What a world! The ever-informative Daily Mail recently ran a story with the headline:
Has the White City of the Monkey God been found after 500 years? Ruins could be legendary lost jungle city where lurid tales say tribe worshipped a giant simian deity and bred chimp-human children
* National Geographic team ventured into Honduras rainforest to look for the fabled ‘White City’ filled with gold
*Found white rubble which they believe to be remnants of temples built thousands of years ago
*American explorer in the 1940s said people believed a monkey God raped women and had half-monkey babies
- The National Geographic story being referenced is 6 years old – https://www.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/article/150302-honduras-lost-city-monkey-god-maya-ancient-archaeology.
- Chimpanzees are native to the African continent, not the Americas and certainly none were imported cross-Atlantic during the time this Honduran civilization existed
- While Pan troglodytes aka Chimpanzees are VERY close relatives to Homo sapiens aka Human, they’re NOT close enough to interbreed
- So this bit is disgusting Anglo-American racism towards an Indigenous people being portrayed as so bestial that they could interbreed with lower primates successfully. Perhaps the American “explorer” who claims that the local people told him this story belies his incredulity at the sophistication of the ruins they lived amongst. I’m surprised he didn’t claim they were the remains of Mu whose inhabitants had been killed by the ancestors of the “savages” he encountered. OY!
- And the Daily Mail illustrated this piece with a picture of the Indian deity Hanuman!
