1 00:00:09,309 --> 00:00:13,541 They were here thousands of years before Columbus. 2 00:00:23,990 --> 00:00:26,390 While Paris was still a village, 3 00:00:26,526 --> 00:00:29,791 they were carving cities out of the jungle. 4 00:00:44,677 --> 00:00:48,579 They played a ball game for life or death. 5 00:00:49,616 --> 00:00:52,813 They planned their lives according to the heavens. 6 00:00:54,554 --> 00:00:59,014 Their writing is a puzzle we're still learning to decipher. 7 00:00:59,159 --> 00:01:02,026 Wow! Look at this. 8 00:01:02,962 --> 00:01:04,429 Really something. 9 00:01:05,799 --> 00:01:08,734 Now the pace of discovery is quickening. 10 00:01:15,875 --> 00:01:19,641 We are finally finding out who they were. 11 00:01:19,779 --> 00:01:22,441 Bone? There's a lot of bone. 12 00:01:27,053 --> 00:01:29,283 Look. It's a black kind of a... 13 00:01:29,422 --> 00:01:30,184 Oh, man! 14 00:01:30,323 --> 00:01:33,815 This is really a powerful work of art. 15 00:01:44,404 --> 00:01:48,465 They are the people who say that the gods made them from corn. 16 00:01:54,848 --> 00:01:58,284 They are the Maya. 17 00:02:48,301 --> 00:02:50,735 The year is 1839. 18 00:02:50,870 --> 00:02:54,362 The place-western Honduras. 19 00:03:03,349 --> 00:03:06,443 An American explorer named John Lloyd Stephens 20 00:03:06,586 --> 00:03:12,650 is leading an expedition in search of an abandoned Maya city called copan. 21 00:03:13,560 --> 00:03:16,154 Almost nothing is knows about the Maya 22 00:03:16,696 --> 00:03:19,130 Stephens is about to learn more. 23 00:03:37,717 --> 00:03:41,084 Draped with a thousand years of tropical growth, 24 00:03:41,221 --> 00:03:45,988 the brooding temples and tumbled stones sprawl for miles. 25 00:03:52,632 --> 00:03:56,762 Stephens is overwhelmed by a sense of mystery. 26 00:03:57,804 --> 00:03:59,135 Who built this place? 27 00:04:00,573 --> 00:04:02,063 What happened here? 28 00:04:05,278 --> 00:04:09,146 In the following days Stephens and English artist Frederick Catherwood 29 00:04:09,282 --> 00:04:12,183 record their impressions of the ruined city. 30 00:04:13,653 --> 00:04:17,555 It lay before us like a shattered bark in the midst of the ocean, 31 00:04:17,690 --> 00:04:21,091 her masts gone, her crew perished. 32 00:04:21,227 --> 00:04:24,424 And none to tell when she came, 33 00:04:24,564 --> 00:04:27,055 or what caused her destruction. 34 00:04:27,567 --> 00:04:33,301 All was mystery, dark, impenetrable mystery. 35 00:04:36,409 --> 00:04:39,207 During the next three years Stephens and Catherwood 36 00:04:39,345 --> 00:04:42,246 visit the better known Maya sites to the north. 37 00:04:44,851 --> 00:04:48,912 In Yucatan they ecplore Uxmal and chichen ltza. 38 00:04:59,332 --> 00:05:02,165 In Chiapas they visit Palenque. 39 00:05:04,270 --> 00:05:07,068 And still questions plague them. 40 00:05:07,707 --> 00:05:09,402 Who built these cities? 41 00:05:09,542 --> 00:05:11,772 Why had they been abandoned? 42 00:05:15,581 --> 00:05:18,641 The land of the Maya spread from parts of Honduras, 43 00:05:18,785 --> 00:05:22,050 El Salvodor, and Guatemala in the south 44 00:05:22,188 --> 00:05:24,918 to Belize and Mexico in the north 45 00:05:25,958 --> 00:05:28,984 It was dotted with hundreds of small kingdoms, 46 00:05:29,128 --> 00:05:31,688 each with its own unique history. 47 00:05:33,366 --> 00:05:34,993 The heartland of what scholars call 48 00:05:35,134 --> 00:05:39,332 the "Classic" Maya civilization lay in the southern lowlands. 49 00:05:41,007 --> 00:05:44,204 It is there that our story takes place 50 00:05:44,344 --> 00:05:50,681 starting at the site where scientific excavations first began... Copan. 51 00:05:59,058 --> 00:06:05,691 Today, this partially restored site still retains its air of mystery. 52 00:06:08,468 --> 00:06:12,871 Bill Fash is the director of the Copan Acropolis Project. 53 00:06:13,673 --> 00:06:15,868 Copan was one of the premiere Maya cities. 54 00:06:16,008 --> 00:06:17,703 Now we can't say that in terms of its size. 55 00:06:17,844 --> 00:06:20,176 Cetainly there were other cities that were larger. 56 00:06:20,313 --> 00:06:22,975 But while it was booming for about 400 years there, 57 00:06:23,116 --> 00:06:24,606 it was quite a place. 