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Summary
Summary
The acclaimed chronicle of the discovery of the legendary lost civilization of the Maya. Includes the history of the major Maya sites, including Palenque, Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Tuloom, Copan, and more.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * Illustrated with a map and more than 100 images.
In 1839, rumors of extraordinary yet baffling stone ruins buried within the unmapped jungles of Central America reached two of the world's most intrepid travelers. Seized by the reports, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood--both already celebrated for their adventures in Egypt, the Holy Land, Greece, and Rome--sailed together out of New York Harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rainforests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. What they found would upend the West's understanding of human history.
In the tradition of Lost City of Z and In the Kingdom of Ice, former San Francisco Chronicle journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist William Carlsen reveals the remarkable story of the discovery of the ancient Maya. Enduring disease, war, and the torments of nature and terrain, Stephens and Catherwood meticulously uncovered and documented the remains of an astonishing civilization that had flourished in the Americas at the same time as classic Greece and Rome--and had been its rival in art, architecture, and power. Their masterful book about the experience, written by Stephens and illustrated by Catherwood, became a sensation, hailed by Edgar Allan Poe as "perhaps the most interesting book of travel ever published" and recognized today as the birth of American archaeology. Most important, Stephens and Catherwood were the first to grasp the significance of the Maya remains, understanding that their antiquity and sophistication overturned the West's assumptions about the development of civilization.
By the time of the flowering of classical Greece (400 b.c.), the Maya were already constructing pyramids and temples around central plazas. Within a few hundred years the structures took on a monumental scale that required millions of man-hours of labor, and technical and organizational expertise. Over the next millennium, dozens of city-states evolved, each governed by powerful lords, some with populations larger than any city in Europe at the time, and connected by road-like causeways of crushed stone. The Maya developed a cohesive, unified cosmology, an array of common gods, a creation story, and a shared artistic and architectural vision. They created stucco and stone monuments and bas reliefs, sculpting figures and hieroglyphs with refined artistic skill. At their peak, an estimated ten million people occupied the Maya's heartland on the Yucatan Peninsula, a region where only half a million now live. And yet by the time the Spanish reached the "New World," the Maya had all but disappeared; they would remain a mystery for the next three hundred years.
Today, the tables are turned: the Maya are justly famous, if sometimes misunderstood, while Stephens and Catherwood have been nearly forgotten. Based on Carlsen's rigorous research and his own 1,500-mile journey throughout the Yucatan and Central America, Jungle of Stone is equally a thrilling adventure narrative and a revelatory work of history that corrects our understanding of Stephens, Catherwood, and the Maya themselves.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Journalist Carlsen travels through Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras, tracing the footsteps of Frederick Catherwood and John Lloyd Stephens, the amateur archaeologists whose 1839 expedition offered Euro-Americans their earliest awareness of Mayan civilization. At the time, the cultural and religious chauvinism of whites on both sides of the Atlantic encouraged the view that indigenous Americans had been nothing more than "primitive, inferior people." But Stephens and Catherwood's journey, as described through their pivotal writings, provided irrefutable evidence the Maya had created "one of the most sophisticated early civilizations on earth" and forced their readers to rethink basic assumptions about race, culture, and evolution. Carlsen depicts the two men's arduous expedition with verve and vigor, though some readers may find that the book's staccato narrative structure doesn't do the material justice. The book would also have been strengthened by at least a brief engagement with the longer history of European encounters with Central America; Hernán Cortés and his conquistadors had been dazzled by Aztec culture early in the 16th century, so at least some Europeans were aware that indigenous Central Americans were not savages. Nonetheless, Carlsen finely explicates the challenges of the Catherwood-Stephens expedition and the wonders they found. Agent: Geri Thoma, Writers House. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* When travel writer, explorer, and diplomat, John Stephens read a 1836 antiquarian journal that mentioned the existence of monumental ruins in Central America, he decided that this would be his exciting next destination. Although he could write with engaging eloquence, he could not create the illustrations he knew the book-buying public would demand. Providentially, he met Frederick Catherwood, an Englishman who could, and who also was as passionate about exploration as Stephens. The partnership they formed shapes the lively narrative author Carlsen delivers about their ensuing expeditions to the region. The first, undertaken in 1839, entailed the panoply of perils (mountains, disease, hostile inhabitants) that exploration readers then and now expect, along with the added drama of a Guatemalan civil war. In addition to the discomforts endured by Stephens and Catherwood, Carlsen fully captures their awe before the ruins they described in word and image to such popular acclaim. Beyond their adventures, Carlsen credits the duo with an intellectual breakthrough about Mayan civilization: that it was an indigenous evolution, not derivative of another culture. Ably researching this pair and affectingly depicting their friendship, Carlsen makes an exemplary contribution to the lost-cities genre.--Taylor, Gilbert Copyright 2016 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Journalist Carlsen examines the adventurous lives of American diplomat, lawyer, and explorer John Lloyd Stephens (1805-52), and British artist and architect Frederick -Catherwood (1799-1854), whose many grueling archaeological expeditions through the dangerous jungles of Central America were among the first to document the majestic ruins of the Maya civilization. Stephens and Catherwood's investigation of then-unknown Mayan sites such as Copán and Palenque proved the existence of a highly sophisticated ancient indigenous civilization that challenged 19th-century views on Western cultural superiority. Combining Stephens's travel writing and -Catherwood's masterly illustrations, books such as -Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and -Yucatan, as well as a later volume, became best sellers that introduced a mysterious, hidden world to an avid audience. VERDICT Carlsen's cogent and well-written dual biography successfully illuminates the fascinating tale of these intrepid pioneers of a lost civilization. For recreational readers or researchers interested in the rediscovery of Mayan culture, the history and archaeology of Central America, or archaeological adventure tales that make Indiana Jones seem tame. Readers may also enjoy the original works of Stephens and Catherwood. [See Prepub Alert, 8/31/15.]-Ingrid Levin, Salve Regina Univ. Lib., Newport, RI © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
Introduction | p. ix |
Map | p. xvi |
Prologue | p. 3 |
Part 1 Expedition | p. 7 |
1 South, 1839 | p. 9 |
2 Upriver | p. 21 |
3 Mountain | p. 30 |
4 Passport | p. 39 |
5 Monkeys Like the Wind | p. 51 |
Stephens | p. 67 |
Part 2 Politics | p. 115 |
6 Ruins | p. 117 |
7 Carrera | p. 133 |
8 War | p. 147 |
9 Malaria | p. 158 |
10 Crisis at Hand | p. 169 |
11 Reunion | p. 180 |
Catherwood | p. 193 |
Part 3 Archaeology | p. 225 |
12 Journey into the Past | p. 227 |
13 Palenque | p. 245 |
14 Uxmal | p. 267 |
15 "Magnificent" | p. 278 |
16 Yucatan | p. 290 |
17 London | p. 306 |
18 Discoveries | p. 313 |
19 Chichén Itzá | p. 331 |
20 Tuloom | p. 340 |
21 Home | p. 356 |
The Maya | p. 363 |
Part 4 Friends | p. 387 |
22 Views of Ancient Monuments | p. 389 |
23 Steam | p. 398 |
24 Panama | p. 407 |
25 Crossing the Ischmus | p. 419 |
26 Together Again | p. 437 |
27 Missing | p. 447 |
Epilogue | p. 453 |
Acknowledgments | p. 463 |
Selected Bibliography | p. 467 |
Notes | p. 474 |
Index | p. 517 |