept secret. Meanwhile, according to some sources, it is located in La Mosquitia (in the historical area of ​​​​the “Mosquito Coast”), which is famous for an incredible amount of swamps.

The team of researchers was inspired by rumors that in this remote, uninhabited region there was a place called the “White City,” which in one legend is referred to as the “City of the Monkey God,” reports .

Archaeologists examined the unique site and mapped its vast areas, earthworks, mounds, and pyramids belonging to a culture that flourished a thousand years ago and then suddenly disappeared.

The team, which returned from the excavation site last Wednesday, also discovered a remarkable "collection" of stone sculptures that had lain untouched since this strange city was abandoned.

Unlike the neighboring Mayan culture, this vanished culture was poorly understood and remains virtually unknown to this day. Moreover, archaeologists have not yet even come up with a name for it.

Christopher Fisher, a Mesoamerican specialist on the Colorado State University team, says intact, unlooted sites are "incredibly rare."

He suggested that the cache found at the base of the pyramid may have been some kind of sacrifice. "This whole intact context is completely unique," Fischer said.

Parts of 52 artifacts peeked out of the ground to the delight of researchers. Many of them are still hiding underground, marking possible burial sites. Stunning artifacts include carved stone vessels decorated with snakes and zoomorphic figures.

One of the brightest objects also stuck out from the ground. Fisher suggests that it was an image of a shaman who was reincarnated as a jaguar. Additionally, this round artifact may be associated with ritual ball games that were a feature of pre-Columbian life in Central America.

Mesoamerica was home to numerous highly developed cultures. Among them: Aztecs, Mayans, Mixtecs, Olmecs, Purépechas, Zapotecs, Toltecs, Totonacs, Huastecs, Chichimecs. The new culture from La Mosquitia can continue this list of once-vanished civilizations of antiquity.

The existence of this city in Honduras was first discussed in 2012: during aerial observations, the first mysterious ruins were spotted. The unknown civilization is dated by scientists to 1000 - 1400 years after Christ.

The Lost City of the Monkey God: A True Story
Chapter 5: I return to the City of the Monkey God to try to unravel one of the few unsolved mysteries of the Western world.

Theodore Mord, handsome man with a thin mustache, a smooth high forehead and sleek hair combed back, was born in 1911 in New Bedford, Massachusetts, into a family of hereditary whalers. He dressed in the latest fashions, preferring Palm Beach suits, starched shirts and white shoes. He began his journalism career while still in school, becoming a sports reporter for a local newspaper, then moved into radio journalism, serving as an author and news commentator. He attended Brown University for two years and published newspapers on cruise ships in the mid-1930s. In 1938 he covered civil war in Spain as a correspondent and photographer. There is evidence that he once swam across the river that separated the fascist and republican troops, as he wanted to describe the events that took place on both sides of the front.

Hay encouraged Mord to go on the expedition as soon as possible, and he, without wasting time, immediately began preparations. He invited his former classmate, geologist Lawrence Brown, to go with him. In March 1940, with war already raging in Europe, Mord and Brown departed New York for Honduras with a thousand-pound cargo of equipment and supplies. Hay officially named this enterprise the "Third Honduran Expedition". There was no news from them for four months. When the two explorers finally showed up after visiting Mosquitia, Mord sent Hay a letter reporting an amazing discovery - they had done something no expedition before them had been able to do. This news was published in the New York Times on July 12, 1940:

City of the Monkey God Supposedly Discovered

The successful completion of the Honduran expedition was reported.

“Judging by information received by the newspaper,” the article wrote, “the expedition established the approximate location of the legendary ‘lost city of the Monkey God’ in an almost inaccessible area between the Paulaya and Platano rivers.”

The American public eagerly swallowed this news.

Mord and Brown returned to New York with great fanfare in August. On September 10, 1940, Mord gave an interview on CBS. There is a transcript of it, along with notes in Mord's handwriting. Apparently this text is the most complete surviving account of their discovery.

