* The picture is easily found on the web, for those readers with a strong stomach.

** The name Mosquitia does not derive from the insect; rather, it comes from a nearby coastal people of mixed Indian, European, and African ancestry who, centuries ago, acquired muskets (mosquetes in Spanish) and became known as the Miskito, Mosquito, or “Musket” people. Some, however, say the name is of indigenous language origin.

* The short piece I wrote for the New Yorker was published in the October 20 & 27, 1997, issue.

* Archaeologists today don’t like the word “civilization” because it implies superiority, preferring the term “culture.” I will, however, continue to use the word “civilization” with the understanding that no such value judgment is meant; it is merely a term for a culture that is complex and widespread.

* The “Plantain” was Morde’s name for the Río Plátano, plátano being Spanish for plantain.

* Since my family is from Boston, I asked my cousin Ellen Cutler, our resident family genealogist, if Andrew was a relation. She responded that he was indeed my fifth cousin, twice removed—“another imperialist capitalist on the family tree!”

* His positive legacy lives on; his daughter, Doris Zemurray Stone, became a well-known archaeologist and ethnographer who did groundbreaking work in Honduras and Costa Rica. She and her husband founded the Stone Center for Latin American Studies at Tulane University.

* This is of course an exaggeration. As I heard more of Bruce’s stories I realized he habitually referred to almost any large ruin in Mosquitia as the “White City.”

* Bruce Heinicke later allowed me to take extensive notes, from which these conversations have been taken, as long as I promised not to publish anything until after his death. He passed away on September 8, 2013.

* I later investigated the illegal clearing and who was responsible. The land southwest of Mosquitia—the Olancho valley and environs—is one of the largest beef-producing areas in Central America, with three quarters of a million grazing head. The surrounding ranches—legal and illegal—produce thousands of tons of meat for overseas markets, especially the United States. I was able to ascertain (through an unimpeachable source in Honduras) that, after passing through several intermediaries, some of this illegal rainforest beef ends up in patties for McDonald’s and other American fast-food chains.

When I later queried McDonald’s public affairs department about this, within three days people in Honduras reported that McDonald’s USA was making intensive inquiries in the country as to the sources of the Honduran beef coming into the United States; the company was demanding to know what was being done to ensure that beef cattle from the Mosquitia region were not coming from “farms that are responsible for such deforestation, or any irresponsible environmental practices,” in my source’s words. A week later, McDonald’s spokesperson Becca Hary wrote me back, saying: “McDonald’s USA does not import any beef from Honduras, or any country in Latin America. McDonald’s has a proven track record of protecting rainforests in Latin America, ensuring that no cattle from deforested land enters its supply chain.”

* Tom Lutz later wrote an interesting account of this discussion in the New York Times, in an op-ed piece entitled, “Finding This Lost City in Honduras Was the Easy Part,” published March 20, 2015.

* In past centuries many efforts to drain the lake and recover the gold were made, some of which salvaged extraordinary gold sculptures and ornamental art. The lake is now protected by the Colombian government from further treasure-hunting efforts.

* We see this phenomenon in Western society not only in established religions and cults like Scientology, but also in the quasi-religious practice of capitalism: specifically, in extremely high CEO compensation (necessary because of esoteric knowledge), and on Wall Street, where bankers dismiss criticism by claiming that the common people do not understand the complex, important, and multilayered financial transactions they are engaged in as they do “God’s work”—to quote the CEO of Goldman Sachs.

* When I ran this idea of bone grinding by Chris Fisher, he said: “That’s just beyond crazy. Don’t print that.”

* It is actually slightly smaller. Portugal had a population of about a million in 1500.

* I ran this paragraph by Dr. Nash before publication and he objected. “Please amend and take the halo off my head,” he wrote me. I toned it down but I couldn’t remove the halo.

* Nash had been using miltefosine in a clinical trial with the drug company that was seeking approval for it, but when it was approved for use in the United States, the company closed the trial and the drug was suddenly unavailable in the United States, while the company ramped up production. It would take another two years for the drug to finally be available to Americans, due to a crazy combination of slowness in making the drug, bureaucratic bungling by the FDA, and the fact that treating leish in the United States is neither profitable nor a medical priority.

* Corruption is a serious issue, and clearly there is an acute problem of human rights abuses in Honduras. While it is well beyond the scope of this book to investigate Honduran corruption, personally I saw no direct evidence of it in my own limited experience related to the current Hernández administration, nor in the military or at the IHAH. It must be said that, in general, if archaeologists refused on principle to work with governments known for corruption, most archaeology in the world would come to a halt; there could be no more archaeology in China, Russia, Egypt, Mexico, most of the Middle East, and many countries in Central and South America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. I present this not as a justification or an apology, but as an observation on the reality of doing archaeology in a difficult world.

* The time frame and migration route of the initial peopling of the Americas are much disputed.

* The one notable exception is syphilis, which Columbus’s men likely brought back to the Old World on the first voyage’s return.

* Recently there have been serious outbreaks of deadly visceral leishmaniasis in dog kennels across the United States, with the very real possibility of dog-to-human transmission.