Chasing the Lost City | Steve Elkins | TEDxPasadena

Through snippets from his expedition to discover a lost city in Honduras, explorer Steve Elkins takes his audience on a fascinating ride. He shares how when faced with a crazy idea, he stuck with it long enough to take advantage of each and every opportunity until he saw his dream through. His tenacity pays off - and big - when he winds up doing something that effected real change for an entire country, and unexpectedly became part of a global consciousness in the process. Steve Elkins has worked in television for 30 years as a cinematographer, editor, and producer. While filming in Honduras in 1994, Steve became fascinated with the Honduran Mosquitia and its lost city legends. In 2012, after reading about the advent of airborne lidar as a tool for unveiling archaeological ruins, he formed UTL – Under the Lidar with colleagues to explore the Mosquitia jungle using lidar which resulted in the discovery of two “lost cities”. Three years later, Steve and his partner organized a multi-disciplinary scientific ground expedition to one of the sites. The results and ongoing work have garnered world media headlines including feature articles in the New Yorker, National Geographic, an episode of National Geographic Explorer, and a New York Times bestseller non-fiction book, “The Lost City of the Monkey God”. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx