Friday, March 6, 2015

FINDING A LOST CITY: IT'S SO COOL THAT SOMEONE ACTUALLY FOUND A LONG LOST CITY IN THE JUNGLE!

This weeks news about the spectacular find in the Honduran Jungle of a Lost City, and apparently as the explorers suspect, there are more Lost Cities, was so cool to me. National Geographic also has a short piece on it.

EDIT: SEE THE COMMENTS BY ZACH BELOW AND ALSO YOU MAY WANT TO READ MY PREVIOUS POST ON DANA AND GINGER LAMB. YES, I'VE READ BOTH BOOKS BY THE LAMBS AND FIND THEM INTERESTING. I'M IN THE PROCESS OF ACQUIRING A BOOK THAT CRITICALLY REVIEWS THEIR CLAIMS AS WELL AND WILL POST ON IT WHEN READ.

HERE'S THE LINK TO THE POST ABOUT AN EXTREMELY INTERESTING COUPLE NAMED DANA AND GINGER LAMB.

I'm 50-something, and growing up in the 1960's when my Saturday mornings started on Houston ABC affiliate Channel 13 KTRK with the 7:00 AM Bugs Bunny hour and then the 8:00 A.M. Saturday morning adventure movie, sometimes in black and white, involving adventurers making their way through some jungles somewhere on varied quests involving rescue of someone or some such noble task like taking medicine past a hostile tribe or crooked bunch of businessmen to aid an ailing and isolated tribe.

These movies would commonly involve guys in Safari outfits with bolt action big game rifles and usually some kind of belt carried larger revolver. Jungle Jim was one of the movie characters with a string of movies and there were other knock off types of movies along the same theme.

We had a BIG color TV at our house by the mid-60's. A Curtis Mathis. A real nice one. My sister and I would gather in the den, often with our parents taking a late snooze on a Saturday, and we'd watch whatever feature came on eating cereal and such.

My friends all watched those shows too. We'd gather after those movies finished and head off on our Stingray bikes with our Daisy bb guns to one of several wooded locales. We had a large bayou nearby that was full of snakes both poisonous and non-poisonous as well as some nearby wooded hills referred to as Hamburger Hills, a bike motocross type of place where we hung out. We'd have our expedition.

Over the years, I've had my fair share if not more of adventures, both intended and otherwise. I haven't had any good adventures lately, but I'm definitely ready for something, although I'm not craving anything perilous. 

I'm didn't grow up to be an international adventurer or archaeologist, and I guess these adventurers involved in this discovery probably don't get out in the field as much as they'd like. That's one of those trips, however, that'd I sure pay to go on as a worker bee for the archaeological exploration that will follow.

It'd be highly interesting to discover something like this. I'm not sure what the ultimate total sum of the meaning of finding this Lost City is for humanity but there is no telling what kind of ancient wisdom or at least history we might learn.

The articles indicate that they were accompanied by 16 members of the Honduran Army Special Forces. That's good because apparently the Honduras is a mighty dangerous place for a multitude of reasons. But the National Geographic and other articles make numerous reference to them having ex-British army SAS fellows with them.

Damn good idea. My kind of expeditionary outfit. No messing around. Bring your own SAS and leave the driving to them.

And if anyone remembers the names of some of those old 50's and 60's jungle expedition adventure movies and their stars, let me know. I've seen some Jungle Jim dvds for sale but have not bought them yet but it's on my list.



4 comments:

  1. You have probably heard of or watched Abbott and Costello’s “Africa Screams.” Until I read your post, I had mostly forgotten about this movie and had to do multiple searches to refresh my vague memories. Clyde Beatty and Frank Buck each were real deal hunters / adventurers and they played themselves in this move. Other notable names were Max Baer, Buddy Baer, Shemp Howard, and Joe Besser.

    I too lived to watch Jungle Jim, Tarzan, and Zim Bomba. It all was outstanding entertainment.

    My Dan and I were both fascinated by Arthur Jones and his REAL reality TV shows, “Wild Cargo” and “Capture.” He was an awesome hunter / adventurer. (He also invented the Nautilus Machine.)

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  2. No Zach, I was not familiar with that flick, so that's good information for me to spend tonight searching for.

    I plan to amend the article adding information about Dana and Ginger Lamb and their adventures, which I have posted on before.

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  3. Ever wonder with all the eyes in the sky these days how anything can be lost?

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  4. Well, before Flight MH370, Wild Ed, I would've agreed with you. Are you not shocked and astonished that red light cameras proliferate yet our world cannot track a plane that veers suddenly off course?

    In any event, you're an adventurer/discoverer type, wouldn't it be cool to whack through some Honduran Jungle and see something no non-indigenous person has seen in hundreds of years? I for one am highly envious of those that went on this trip. It just seems exciting to me, and the historian part of me also finds it fascinating.

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