58 00:06:24,751 --> 00:06:26,719 It had incredible artists, sculptors, 59 00:06:26,853 --> 00:06:31,051 architects, engineers, astronomers, scribes, and so forth. 60 00:06:31,190 --> 00:06:34,421 So I suppose if you had to put it in our cultural terms 61 00:06:34,560 --> 00:06:39,054 ...if Tikal were like say New York, Copan was like Paris. 62 00:06:49,909 --> 00:06:52,139 Every year of the past few decades, 63 00:06:52,278 --> 00:06:55,941 a handful of Maya specialists and hundreds of workers have been trying 64 00:06:56,082 --> 00:06:59,051 to piece Copan's history back together 65 00:07:08,428 --> 00:07:11,659 The story of what happened here is still unfolding, 66 00:07:11,798 --> 00:07:13,993 stone by stone. 67 00:07:15,101 --> 00:07:17,968 There are over 30,000 fragments of stone sculpture 68 00:07:18,104 --> 00:07:20,038 that once adorned these buildings. 69 00:07:20,173 --> 00:07:22,403 The problem is, for this particular puzzle, 70 00:07:22,542 --> 00:07:24,009 there is no box top. 71 00:07:24,143 --> 00:07:27,044 There is no picture that enables us to know how they went back together. 72 00:07:27,180 --> 00:07:29,080 We have to try and figure that out. 73 00:07:29,215 --> 00:07:31,376 And the problem is made worse by things like this. 74 00:07:31,517 --> 00:07:45,864 This is what we call a GO piles 75 00:07:45,998 --> 00:07:49,024 and pull out the examples that are just like those we have dug up, 76 00:07:49,168 --> 00:07:52,160 and try and put the whole thing back together. 77 00:07:53,072 --> 00:07:55,165 But in spite of the difficulties, 78 00:07:55,308 --> 00:08:00,109 Fash's team of experts has reassembled thousands of sculptures 79 00:08:00,246 --> 00:08:02,714 and conserved dozens of buildings. 80 00:08:05,017 --> 00:08:07,110 Every year the pictures of what Copan 81 00:08:07,253 --> 00:08:11,314 was like more that a thousand years ago becomes clearer. 82 00:08:26,939 --> 00:08:29,066 Many clues still lie hidden 83 00:08:29,208 --> 00:08:32,735 in the temples where the Maya elite buried their dead 84 00:08:54,500 --> 00:08:57,867 The Classic Maya had virtually no interest in metal, 85 00:08:58,004 --> 00:09:00,495 so there is no gold buried here. 86 00:09:01,507 --> 00:09:05,568 But sometimes something even more valuable is unearthed. 87 00:09:07,146 --> 00:09:11,242 Watch the wire. See this face. 88 00:09:11,384 --> 00:09:15,320 All right. It's repainted. It's a stucco coating over... 89 00:09:15,454 --> 00:09:21,222 In 1992 Robert Sharer discovered the tomb of a royal family member. 90 00:09:21,961 --> 00:09:24,691 Buried with him were some pots. 91 00:09:25,064 --> 00:09:26,588 One glyph is there. 92 00:09:27,066 --> 00:09:29,967 What makes these vessels especially significant 93 00:09:30,102 --> 00:09:31,729 are the painted designs 94 00:09:31,871 --> 00:09:34,601 and the hieroglyphic writing. 95 00:09:34,740 --> 00:09:36,469 Well, those are fantastic vessels, 96 00:09:36,609 --> 00:09:39,806 although I don't know if I can say much about the glyphs on them. 97 00:09:39,946 --> 00:09:44,610 Forty years ago we could read only a few Maya hieroglyphs. 98 00:09:44,750 --> 00:09:47,810 Today we can read about half. 99 00:09:47,954 --> 00:09:49,581 But it takes an expert. 100 00:09:49,722 --> 00:09:54,125 There's another pot just like the one with the feet in the tomb. 101 00:09:56,295 --> 00:09:59,128 David Stuart is the son of Maya scholars 102 00:09:59,265 --> 00:10:02,428 and one of the world's foremost epigraphers. 103 00:10:02,868 --> 00:10:04,802 By being able to read the glyphs now, 104 00:10:04,937 --> 00:10:07,303 it makes the Maya a little bit more normal. 105 00:10:07,440 --> 00:10:11,740 It makes them more human because we see that they did have history, 106 00:10:11,877 --> 00:10:15,711 that they were a people that had real concerns about themselves 107 00:10:15,848 --> 00:10:17,406 and the events in their lives. 108 00:10:19,085 --> 00:10:23,044 One kind of Maya writing was almost lost forever. 