Ruins including roads and building foundations have been mapped out in an area of Honduras renowned for a legendary City of Gold El Dorado.

A 3D mapping technique called lidar has shown what appear to be ruins, including roads and building foundations, in the Mosquitia region.

It is in an area believed by some to be home to The White City, which according to legend is a now-buried metropolis full of gold.

The conquistadors searched for it in the 1500s, and throughout the 1900s archaeologists documented mounds and other signs of ancient civilization in the region. However, so far the existence of the city has not been confirmed.

In the latest study, slow-flying planes travelled over the site, sending constant laser pulses towards the ground.

It helped to map out the topography below the thick forest canopy.

“We use lidar to pinpoint where human structures are by looking for linear shapes and rectangles,” Colorado State University researcher Stephen Leisz said, “nature doesn’t work in straight lines.”

According to legend, Ciudad Blanca or the ‘White City’ is full of gold and has been sought out by explorers and treasure hunters since conquistador Hernando Cortes first made reference to it in a 1526 letter to King Charles V of Spain.

Inspired by this legend, cinematographer and Ciudad Blanca enthusiast Steven Elkins sought backing from private investors to pay for the team at NCLAM to use their laser mapping technology to chart the forest floor of Mosquitia.

Over the course of a week, the NCALM and University of Houston engineers flew over 60 square miles of forest in their dual-engine Cessna planes.

LiDAR’s computer-generated images allow researchers to ‘see’ through the forest canopy to the ground surface, revealing any evidence of ancient settlements or human-engineered landscapes.

‘The LiDAR point cloud data clearly show the remains of large settlements that can be characterized as ancient cities based on their spatial complexity, size and organization,’ said  Colorado State University professors Christopher Fisher, who led the research.

‘We may never be able to tell whether any of these are Ciudad Blanca, or whether the legendary city ever existed, but we can clearly see in the UTL data evidence that there was a densely settled region with a human modified environment.

‘These conclusions provide important new insights into the pre-Hispanic settlement of this largely unexplored region.’

The archaeologists plan to visit the area later this year to investigate the features more closely.

What is The White City Of Gold (El Dorado) Legend

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