Jungle of Stone

The True Story of Two Men, Their Extraordinary Journey, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya

By: William Carlsen

Narrated by: Paul Michael Garcia

"Thrilling.... A captivating history of two men who dramatically changed their contemporaries' view of the past." (Kirkus)

In 1839 rumors of extraordinary yet baffling stone ruins buried within the unmapped jungles of Central America reached two of the world's most intrepid travelers. Seized by the reports, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood - each already celebrated for their adventures in Egypt, the Holy Land, Greece, and Rome - sailed together out of New York Harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rainforests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. What they found would rewrite the West's understanding of human history.

In the tradition of The 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 uncovered and documented the remains of an astonishing civilization that had flourished in the Americas at the same time as classic Greece and Rome. Their remarkable book about the experience became a sensation and is 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 West's assumptions about the development of civilization.

By the time of the flowering of classical Greece (400 BC), the Maya were already constructing pyramids and temples around central plazas. Within a few hundred years, the structures took on a monumental scale. 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. The Maya developed a 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 10 million people occupied the Maya's heartland on the Yucatan Peninsula. 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 300 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 Carlsen's 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.

©2016 William Carlsen (P)2016 HarperCollins Publishers

Held back by narration

A surprising and interesting history of early Central American exploration. Though the writing was excellent and the people well-described, the narrator’s mispronunciations of English and Spanish, left me wondering where the editor had gone.

upstairs, downstairs; helps and hinders

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

remarkable people are very much worth study

What was one of the most memorable moments of Jungle of Stone?

when Stephens won't put up 9000$ for Catherwood's book though Stephens father was worth $500,000. Penny wise, pound foolish.

Have you listened to any of Paul Michael Garcia’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

A fine reading.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

the men's lives were tragic largely

Any additional comments?

you will enjoy it

Stevens' & Catherwood's bizarre adventure

The story of these two men are quite extraordinary & very entertaining to listen to. If you're at all interested in learning how two pioneers ventured to accurately document the Mayan ruins, I'd highly recommend this book.

great story in there somewhere.

great story, but I'm not terribly crazy with the way he chose to write it. focused on a lot of things I would have left out, left out a lot of things I would have focused on. there is a great story in here somewhere and I shouldn't complain so much because I enjoyed the listen. still, I wanted more feeling in the struggle. I wanted a better understanding of the relationship. I wanted something to grab hold of. maybe it just couldn't decide if I wanted to be a history book or a great narrative.

Better than Indiana Jones…but real.

A story of adventure, exploration, and tremendous friendship…all this with an education in the “discovery” of the Mayan civilization in Mesoamerica.

Highly recommended real-life adventure.

Title is misleading

This is a really good book. But I thought it would be more about the Mayan and archeology. It is more based on the loves of these 2 men who first drew and published books of Mayan civilization. However. It was a really fascinating story. So if you are looking for an archeology book, this may not be for you.

Ghost Cities in the Jungle

When two fearless explorers set out in 1839 to investigate reports of stone ruins in the thick jungles of Central America, they had no idea they would turn the history of the Western Hemisphere on its head. It was a time when the world was thought to be only a few thousand years old. The Maya—and, for that matter, the Aztecs and Incas—were believed by many to be descendants of the lost tribes of Israel.

John Lloyd Stephens, an American writer and diplomat, and British artist Frederick Catherwood discovered and documented the remains of stunning city-states that had been home to an estimated ten million Maya in the Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. The more sophisticated their culture proved to be, the more public opinion held that it must have been the work of ancient visiting Europeans, or Asians, or even refugees from the Lost City of Atlantis. The indigenous people of the region just weren’t capable of such things, the argument went.

But the adventurers proved them wrong. “At the zenith of their achievements,” writes William Carlsen, “during a 600-year period lasting through the 10th century AD, the Maya were in a class of their own in the Americas.” And then they vanished, for reasons the book details, and the jungle engulfed their cities and swallowed their pyramids, centuries before Stephens and Catherwood arrived.

Their work was meticulous and free of hyperbole, unlike most other explorers of their time. They measured, filled notebooks with details, and Catherwood produced hundreds of spectacular drawings that are definitely worth googling. They published best-selling books on their findings, and held public exhibitions.

And their exploits were worthy of an Indiana Jones movie. They threaded their way through civil wars and treacherous characters, endured physical hardships of blistering heat, voracious insects, malaria and injuries. They nearly starved, became lost, and their equipment failed. Today, with modern technology like airborne Lidar that sees through the jungle canopy with lasers, the true dimensions of the Maya civilization are becoming clear. But these guys did it the hard way.

This could have been a shorter true-life adventure. But in nearly 17 hours of scrupulous detail and historical context—certainly including plenty of harrowing exploits—the author has produced a work that skews more scholarly. Exactly, perhaps, the way Stephens and Catherwood would have done.

Narrator Paul Michael Garcia is a good fit for relating this long and complex story, including heroic efforts at pronouncing countless Spanish words, some of them incorrectly. He is a steady presence in the winding tale of two extraordinary lives and the remarkable civilization they uncovered and shared with the world.

Jungle of Stone Very Well Told!

Excellently researched, written and read. A most interesting history of the re-discovery of Lost Mayan cities, full of intrigue, adventure and the extraordinary relationship two men formed through the most frightening and thrilling ten years of their lives.

A story more about the journey than destination

I will agree to a degree with some of the reviews that there are a lot of tangents to this story, but not as a negative. I think that those tangents are the point. This duo helped develop the concept of good (or good for the times) archeology. And were among the first to be willing to entertain the idea that it was possible for civilization to exist outside of the Rome, Greece, and Egypt. But the real story is about these two men and that story is developed by their adventures and experiences outside of the land of the Maya. There is some information about what they found and what it meant, but since these guys wee operating in a void and all of the interesting discoveries and connections were made much later there is very little on the Maya overall. Many of those later connections were possible because of this work, but not the focus of this story.

Good But Slow at Times

incredible endeavours, discoveries and careers. best listened to when travelling yourself. enjoyed the book but had to start and stop it several times.