109 00:10:23,189 --> 00:10:26,386 When Spanish priests arrived in the 16th century, 110 00:10:26,525 --> 00:10:30,359 they found hundreds of folding books called codices, 111 00:10:30,496 --> 00:10:33,158 and promptly burned them. 112 00:10:35,301 --> 00:10:38,737 Today, only parts of four codices remain, 113 00:10:38,871 --> 00:10:42,432 but they have helped to shape the way we think about the Maya. 114 00:10:43,776 --> 00:10:46,210 The books are almanacs, 115 00:10:46,345 --> 00:10:49,542 filled with astrological information. 116 00:10:54,987 --> 00:10:58,650 The men and women who wrote the almanacs were scribes, 117 00:10:58,791 --> 00:11:01,157 well versed in astronomy. 118 00:11:03,195 --> 00:11:05,720 Using a sophisticated mathematics, 119 00:11:05,865 --> 00:11:08,595 they calculated the movements of the night sky 120 00:11:08,734 --> 00:11:14,570 thousands of years into the past and thousands of years into the future. 121 00:11:15,841 --> 00:11:18,810 They knew that the universe moved in cycles, 122 00:11:18,944 --> 00:11:22,402 some very large, some very small. 123 00:11:22,548 --> 00:11:26,211 They even predicted eclipses of the sun. 124 00:11:29,722 --> 00:11:33,988 They seem to have been fascinated by the relationship between time 125 00:11:34,126 --> 00:11:37,323 and the events in their own lives. 126 00:11:42,568 --> 00:11:47,369 The Maya also left a record in a medium much more permanent than paper. 127 00:11:47,973 --> 00:11:52,069 And this writing contains much more than dates and numbers. 128 00:11:56,148 --> 00:11:59,675 On these stone the Maya recorded the important events 129 00:11:59,819 --> 00:12:01,719 in the lives of their rulers. 130 00:12:07,860 --> 00:12:11,125 This is the Hieroglyphic Stairway at Copan, 131 00:12:11,263 --> 00:12:14,664 the longest inscribed text in the New World. 132 00:12:15,367 --> 00:12:18,928 But early archaeologists reassembled it out of order, 133 00:12:19,071 --> 00:12:22,939 so today we can read it only in segments. 134 00:12:26,178 --> 00:12:29,375 Sculpture specialist Barbara Fash is making a catalog 135 00:12:29,515 --> 00:12:32,075 of the 1,200 glyphs on the stairway. 136 00:12:32,218 --> 00:12:37,656 Someday, these drawings may tell a more complete story of Copan's kings 137 00:12:38,657 --> 00:12:42,889 This means "to plant with a stick in the ground." 138 00:12:43,028 --> 00:12:45,394 Other hieroglyphs are more accessible, 139 00:12:45,531 --> 00:12:48,659 thanks to dramatic breakthroughs in the past few decades. 140 00:12:48,801 --> 00:12:51,895 This is the date. It's a... 141 00:12:52,037 --> 00:12:56,371 Epigrapher Linda Schele has done her share of the recent detective work 142 00:12:56,509 --> 00:12:58,306 This is a little tree-tey. 143 00:12:58,444 --> 00:13:01,106 And on this side, facing the east, he's young. 144 00:13:01,247 --> 00:13:03,477 But on the west side you can see... 145 00:13:03,616 --> 00:13:05,140 Look at the beard. 146 00:13:08,187 --> 00:13:13,250 It is a rare thing when a people develop historical consciousness 147 00:13:13,392 --> 00:13:18,557 and make recorded history a part of what they do. 148 00:13:19,298 --> 00:13:21,562 What we are participating in now 149 00:13:21,700 --> 00:13:25,136 is the recovery of lost history... 150 00:13:25,271 --> 00:13:29,970 ...because American history does not begin in 1492 with Columbus. 151 00:13:30,109 --> 00:13:32,373 It begins in 200 B.C. 152 00:13:32,511 --> 00:13:35,969 With the first Maya king who wrote his name on a stone. 153 00:13:44,056 --> 00:13:47,287 Long before the first king wrote his name on a stone, 154 00:13:47,426 --> 00:13:51,795 the Maya were living in the fertile Copan valley. 155 00:13:52,431 --> 00:13:54,228 They were corn farmers. 156 00:13:55,568 --> 00:13:59,334 Their lives were ruled by the rhythms of the natural world, 157 00:13:59,471 --> 00:14:04,408 planting and harvesting, birth and death. 158 00:14:06,779 --> 00:14:09,009 But around A. D. 400, 159 00:14:09,148 --> 00:14:11,878 at about the time Rome was starting to collapse, 160 00:14:12,017 --> 00:14:15,145 a change swept through the valley. 161 00:14:20,759 --> 00:14:23,489 On a lazy bend in the Copan River, 162 00:14:23,629 --> 00:14:28,328 buildings made from stone were rising from the jungle floor. 163 00:14:29,902 --> 00:14:33,929 Brilliantly colored buildings surrounded a whitewashed central plaza 164 00:14:34,073 --> 00:14:36,837 where thousands of people could gather 165 00:14:39,245 --> 00:14:42,214 There was trade in shells and cacao beans, 166 00:14:42,348 --> 00:14:45,112 tobacco, jade, and feathrs. 