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La Ciudad Blanca (, Spanish for "The White City") is a legendary settlement said to be located in the Mosquitia region of the Gracias a Dios Department in eastern Honduras. This extensive area of rainforest, which includes the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, has long been the subject of multidisciplinary research. Archaeologists refer to it as being a part of the Isthmo-Colombian Area of the Americas, one in which the predominant indigenous languages included those in the Chibchan and Misumalpan families. Due to the many variants of the story in the region, most professional archaeologists doubt it refers to any one actual settlement, much less one representing a city of the Pre-Columbian era. Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés reported hearing "trustworthy" information on a region with "towns and villages" of extreme wealth in Honduras, but never located these. In 1927, aviator Charles Lindbergh reported seeing a "white city" while flying over eastern Honduras.〔Colavito, Jason "On the Development of the Ciudad Blanca Myth" http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/on-the-development-of-the-ciudad-blanca-myth〕 The first known mention by an academic of the ruins under the name Ciudad Blanca (White City) was by Eduard Conzemius, an ethnographer from Luxembourg in 1927. In his report on the Pech people of Honduras to the Society of Americanists, he said the ruins had been found about twenty-five years previously by someone looking for rubber who got lost in the area between the Paulaya River and the Plantain River. He said it was called the White City because its buildings and a wall around it were white stone.〔Conzemius, Eduard (1927) "Los Indios Payas de Honduras, Estudio geografico, historico, etnografico y linguistico" in Journal de la Societé des Americanistes. Tome 19,p. 302〕 In 1939, adventurer Theodore Morde claimed to have found a "City of the Monkey God". However, he never provided a precise location for this, a place that later sources equated with Ciudad Blanca. Morde died before returning to the region to undertake further exploration. Explorer Tibor Sekelj searched for The White City in 1952 on a small, unsuccessful, expedition that was financed by the Ministry of Culture of Honduras. Interest in Ciudad Blanca grew in the 1990s as numerous explorers searched for it and news of archeological work in the area was chronicled in popular media. In 2009, author Christopher Stewart attempted to retrace the steps of Morde with the help of archaeologist Christopher Begley. His book about the search, ''Jungleland'', was published in 2013. In May 2012, press releases issued by a team led by documentary film maker Steve Elkins and by the Honduran government about remote sensing exploration using LiDAR renewed interest in the legend, and the news media asserted that Ciudad Blanca had been found. The association was quickly criticized by University of California, Berkeley archaeologist Rosemary Joyce as "hype".〔Joyce, Rosemary "Good science, big hype, bad archaeology" http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2012/06/07/good-science-big-hype-bad-archaeology/〕 Discovery of Ciudad Blanca was asserted by the media yet again after additional fieldwork in 2015, but this work has also been met with sharp criticism.〔Joyce, Rosemary There’s a Real Archaeological Surprise in Honduras…" http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2015/03/03/theres-a-real-archaeological-surprise-in-honduras/〕 Over 200 archeological sites have been discovered and documented in Mosquitia during the last century as amateurs and professionals searched the area, with the most extensive building period being 800-1250 AD. However, only a few have been systematically mapped and scientifically investigated so far. The legend of Ciudad Blanca, a popular element of folklore in Honduras, has been the subject of multiple films, TV programs, books, articles, and in 2010 the Honduran government inaugurated an eco-tourism route to take advantage of its popularity called Ruta "Kao Kamasa" (Route plus the Pech name for the White City) between Santa Maria de Real (Escamilpa in the conquest period), Olancho and going through the Pech villages and the town of Dulce Nombre de Culmi either to the southern entrance of the Rio Platano Biosphere or to the Sierra de Agalta National