Target One, also called T1, is an ancient Mesoamerican city described by author

Douglas Preston Douglas Jerome Preston (born May 31, 1956) is an American journalist and author. Although he is best known for his thrillers in collaboration with Lincoln Child (including the ''Agent Pendergast'' series and ''Gideon Crew'' series), he has also ...

as located in the mountains of the Mosquitia region in the easternmost part of the modern state of

Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. The republic of Honduras is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Oce ...

(this despite the fact that there are no mountains in this part of the country). T1 is of particular archaeological significance because unlike any other Mesoamerican city ever recorded, T1, once abandoned, was not rediscovered by either local inhabitants nor expeditionary European explorers/ conquistadors until 2013 when it was finally revealed using

LIDAR Lidar (, also LIDAR, or LiDAR; sometimes LADAR) is a method for determining ranges (variable distance) by targeting an object or a surface with a laser and measuring the time for the reflected light to return to the receiver. It can also be ...

technology under purely speculative premises. Whatever its name or significance, the T1 site was almost certainly abandoned following an influx of European diseases (particularly

small pox Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus (often called smallpox virus) which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) cer ...

and

measles Measles is a highly contagious infectious disease caused by measles virus. Symptoms usually develop 10–12 days after exposure to an infected person and last 7–10 days. Initial symptoms typically include fever, often greater than , cough, ...

) which began devastating Central and South America in the 16th century. These diseases wiped out as much as 90% of the native population, leaving the remainder unable to sustain a viable social culture and causing widespread collapse. The last few survivors appear to have deliberately broken their religious artifacts and sculptures, and to have piled them together near the city center before departing the area. Over the last 500 years no one has wandered into the area, and so it has never been looted like most such sites. In August 2016, the UTL team published an account of their findings on T1 in a peer-reviewed, online journal. A popular account of the expedition appears in a 2017 book by

References

{{reflist Mesoamerican archaeology