167 00:14:46,752 --> 00:14:50,483 At the center of the city stood the ball court. 168 00:15:03,569 --> 00:15:06,367 The object of the ball game seems to have been to keep 169 00:15:06,505 --> 00:15:08,735 the heavy rubber ball in motion, 170 00:15:08,874 --> 00:15:11,240 without using hands or feet. 171 00:15:19,451 --> 00:15:22,181 Stone carvings at some sites show 172 00:15:22,321 --> 00:15:26,655 ballplayers with severed human heads dangling from their belts. 173 00:15:26,792 --> 00:15:31,058 But no one knows if they depict what actually happened to the losers, 174 00:15:31,196 --> 00:15:34,359 or illustrate something more symbolic. 175 00:15:41,540 --> 00:15:45,636 The ball was supposed to be a metaphor for the movement of the sun 176 00:15:45,778 --> 00:15:48,645 and by extension, also the moon and the stars. 177 00:15:48,781 --> 00:15:52,683 And you wanted to make sure that there was regularity in that movement. 178 00:15:52,818 --> 00:15:55,446 They thought that if they played the game in the right way, 179 00:15:55,587 --> 00:15:57,578 and honored the gods in the right way, 180 00:15:57,723 --> 00:15:59,918 that they would ensure the agricultural cycle 181 00:16:00,059 --> 00:16:03,517 and enable the sun to rise and the rains to come on time 182 00:16:03,662 --> 00:16:05,857 and for there to be a bountiful harvest. 183 00:16:20,980 --> 00:16:23,448 In the secret world of the Maya 184 00:16:23,582 --> 00:16:26,346 the gods were the source of all life, 185 00:16:26,485 --> 00:16:30,421 and only the kings had the power to intervene with them. 186 00:16:33,058 --> 00:16:37,688 The gods sustained the physical universe with sun and rain 187 00:16:37,830 --> 00:16:41,527 and expected humans to nourish them in return. 188 00:16:42,401 --> 00:16:46,428 The supreme source of that nourishment was blood. 189 00:16:48,040 --> 00:16:50,338 When the Maya wanted to acknowledge 190 00:16:50,476 --> 00:16:53,968 the sacredness of the moment or an important event, 191 00:16:54,113 --> 00:16:55,603 they would let blood. 192 00:16:55,748 --> 00:17:00,879 Blood was the vehicle that carried a quality that they called chu'lel, 193 00:17:01,020 --> 00:17:02,783 which means their soul. 194 00:17:02,921 --> 00:17:06,084 It was something that not only permeated human bodies, 195 00:17:06,225 --> 00:17:09,285 it permeated buildings, it permeated the trees, the sky. 196 00:17:09,428 --> 00:17:12,397 It permeated all things sacred in the world. 197 00:17:12,531 --> 00:17:14,328 And when they gave blood, 198 00:17:14,466 --> 00:17:17,162 what they were doing was they were activating the chu'lel. 199 00:17:17,302 --> 00:17:18,769 It's like George Lucas's the "Force." 200 00:17:18,904 --> 00:17:21,099 If you can think of Obi-wan-kenobi, 201 00:17:21,240 --> 00:17:22,036 you know, 202 00:17:22,174 --> 00:17:25,405 calling the "Force"out, or Luke, as he guides the plane in 203 00:17:25,544 --> 00:17:28,445 you know, in the final Death Star battle. 204 00:17:28,580 --> 00:17:31,048 That's what the Maya were doing by these rituals. 205 00:17:31,183 --> 00:17:33,879 They were touching what they considered to be 206 00:17:34,019 --> 00:17:37,455 the living force of the univers and it's still here. 207 00:17:46,632 --> 00:17:48,463 On special occasions 208 00:17:48,600 --> 00:17:51,797 the king himself would give blood. 209 00:17:51,937 --> 00:17:56,897 This was one of the most secret rituals in Maya life. 210 00:18:01,814 --> 00:18:04,840 After days of fasting and spiritual preparation, 211 00:18:04,983 --> 00:18:08,919 the king would pierce his foreskin with a stingray spine 212 00:18:09,054 --> 00:18:12,285 and let the blood drip onto paper strips. 213 00:18:35,080 --> 00:18:36,911 With this act of sacrifice 214 00:18:37,049 --> 00:18:39,847 a doorway to the gods was opened. 215 00:18:46,325 --> 00:18:48,350 When the paper strips were burned, 216 00:18:48,494 --> 00:18:53,193 the Maya believed they could see their gods in the rising smoke. 