This is a wonderful book, one that brings to life the tremendous efforts of two exceptional explorers/adventurers in the early 1800s. These men collaborated to find and document many of the major ruins left by the indigenous natives of southern Mexico and Central America.
Says author William Carlsen: “Today the ancient Maya are recognized for having achieved one of the most sophisticated early civilizations on earth. Tourists by the millions, from every part of the globe, annually descend on Maya ruins in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and Belize.”
But it was not always this way, and that is what this book is about: The story of the earliest explorations into the jungles of Mexico and Central America and the words and thoughts produced by these two explorers about what they found and what they surmised.
In the Acknowledgements section of the book, Carlsen states his passion for his work: “I will hold in my heart always the extraordinary Maya people….May you forever keep your rich culture alive for the benefit of us all.”
I’ve personally had the pleasure of traveling in Mexico and Central America. I’ve been to many of the places talked about in the book. But I really treasure the way “Jungle of Stone” puts the pieces together, capturing the historic details and bringing the people involved in the early explorations to life.
The story starts in the early 1800s, in the Age of Discovery. This was a period when Europeans and Americans knew little about the Latin American before Columbus. The Spanish conquistadores were all about enriching themselves. They were not in the New World to learn about and/or preserve indigenous native culture. In fact, the Spanish shut off the New World south of the emerging United States for centuries.
But there were rumors of ruins of ancient civilizations found by the Spanish. Popular culture speculated that the works had to be by Egyptians, the Lost Tribes of Israel or others. The general thinking was that no indigenous people in the Americas would be capable of creating sophisticated works of art.
The book is all about the adventures of John Lloyd Stephens and his colleague Frederick Catherwood. Each had extensive travel experience, including in the Middle East, decades before Mark Twain would publish his book, “Innocents Abroad.” Catherwood was a professional architect by trade. Stephens was a lawyer who had made good money writing a book about his travels in Egypt, the Holy Land and Petra.
They began their great adventures in Latin America in 1839. They teamed up for 13 years to explore Mayan ruins in Latin America, their first conquest being Copan in Honduras. They were stunned by what they found.
They went were few white men had been before. They followed some of the same paths used earlier by Hernan Cortez. They continually faced dangers from bandits or hostile Indians. They traveled through areas of active wars. Mosquitoes, ticks, snakes, scorpions, rain, heat, mud and all kinds of other nuances and obstacles were encounter along the way. This was not an adventure for sissies.
Britain was the great world power at the time. The U.S. was not yet a major world power. Stephens, as an American, dreamed of bringing Mayan treasures back to New York as the foundation of new prestigious museums that would put the U.S. on the world map. At the time, few in the world knew anything about the existence of the art and architecture of the Mayans.
Cameras did not exist, so it was the detailed drawings by Catherwood that would be an essential element in a future publication of a book by Stephens. The book, Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan, published in 1841, was met with great success, eventually going through 12 printings and sold all over the world. Stephens’ important conclusion was that the Mayan work was original and without influence of “models or masters.”
The two were off on the trail once again in 1841, this time to focus on the Yucatan Peninsula. Catherwood would be meticulous in the detail of his drawings. Bouts of malaria slowed them down, but they were prodigious in their work, the result of which was the 1843 work entitled, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan. Like Stephens earlier works, it was a great financial success.
Stephens and Catherwood talked about exploring further south, where Machu Picchu would not be discovered by the West for another 67 years. But the steam engine and the railroad was all the rage at this time. Catherwood took a job working on a line in British Guyana. Stephens would work on the railroad across Panama, essentially until he worked himself to death in 1852.
Further exploration of the Mayan ruins would wain, or the most part, until the early 1900s. But the foundational information documented by Stephens and Catherwood laid a foundation for all that was to come. And what a story it is, as beautifully written by Mr. Carlson in this very fine book, which I highly recommend.
Jungle of Stone: The True Story of Two Men, Their Extraordinary Journey, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Ma
4.6 | 1,086 ratings
Price: 30.7
Last update: 01-03-2025
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