“I just returned from discovering a lost city,” he told listeners. – We went to an area inside Honduras where no explorer had ever set foot... For weeks on end we struggled to push boats with hooks, moving along the rivers among impenetrable jungle. When it became impossible to swim further, we began to cut our way through the jungle... after several weeks of such life, we became hungry, exhausted and lost confidence in success. We were about to give up when I saw something from the top of a small cliff that made me freeze in place... It was the wall of a city - the lost city of the Monkey God!.. I could not judge the size of the city, but I know that it went deep into the jungle and that it was once inhabited by about thirty thousand people. But that was two thousand years ago. All that remained were the ruins of walls covered with earth where houses stood, and the stone foundations of buildings that were probably magnificent temples. I remembered ancient legend, which was told by the Indians. It said that in the lost city a giant monkey statue was worshiped as a deity. I saw a huge mound overgrown with forest: when we manage to excavate it, I think we will see a statue of this monkey deity. Today, the Indians living in that area dread the thought of the city of the Monkey God. They believe that a huge hairy ape-like man named Ulax lives there... In the streams near the city we discovered rich deposits of gold, silver, and platinum. I found a face mask... it resembles the face of a monkey... Almost everywhere there are carved images of a monkey - the monkey god... I will return to the city of the Monkey God and try to unravel one of the few unsolved mysteries of the Western world.

Mord refused to give the coordinates of the city, fearing it would be looted. It seems he withheld this information even from Hei.

In another report written for the magazine, Mord described the ruins in detail:

“The City of the Monkey God is surrounded by a wall. We found parts of the walls that were slightly damaged by the green magic of the jungle - they successfully resist the advance of the thickets. We walked along one of the walls until it disappeared under the sediments of the earth: there are all signs that huge buildings are buried under it. And indeed, under the centuries-old cover of greenery, buildings still remain.”

“This place is incomparable,” he continued. – High walls provide an ideal backdrop. There is a waterfall nearby, as beautiful as a sequined evening dress. It spills into a green valley full of ruins. Birds similar to gems, flew from tree to tree, and curious monkey faces looked at us from the dense curtain of foliage.”

He had long conversations with the old Indians, who told a lot about the city - “information that is passed down from generation to generation from those who saw it with their own eyes.”

“They said that as we approached the city we would see a long staircase, built and paved in the manner of those found in the ruined Mayan cities in the north. There will be statues of monkeys on the sides.

In the center of the temple there is a high stone platform, on which the statue of the monkey god is located. Before, sacrifices were made there.”

Mord brought many artifacts to New York—monkey figurines made of stone and clay, his canoe, pottery, and stone tools. Many of them are still part of the Smithsonian Institution's collection. Mord promised to return to Honduras next year to “start excavations.”

But these plans were prevented by the Second World War. Mord became an OSS agent OSS (Office of Strategic Services)- The first joint intelligence service of the United States, created during World War II. On its basis, the CIA was created after the war. and a war correspondent, and his obituary stated that he was one of the participants in the plot to assassinate Hitler. He never returned to Honduras. In 1954, Mord, a drunkard after a divorce, hanged himself in the shower stall of his parents' summer home in Dartmouth, Massachusetts. He never told anyone where the lost city was.

Mord's reports of the discovery of the lost city of the Monkey God received wide publicity and fired the imagination of both Americans and Hondurans. After his death, the location of the city became the subject of intense debate and speculation. Dozens of people searched the city unsuccessfully, re-reading notes and reports in search of possible clues. The object of desire of the researchers was Mord's favorite cane, still kept in his family. The cane is carved into four columns of cryptic characters that look like directions or coordinates - for example, NE 300; E 100; N 250; SE 300. The inscriptions on the cane completely captured the attention of the Canadian cartographer Derek Parent, who spent many years traveling around Mosquitia, compiling maps of the region. He assumed that the numbers on the cane were the coordinates of the lost city. During his travels, Parent created the most detailed and accurate of existing maps Mosquitia.