217 00:19:03,976 --> 00:19:06,968 Today, the descendants of the ancient Maya 218 00:19:07,112 --> 00:19:10,548 still live much like their ancestors did. 219 00:19:14,186 --> 00:19:15,676 The myths they remember 220 00:19:15,821 --> 00:19:20,019 and the ceremonies they perform are all part of a tradition 221 00:19:20,159 --> 00:19:24,721 that the Maya say God gave them at the beginning of time. 222 00:19:39,778 --> 00:19:46,047 Casimiro Sagajau is a Maya priest who blesses the fields at harvest time 223 00:19:50,556 --> 00:19:55,152 We are Cakchiquels, direct descendants of the ancient Maya. 224 00:19:55,294 --> 00:19:58,593 Our religion is from a long time ago. 225 00:19:58,730 --> 00:20:01,699 I learned as a child from the Maya priests. 226 00:20:01,833 --> 00:20:03,960 In dreams we learned from the Maya gods 227 00:20:04,102 --> 00:20:06,434 when to plant and when to harvest, 228 00:20:06,572 --> 00:20:11,339 when to set the fires, and when to do the corn ceremony. 229 00:20:27,893 --> 00:20:29,986 The Maya passion for ritual 230 00:20:30,128 --> 00:20:33,655 was one of the first things Spanish missionaries observed 231 00:20:33,799 --> 00:20:38,532 when they arrived in Yucatan almost 500 years ago. 232 00:20:52,251 --> 00:20:55,982 When the Catholic Church banned traditional forms of worship, 233 00:20:56,121 --> 00:20:58,646 the old ways went underground. 234 00:20:59,591 --> 00:21:05,962 Today the religion the Maya follow is a blend of these two ancient faiths 235 00:21:11,236 --> 00:21:16,435 The Maya have clung tenaciously to many aspects of the old culture. 236 00:21:16,575 --> 00:21:20,671 In the highlands of Chiapas and Guatemala 237 00:21:20,812 --> 00:21:24,111 their unique dress not only defines them as Maya, 238 00:21:24,249 --> 00:21:28,481 but identifies the particular village where they live. 239 00:21:33,058 --> 00:21:34,889 It is said that when a Maya woman 240 00:21:35,027 --> 00:21:38,463 puts on her traditional blouse, called a huipil, 241 00:21:38,597 --> 00:21:44,035 her head emerges at the very center of a world woven from dreams, 242 00:21:44,169 --> 00:21:48,833 just as the great tree of life emerges from the earth. 243 00:22:03,588 --> 00:22:06,352 In the highlands of Chiapas, Mexico, 244 00:22:06,491 --> 00:22:10,985 Chip Morris had been working with weavers for 20 years. 245 00:22:16,234 --> 00:22:17,758 The weavers have always said that 246 00:22:17,903 --> 00:22:19,996 their designs come from the beginning of the world, 247 00:22:20,138 --> 00:22:22,072 meaning the beginning of their culture 248 00:22:22,207 --> 00:22:25,665 When I started looking at the archaeology of the sculptures 249 00:22:25,811 --> 00:22:28,905 and the statues, the things that show what the weaving was like, 250 00:22:29,047 --> 00:22:33,313 there are a number that are all but identical to the weavings of today. 251 00:22:40,425 --> 00:22:44,885 What's in the designs is a map of the Maya world, 252 00:22:45,030 --> 00:22:46,497 but not the surface of the earth, 253 00:22:46,631 --> 00:22:49,395 not where we are standing now, but it's the dream world. 254 00:22:49,534 --> 00:22:51,263 It's that world where the gods are, 255 00:22:51,403 --> 00:22:55,999 where the beings that control rain, where Angel, the lightning bolt lives. 256 00:22:56,141 --> 00:22:59,110 There are no trucks, there are no houses on a blouse. 257 00:22:59,244 --> 00:23:03,510 It's all images of that sacred universe that creates rain, 258 00:23:03,648 --> 00:23:07,049 that creates life, that maintains the world. 259 00:23:15,827 --> 00:23:19,228 In a world where the line between the secular and the sacred 260 00:23:19,364 --> 00:23:21,594 is almost imperceptible, 261 00:23:21,733 --> 00:23:24,759 everything is more than is seems. 262 00:23:29,875 --> 00:23:34,676 Pyramids symbolize sacred mountains where the ancestors dwell. 263 00:23:34,813 --> 00:23:37,509 Doors represent the mouths of caves 264 00:23:37,649 --> 00:23:41,745 passageways into the mountian's dangerous underworld. 265 00:23:52,664 --> 00:23:56,794 The Maya believed they went to that underworld when they died. 266 00:23:57,269 --> 00:24:00,397 They called it Xibalba. 267 00:24:00,939 --> 00:24:03,965 It was the "place of fright" 268 00:24:05,577 --> 00:24:10,014 a watery realm of disease and deacy that ordinary people 269 00:24:10,148 --> 00:24:12,378 had little hope of escaping. 