Park or the proposed Malacate Mountain Wildlife Preserve in the ''municipio'' or county of Culmí, Olancho Department. ==Background== La Ciudad Blanca is said to be located in la Mosquitia, reportedly in or near the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve, a protected World Heritage Site located in Gracias a Dios, Colon and Olancho Departments of Honduras in what archaeologists refer to as the Isthmo-Colombian Area. La Mosquitia is a 32,000 square mile stretch of dense forest spanning to the Honduras-Nicaragua border. The ecology of this region is primarily a rainforest habitat, although parts are savannah. Mosquitia is occupied by several different indigenous peoples including the Pech, Miskito, Miskito Sambu, and Tawakha, as well as ''mestizo'' populations and those of European and East or South Asian ancestry. These groups all speak their own languages, but Colonial-era reports also mention "Mexicano" (presumably Nahuatl) and variants of Lencan languages (Colo, Ulúa, Lenca) in the Taguzgalpa area east of Trujillo.〔Herranz, Atanasio (2000) Estado, sociedad y lenguaje La politica linguistica en Honduras, Tegucigalpa: Editorial Guaymuras〕 The Pech (at one time referred to as Paya) "trace their ancestry to Chilmeca in the Plátano River headwaters, near the legendary and lost 'Ciudad Blanca'."〔Stevens, Stanley (1997) ''Conservation Through Cultural Survival: Indigenous Peoples and Protected Areas.'' Island Press, Washington, DC. p. 106.〕 In the past another group of Indians known to the Miskitos as the Rah, who were very warlike and ate people, also lived in the area.〔Wood, Scott (2103) La Moskitia desde adentro. Tegucigalpa: Secretaria de Cultura, Artes y Deportes.〕 The Rio Platano Biosphere declared in the 1980s is a larger area that includes all the protected area decreed in 1961 by the Honduran Congress at the suggestion of the Maker of Honduras's 1954 General Map Dr. Jesus Aguilar Paz as the Ciudad Blanca Protected Area. The Honduran-Nicaraguan border dispute was only decided in 1960 in the World Court at The Hague. Aguilar Paz had included on his map a place called "Ciudad Blanca" with a question mark.〔Video "Discover the Rio Plátano Biosphere Reserve In search of Ciudad Blanca, SEPH, 2000Available on Youtube in English and in Spanish〕 The Pech Indian name for the ruin is Kao Kamasa (White House in English, Casa Blanca in Spanish)〔Flores, Lazaro H. and Wendy Griffin (1991) Dioses, Heroes, y Hombres en el Universo Mitico Pech, San Salvador: Universidad Centroamericana José Simeon Cañas〕 and Dr. Aguilar Paz who was also a noted Honduran geographer also included Casa Blanca as a place name near his Ciudad Blanca site.〔(Aquilar Paz, Jesus (1954) Mapa General de la Republica de Honduras)〕 Popular accounts of the Ciudad Blanca claim it was a city of great wealth, associated with the town or Province of Taguzgalpa east of Trujillo, that the Spanish on repeated occasions tried to conquer but could not.〔Conzemius, Eduard (1927) "Los Indios Payas de Honduras, Estudio geografico, historico, etnografico y linguistico" in Journal de la Societé des Americanistes, Tome 19, 1927, p. 245-302〕 Indigenous people such as the Pech, Tawahkas,and Miskitos talk about a city that cannot be entered, or if regular people enter they can not take anything out of it, and if they tell where it is, they will be punished. In some versions, it is the hiding place of deities who retreated from the Spanish invaders. Some accounts of Ciudad Blanca include allusions to the legend of El Dorado, an imaginary location in South America.〔〔Wood, Scott(2013) La Moskitia Desde Adentro: Aspectos Históricos,antropologicos, y culturales, Tegucigalpa: Secretaria de Cultura, Artes y Deportes〕〔Conzemius, Eduard (1927) Los Indios Payas de Honduras, Estudio geografico, historico, etnografico y linguistico, in Journal de la Societe des Americanistes, Tome 19, 1927, p.302〕〔Griffin, Wendy (2013) "(Jungleland )"〕 In Honduras, the Colonial era Spanish had a gold mine located between the Paulaya and Sico Rivers, an area named El Dorado in Colonial times.〔Conzemius, Eduard (1927) "Los Indios Payas de Honduras, Estudio geografico, historico, etnografico y linguistico" in Journal de la Societé des Americanistes, Tome 19, 1927, p.245-302〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「La Ciudad Blanca」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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