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Jungle of Stone
Jungle of Stone: The True Story of Two Men, Their Extraordinary Journey, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya | William Carlsen
9 posts | 7 read | 3 reading | 8 to read
Thrilling. A captivating history of two men who dramatically changed their contemporaries view of the past. Kirkus (starred review) In 1839 rumors of extraordinary yet baffling stone ruins buried within the unmapped jungles of Central America reached two of the worlds most intrepid travelers. Seized by the reports, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwoodeach already celebrated for their adventures in Egypt, the Holy Land, Greece, and Romesailed together out of New York Harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rainforests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. What they found would re-write the Wests 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 unforgettable true 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 Romeand had been its rival in art, architecture, and power. Their remarkable book about the experience, written by Stephens and illustrated by Catherwood, became a sensation, hailed by Edgar Allen Poe as perhaps the most interesting book of travel ever published and recognized today as the birth of American archeology. Most importantly, Stephens and Catherwood were the first to grasp the significance of the Maya remains, recognizing that their antiquity and sophistication overturned the Wests 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, 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 dazzling 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 Mayas 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 classic-era 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 all but forgotten. Based on Carlsens rigorous research and his own 2,500-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 the Maya and the two remarkable men who set out in 1839 to find them.
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TheSpineView
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#Movie2BookRecs @Klou
Prompt: The Quest

Klou Super 👍 2y
45 likes1 stack add2 comments
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Oblomov26
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Pickpick

We have heard of many explorers such as Cook and Columbus and Archaeologists such as Carter and Schliemann so it is strange that we have not heard of Stephens and Catherwood, a writer and a artist who rediscovered the Maya culture in in Central America and bought it to the attention of the wider public in the 1840's. Book covers the life of both individuals, their discoveries and a brief history of the Maya. Enjoyable history.

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RealBooks4ever
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Pickpick

Adventure! Exploration! Danger! More adventure! Death! This book has me wanting to read John Lloyd Stephens' 19th century "Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas & Yucatan, Vol 1"!! ?

Chelsibeau I bought this one and I can‘t wait to get to it! 7y
23 likes2 comments
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HillaryCopsey
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These are the books Stephens wrote and Catherwood illustrated. I found them on the shelves of The Mercantile Library, a private library in existence in Cincinnati since 1835. I'm the first person to check them out since 1958.

JennaAZ 😍😍 8y
13 likes1 comment
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HillaryCopsey
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Mehso-so

The book gets bogged down with the backstories of Stephens and Catherwood, but the history of their exploration of the Mayan ruins is fascinating.

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HillaryCopsey
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Catherwood's illustrations of the Mayan ruins are amazing, and I laughed aloud at the scene of him, ankle deep in mud and wondering how he'd capture these images, being laughed at by monkeys.

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paperweights
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Starting this one tonight in front of a cozy fire. Can't wait to sink in.

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JoCo1990
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Pickpick

This one I got a while back but it was an amazing adventure about the re-discovery of the maya civilization. So good, highly recommend to anyone looking for a good adventure and a true story.

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charliemarlowe
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Pickpick

Carlsen's Jungle of Stone is an excellent story about how two men in the early 1800s braved the Central American jungles to rediscover the Mayan civilization. They also helped place the ruins as the result of a new world civilization rather than an old world one.