270 00:24:20,225 --> 00:24:23,991 How the Maya treated their dead is being investigated here 271 00:24:24,129 --> 00:24:27,860 at a site 130 miles north of Copan. 272 00:24:28,433 --> 00:24:31,630 These are the ruins of a city called Caracol. 273 00:24:31,770 --> 00:24:35,001 Once it was a prosperous administrative center. 274 00:24:35,140 --> 00:24:40,043 Today it is remarkable for the scores of tombs discovered here. 275 00:24:43,548 --> 00:24:45,846 I think we'll leave the rest of this until we move the rocks. 276 00:24:45,984 --> 00:24:47,383 Okay. 277 00:24:49,488 --> 00:24:51,683 Arlen Chase is a potter expert. 278 00:24:51,823 --> 00:24:55,259 Diane Chase is an authority on human bones. 279 00:24:59,331 --> 00:25:03,165 They're trying to understand how the Maya thought about death. 280 00:25:04,102 --> 00:25:06,696 We tend to think of things in Westernized terms. 281 00:25:06,838 --> 00:25:08,533 The Maya were not a Western society; 282 00:25:08,673 --> 00:25:11,141 they didn't do anything the way Europeans do. 283 00:25:11,276 --> 00:25:15,838 It's so hard for our own society to understand how the Maya lived. 284 00:25:15,981 --> 00:25:20,145 I mean we don't have dead living with us, you know, every day. 285 00:25:20,285 --> 00:25:22,719 We don't put them in a room in our house and maintain them there. 286 00:25:22,854 --> 00:25:25,550 Well, the Maya essentially did that in their living groups. 287 00:25:28,126 --> 00:25:30,026 Okay. Oh, this is nice. Arlen. 288 00:25:30,161 --> 00:25:31,560 This is real nice. 289 00:25:31,696 --> 00:25:34,256 We've definitely got a royal tomb here 290 00:25:34,900 --> 00:25:38,859 Ordinary people were usually buried under the floors of their houses. 291 00:25:39,004 --> 00:25:41,302 The vessels are nice and they're in good shape. 292 00:25:41,439 --> 00:25:43,600 The elite were placed in tombs. 293 00:25:43,742 --> 00:25:44,868 This polychrome over here 294 00:25:45,010 --> 00:25:47,604 is in better shape on the back than the front side. 295 00:25:47,746 --> 00:25:48,906 What about the bone? 296 00:25:49,047 --> 00:25:51,311 Bone? There's a lot of bone. 297 00:25:51,449 --> 00:25:56,477 There are at least two individuals whose heads are to the south. 298 00:25:56,621 --> 00:25:58,612 They're in pretty good shape. 299 00:25:59,190 --> 00:26:01,556 Someone else's legs are up in this corner. 300 00:26:01,693 --> 00:26:04,924 It doesn't go with either one of the first two individuals. 301 00:26:05,063 --> 00:26:08,624 It's not the man and the possible woman. 302 00:26:08,767 --> 00:26:10,257 It's somebody different. 303 00:26:11,703 --> 00:26:16,072 It wasn't uncommon for the Maya to bury more than one family member 304 00:26:16,207 --> 00:26:17,674 in the same space. 305 00:26:18,076 --> 00:26:21,307 I like to think of it more like a family mausoleum 306 00:26:21,446 --> 00:26:25,610 where grandpa may have died and you place him inside first. 307 00:26:25,750 --> 00:26:28,014 Grandma dies. You put her inside too. 308 00:26:28,153 --> 00:26:31,850 A number of years pass and maybe the son or daughter dies. 309 00:26:31,990 --> 00:26:35,357 You might move grandpa to the side a little bit, grandma too, 310 00:26:35,493 --> 00:26:36,391 and stick the son in. 311 00:26:36,528 --> 00:26:39,759 And a little bit further along a few more people in the family die 312 00:26:39,898 --> 00:26:43,561 and eventually the mausoleum has quite a lot of bone material inside. 313 00:26:44,703 --> 00:26:45,761 This one's got a ring... 314 00:26:45,904 --> 00:26:50,000 For archaeologists, tombs are like time capsules. 315 00:26:50,141 --> 00:26:51,972 The objects buried with the dead 316 00:26:52,110 --> 00:26:55,170 sometimes yield precise dates and names. 317 00:26:57,082 --> 00:26:59,107 These help to fill out our picture of 318 00:26:59,250 --> 00:27:03,482 how the ancient Maya lived. ...in the lab it should pop out. 319 00:27:09,894 --> 00:27:14,729 And sometimes what they find is simply beautiful. 320 00:27:37,789 --> 00:27:39,757 Like the tombs at Caracol, 321 00:27:39,891 --> 00:27:44,294 the buildings of Copan contain their share of buried history. 322 00:27:44,429 --> 00:27:48,593 But finding it has often been an elusive undertaking. 323 00:27:53,471 --> 00:28:00,809 Honduran archaeologist Ricardo Agurcia has been working at Copan since 1978. 324 00:28:03,214 --> 00:28:06,047 My primary interest was finding out what happened to these people. 325 00:28:06,184 --> 00:28:08,652 It's something that's part of my heritage too. 326 00:28:08,787 --> 00:28:10,550 It's something that's part of my country. 327 00:28:10,689 --> 00:28:12,554 And I grew up I mean I wasn't very young 328 00:28:12,691 --> 00:28:14,784 when I came to these ruins the first time. 329 00:28:14,926 --> 00:28:19,829 But it impacted me and it was a fascinating issue-question that 330 00:28:19,964 --> 00:28:20,862 you were always thinking about. 331 00:28:20,999 --> 00:28:22,261 What happened to these people? Who were they? 332 00:28:22,400 --> 00:28:24,630 How did they do the things they did? 333 00:28:27,706 --> 00:28:29,298 For the past four years 334 00:28:29,441 --> 00:28:32,342 Agurcia has been excavating a temple pyramid 335 00:28:32,477 --> 00:28:36,538 that may tell us more about how the people of Copan lived. 336 00:28:37,382 --> 00:28:42,445 Temple 16 is a typical royal structure in terms of its construction. 337 00:28:42,587 --> 00:28:46,216 And there in lies the archaeologists' challenge. 338 00:28:46,357 --> 00:28:49,622 For the Maya, certain spaces were sacred, 339 00:28:49,761 --> 00:28:53,595 so they built their temples one on top of another. 340 00:28:54,132 --> 00:28:58,159 Workers would collapse the upper levels of an existing structure, 341 00:28:58,303 --> 00:29:03,866 encase what was left with heavy fill, and build a new structure around it. 342 00:29:08,680 --> 00:29:11,410 As Agurcia's crew remove the fill, 343 00:29:11,549 --> 00:29:14,143 they create a labyrinth of tunnels. 344 00:29:16,621 --> 00:29:18,748 Working in tunnels tends to be very confusing. 345 00:29:18,890 --> 00:29:20,585 You're working like in three dimensions. 346 00:29:20,725 --> 00:29:22,852 You're going up, down, sideways, in between. 347 00:29:22,994 --> 00:29:25,155 And oftentimes you get lost 348 00:29:25,296 --> 00:29:27,423 and you can't really understand what you're looking at. 349 00:29:28,633 --> 00:29:30,328 The flat wall on the left 350 00:29:30,468 --> 00:29:33,665 used to be the outer wall of an older temple. 351 00:29:34,239 --> 00:29:36,707 Only by following its walls to their ends 352 00:29:36,841 --> 00:29:40,572 can Agurcia determine building's original dimensions. 353 00:29:46,551 --> 00:29:48,644 I only traveled a short distance 354 00:29:48,787 --> 00:29:50,778 and bingo, we hit another wall. 355 00:29:50,922 --> 00:29:53,914 It still goes farther on towards the south. 356 00:29:54,058 --> 00:29:56,458 So we then tried going up to see 357 00:29:56,594 --> 00:29:59,722 whether we had the bottom part of a substructure 358 00:29:59,864 --> 00:30:02,662 or the higher part of it and started going up. 359 00:30:02,801 --> 00:30:05,201 And you can see here the terraces going up of 360 00:30:05,336 --> 00:30:06,860 what was a very large pyramid. 361 00:30:07,005 --> 00:30:09,166 It goes up, as far as we've traced it, 362 00:30:09,307 --> 00:30:15,075 eight stories high and each one curving back and going further up. 363 00:30:19,717 --> 00:30:23,483 What Agurcia found next was totally unexpected. 364 00:30:26,491 --> 00:30:30,188 There was yet a third structure inside the first two, 365 00:30:30,328 --> 00:30:33,058 this one was different. 366 00:30:35,567 --> 00:30:41,164 The building Agurcia calls Rosalila was perfectly preserved. 367 00:30:42,207 --> 00:30:43,868 The loose dirt was removed, 368 00:30:44,008 --> 00:30:46,704 exposing a set of giant masks 369 00:30:46,845 --> 00:30:50,337 still tinged with traces of the original paint. 370 00:30:50,481 --> 00:30:54,212 Most of the masks we found before were perhaps a meter or two tall 371 00:30:54,352 --> 00:30:56,820 and would extend as much as five, six meters. 372 00:30:56,955 --> 00:31:00,288 But these masks just kept going and going and going 373 00:31:00,425 --> 00:31:04,122 and to this moment we still haven't found the end of them 374 00:31:09,901 --> 00:31:10,765 Hey, partner. 