The most recent search for the lost city of Morda dates back to 2009. Pulitzer Prize-winning Wall Street Journal journalist Christopher Stewart undertook an arduous journey deep into Mosquitia in an attempt to retrace Mord's route. Stuart was accompanied by archaeologist Christopher Begley, who devoted his doctoral dissertation to the archaeological sites of Mosquitia and examined more than a hundred such sites. Begley and Stewart went up the river and, at the headwaters of the Platano, made their way through the jungle to the ruins called Lansetillal: they remained from a city built by an ancient people who, according to Strong and other archaeologists, once inhabited Mosquitia. This town, already known (it had been cleared and mapped by Peace Corps volunteers in 1988), was roughly in the area where Mord was believed to have been, at least as far as Begley and Stewart could determine. The city consisted of more than twenty earthen mounds bordering four squares and possibly a Mesoamerican stadium. Mesoamerica, or Mesoamerica, is a historical and cultural region (not to be confused with Central America) extending roughly from central Mexico to Honduras and Nicaragua. The term was coined in 1943 by the German philosopher and anthropologist Paul Kirchhoff. ball games. In the jungle, some distance from the ruins, a white cliff was discovered, which, according to Stewart, could be mistaken for a ruined wall from a distance. Stewart published a well-received book about his research, Jungleland. In search of a dead city." The book turned out to be very exciting, but despite the best efforts of Begley and Stewart, they were unable to find solid evidence that the ruins of Lansetillal are in fact the lost city of the Monkey God, found by Mord.

As it turns out, researchers have been looking in the wrong place for answers for nearly three-quarters of a century. The Mord and Brown diaries are preserved in the Mord family. The artifacts were transferred to the Museum of the American Indian, but the diaries were not. This in itself is a notable departure from standard practice, since such diaries usually contain important scientific information and are not owned by the researcher, but by the institution that funded the research. Until recently, the diaries were kept by Theodore's nephew, David Mord. I managed to get a copy of the diaries that the Morda family gave to the National geographical society. No one there read them, but the staff archaeologist kindly scanned the diaries for me because I was writing an article for National Geographic magazine. I knew that Christopher Stewart had seen at least part of the diaries, but was disappointed to find no clue to the location of the lost city of the Monkey God. Stewart suggested that Mord, for security reasons, did not indicate the coordinates even in his notes. Therefore, when I started looking through the diaries, I did not expect that I would find anything noteworthy.

There are three journals - two hardcover notebooks with cloth covers, both titled "The Third Honduran Expedition", and a small spiral-bound notebook with a black cover, labeled "Field Notebook". The total volume is more than three hundred hand-filled pages that contain a detailed account of the expedition from the first to last day. Those diaries where all the original pages have been preserved do not have a single omission: all days are described in detail. Brown and Mord, traveling through the heart of darkness A literary allusion to Joseph Conrad's famous story "Heart of Darkness"., took turns making notes in a notebook. Brown's easy-to-read notes, written in a rounded hand, are interspersed with Mord's text, whose letters are pointed and slanted forward.

I will not soon forget the feelings I felt when reading these diaries - first bewilderment, then disbelief and, finally, shock.

It appears that Hay and the American Indian Museum, and with them the American public, have been deceived. Judging by the diaries of Mord and Brown, they had their own secret agenda. They had not originally intended to search for the lost city, which is mentioned only once, on the last page, almost as an afterthought and clearly in connection with Conzemius. Here is the entry in its entirety:

White City

1898 – Paulaya, PlantanMord uses English name river, which in Spanish is called Platano. (Note by author) , Wampoo - the sources of these rivers are probably located near the city.

Timoteteo, Rosales, the one-eyed rubber miner who made the trek from Paulaya to Plantan, still saw the columns in 1905.

This is the only entry of hundreds of pages related to the lost city, in search of which Morde and Brown allegedly went in search of it, describing it so vividly in an interview with American media mass media. They did not look for archaeological sites and only superficially interviewed the aborigines. From the diaries it is clear that they did not find any ruins, artifacts or objects in Mosquitia - no "lost city of the Monkey God." What did Mord and Brown do in Mosquitia for four months when they remained silent while Hay and the whole world waited with bated breath? What goals did they set for themselves?

The decision to start searching for gold was not spontaneous. The cargo, weighing hundreds of pounds, included the latest gold mining equipment, including pans, scoops, picks, sluice washer parts for gold sands, and mercury for amalgamation. It is curious that Mord, who could have chosen anyone as his assistant, invited a geologist, not an archaeologist. Brown and Mord went into the jungle with detailed information about possible gold deposits along the creeks and tributaries of the Blanco River, and planned their route accordingly. There have long been rumors that this region is rich in alluvial gold, which accumulates inside the stones A stone or pebble bank on a river. and holes in the beds of water streams. The Blanco River flows for miles south of that the sites where Mord and Brown claimed the lost city was discovered. When I correlated their diary entries with the map, it turned out that they did not reach the upper reaches of the Paulaya or Platano rivers at all. Climbing up the Patuca River, they bypassed the mouth of the Whampoa and moved far to the south, where the Cuyamel River flows into the Patuca. However, they never came closer than forty miles to the area of ​​​​the sources of Paulaya, Platano and Whampo - the very same where, according to them, the lost city of the Monkey God was found.

Mord and Brown were looking for a new California, a new Yukon. Everywhere they dug up stones and washed the sand for a “sign” - a piece of gold - in crazy detail, calculating the cost of each grain of gold sand they found. Finally, gold was found in the Ulak-Vaz stream, which flows into the Blanco. An American named Pearl (this is written in his diary) carried out washing here in 1907. A resident of New York, the dissolute son of wealthy parents, he, however, preferred to spend his time not on washing sand, but on drunkenness and debauchery, and his father closed the shop - the work was curtailed in 1908. He left a dam, water pipes, valves, an anvil and other useful structures and devices, which Mord and Brown repaired for their own needs.

At the mouth of the Ulak-Waz, Mord and Brown released all the Indian guides and headed up the creek, where they set up Camp Ulak, the very place where Pearl had worked. They spent three weeks - these were the hottest days for them - in hard work mining gold.

They rebuilt the old Pearl Dam to channel the stream into sluice washes, where the flow of water over the ribbed surface and burlap separated the heavier gold grains from the sand; the daily arrival was recorded in a diary. Both worked like horses, got wet in downpours, endured the bites of clouds of mosquitoes and gnats, extracted thirty to fifty ticks from their skin every day and lived in constant fear of the poisonous snakes that were everywhere. They ran out of coffee, tobacco, and food supplies. They spent most of their free time playing cards. “We discussed the prospects of gold mining again and again,” wrote Mord, “and talked about the likely course of the war, wondering whether America was already involved in it?”

They also built projects. “We found an excellent location for an airfield,” Brown wrote, “on the other side of the river. Perhaps we will set up a permanent camp on this plateau if we are able to carry out our plans.”

But then came the rainy season, which hit them with full fury: the downpours began with a roar in the treetops and left several inches of water on the ground every day. With each new downpour, Ulak-Vaz swelled more and more, Mord and Brown tried to fight the rising water level. On June 12, a disaster happened. A tropical downpour caused a flood, the stream overflowed, and gold mining equipment was carried away by the current. “Obviously we won’t be able to mine gold anymore,” Mord complained in his diary. “Our dam is completely destroyed, as is the trough. It’s best to stop all work as soon as possible and return by going down the river.”

Mord and Brown left the site, loaded the trays, the remaining supplies and gold, and rushed down the swollen Ulak-Vaz with incredible speed. After passing Blanco and Cuyamel, they turned into Patuca. In one day they covered a distance along the Patuka that had previously taken two weeks to cover - then they swam against the current, but used a motor. When they finally reached civilization - there was a radio in one of the villages on Patuk - Mord learned of the fall of France. He was told that America had "actually entered the war, and it would officially happen in a day or two." Mord and Brown panicked at the thought of being stranded in Honduras. “We decided to hurry and achieve the goals of the expedition as quickly as possible.” One can argue about what was meant by these mysterious words, but it seems that they realized that they would have to quickly come up with some kind of legend and get ancient artifacts for Hay, supposedly from the “lost city.” (Until this point, there was no mention in the diaries that they had found or removed any artifacts from Mosquitia.)

They moved further along the overflowing Patuka, sailing during the day and sometimes at night, and on June 25 they reached Brewers Lagoon (now Bruce Lagoon) and the sea. They spent a week there, without haste, since they learned that America was not yet going to enter the war. On the tenth of July, Morde and Brown finally reached the capital, Tegucigalpa. At some point between these two dates, Morde wrote a fabricated report for his employer, George Hay, that became the basis for the New York Times article.

