June, 18, 2012 -- Slashing through jungles searching for lost cities may be a thing of the past, now that a team from the University of Houston has developed a way to peer through even dense foliage to find signs of hidden ruins. The team used a laser-based light detection and ranging (LIDAR) system to find ruins blanketed by the forest in eastern Honduras.
In 1526, conquistador Hernán Cortés heard tales of a white city, la Ciudad Blanca, hidden in the forests of Honduras. Explorers have searched the forest, called La Mosquitia, for centuries in vain. The LIDAR system may have found what generations of treasure-seekers overlooked.
The system used more than four billion laser pulses to map La Mosquitia, the largest wilderness area in Central America. The image shows what looks like a central courtyard surrounded by structures.
No one has ventured into the area yet to confirm the observations. And if this really is the legendary city, no one knows anything about the mysterious structure except that it exists. So it looks like the days of Indiana Jones are not yet over; there is still a job for machete-wielding adventurers to go out and find lost cities. And throughout history archeologists, explorers and thieves have trudged through the wilderness endeavoring to do just that.
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