Upon returning to New York, Mord repeatedly told the story of the discovery of the lost city of the Monkey God, each time adding new details. The listeners loved it all. The rather modest collection of artifacts collected by Mord and Brown was displayed in the museum along with a punt, or dugout canoe. From the diaries it becomes clear that they hastily acquired these items, emerging from the jungle west of Brewers Lagoon, near the coast. One Spaniard showed them a place where there were many ancient things. To find them, the Americans had to do excavations. Probably at the same time they bought some artifacts from local residents, but there is not a word about this in the diaries.

Mord and Brown made no attempt to conceal their actions or to invent any legend. It is difficult to understand why they left such a blatant document that exposes them as swindlers. Obviously they had no intention of showing these recordings to their employer or anyone else. Perhaps they overestimated themselves, assuming that the discovery of a fabulous gold mine would justify their actions, and therefore wanted to tell posterity about everything. The claim of finding the lost city may have been ill-considered, but it is likely that Mord and Brown planned to report it all along to conceal their true intentions.

What is certain is that for decades many have wondered whether Mord had found the city. Until recently, everyone agreed that he had probably discovered some kind of archaeological site - perhaps even important. But the diaries prove that Mord found nothing: his “find” was one hundred percent fraudulent.

But what about the cane with mysterious inscriptions? I recently contacted Derek Parent, who spent several decades exploring Mosquitia, studying the Mord route, and trying to decipher the inscriptions on the cane. Parent probably knows more about Mord than anyone else, and has been in close contact with Mord's relatives for decades.

For years, David Mord sent Parent copies of excerpts from the diaries, several pages at a time. In one of his letters, Parent told me that the discovery of the city was contained in the lost parts of the diary.

“What other missing parts?” – I asked.

That's when David Mord's tricks became apparent.

David Mord told Parent that most of the second diary was lost. According to him, only the first page survived, a copy of which he sent to Parent. The rest disappeared - according to David Mord, it was in this part that the journey along the Paulaya River to the city of the Monkey God was described. Why did she disappear? As Mord explained to Parent, this could have happened immediately after the death of Theodore Mord, when the British military intelligence ordered relatives to burn his papers, or while the diaries were in a warehouse in Massachusetts - it was damp and there were rats.

I was surprised to hear Parent say this, because the lost pages, according to David Mord, were not actually lost. I have a complete copy of the second diary - all pages are numbered, bound and have a hard cover. There is not a single date missing in the text, not a single exception. The supposedly lost portion of the second journal's entries relates only to Mord's time relaxing in Brewers Lagoon, making friends with local Americans, sailing and fishing... and going on a day's hike to dig up some artifacts.

Why this deception? It can be assumed that David Mord was protecting the memory of his uncle or the honor of the family, but, unfortunately, we cannot find out his true motives: he is serving prison term for a serious crime. After David's arrest, his wife (probably without realizing what she was doing) temporarily gave the diaries to the National Geographic Society.

When I shared my findings with Derek Parent and sent him a copy of the entire second diary, he responded to me by email. e-mail: “I’m completely shocked.”

Despite these shenanigans, the mystery of the cane has not gone away. After receiving a copy of the second diary, Parent shared his new theory with me. He speculates that the cane may have directions from Camp Ulak or the site where it is located to "places of interest." In his opinion, Mord found something and carved directions on his cane, but did not write them down in his diary. Perhaps they were talking about things so important that he could not trust this information even to the diary he kept with Brown.

Parent took the information on the cane and matched it to the map. According to him, the cardinal directions and distances correspond to the bends and turns of the Blanco River, if you follow its upstream from the mouth of the Ulak-Vaz stream. He believes that the cane records a journey “along the river bank to a final destination now precisely defined.” The final destination, Parent determined, was a narrow 300-acre valley through which the Blanco River flowed. This valley has never been explored. There may be another promising alluvial gold deposit there, which Mord hoped to return to later - most likely without Brown. But it is possible that the cane indicates the location of another object of interest. The mystery remains unsolved.

However, we now know that the cane does not contain the secret coordinates of the lost city. In a diary entry dated June 17, 1940, written on the last day before leaving the jungle and arriving at a civilized settlement, Mord wrote: “We are convinced that no great civilization existed there. Important archaeological discoveries cannot be made.”