375 00:31:10,902 --> 00:31:12,369 How's it going, boss? 376 00:31:14,205 --> 00:31:15,001 Wo-o-o. 377 00:31:15,139 --> 00:31:16,572 You haven't been here in a while, have you? 378 00:31:16,708 --> 00:31:19,404 Wow! Whoa! 379 00:31:19,544 --> 00:31:20,943 Can you believe it? 380 00:31:21,613 --> 00:31:22,875 Red paint all over the place. 381 00:31:23,014 --> 00:31:24,447 Yeah, we've got lots of good paint. 382 00:31:24,582 --> 00:31:28,541 We're coming down below the molding 383 00:31:28,686 --> 00:31:31,519 and we've got two birds out. 384 00:31:32,423 --> 00:31:34,118 We've got one over here on the left 385 00:31:34,259 --> 00:31:37,092 and he's facing north. 386 00:31:37,228 --> 00:31:38,957 And I think we have another one. 387 00:31:39,097 --> 00:31:42,897 You see, he's got his beak bent over his eye. 388 00:31:43,034 --> 00:31:43,728 All the feathers behind him. 389 00:31:43,868 --> 00:31:46,428 All the feathers radiating out 390 00:31:46,571 --> 00:31:49,699 and also it's higher up than anything else in the Acropolis. 391 00:31:49,841 --> 00:31:55,006 So this thing shone out for miles around. 392 00:31:55,146 --> 00:31:58,172 It's outrageous, it's just outrageous. 393 00:31:58,750 --> 00:32:01,241 Adorned with brightly painted sculpture 394 00:32:01,386 --> 00:32:05,379 Rosalila once crowned the highest point in Copan. 395 00:32:07,125 --> 00:32:12,062 Framing the central doorway, two giant birds face the setting sun. 396 00:32:12,597 --> 00:32:17,159 Above them undulating serpents extend their bodies toward the sky. 397 00:32:20,838 --> 00:32:22,328 For the archaeologists, 398 00:32:22,473 --> 00:32:26,876 the careful treatment given Rosalila poses a question. 399 00:32:27,011 --> 00:32:31,311 We're all just itching to know what Rosalil is all about. 400 00:32:31,449 --> 00:32:34,384 Why was it left there for 150 years 401 00:32:34,519 --> 00:32:36,578 and nobody touched it other than to maintain it? 402 00:32:36,721 --> 00:32:38,655 Why was it buried intact? 403 00:32:38,790 --> 00:32:41,122 They didn't touch any of it when they buried it. 404 00:32:41,259 --> 00:32:42,954 All the rest of them they smashed to pieces 405 00:32:43,094 --> 00:32:44,925 to build something bigger and better over it. 406 00:32:45,063 --> 00:32:49,295 Why was it so revered that is had to be mummified when it was buried? 407 00:32:49,434 --> 00:32:51,595 And most of all, what's inside of it? 408 00:32:51,736 --> 00:32:52,930 What is that thing housing? 409 00:32:53,071 --> 00:32:55,437 And that's what we're hoping Ricardo will find. 410 00:32:59,143 --> 00:33:01,441 But before any new discoveries are made 411 00:33:01,579 --> 00:33:04,571 the rainy season descends on Copan. 412 00:33:07,485 --> 00:33:09,510 The archaeologists return home 413 00:33:09,654 --> 00:33:13,681 and all excavations are suspended until it ends. 414 00:33:30,975 --> 00:33:34,706 Nearly six months later the rain is over. 415 00:33:34,846 --> 00:33:36,541 The weather clears. 416 00:33:37,248 --> 00:33:41,912 At last the excavation of temple 16 can be resumed. 417 00:33:43,521 --> 00:33:48,686 For another half year workers continue to peel away the dirt from Rosalila. 418 00:33:48,826 --> 00:33:51,818 And just before the rains resume, 419 00:33:51,963 --> 00:33:56,161 the enigmatic temple yields one more surprise. 420 00:33:59,570 --> 00:34:02,232 > From a small cache found in a doorway, 421 00:34:02,373 --> 00:34:06,776 Agurcia removes something buried 1,300 years ago. 422 00:34:07,245 --> 00:34:09,577 Look at this. It's a black kind of a... 423 00:34:09,714 --> 00:34:10,874 Oh, man! 424 00:34:12,150 --> 00:34:13,048 It doesn't fit. 425 00:34:13,184 --> 00:34:14,742 It's close enough. 426 00:34:15,386 --> 00:34:18,116 You would not believe how sharp the edges on these things are. 427 00:34:18,256 --> 00:34:21,089 What they have found is a bundle of blades 428 00:34:21,225 --> 00:34:24,251 chipped from an especially sacred material 429 00:34:24,395 --> 00:34:27,193 flint, the firestone. 430 00:34:31,235 --> 00:34:34,636 They were probably used on ceremonial occasions 431 00:34:34,772 --> 00:34:37,900 and the faces may depict royal ancestors, 432 00:34:38,042 --> 00:34:41,534 or sacrificial victims. 433 00:34:42,914 --> 00:34:47,180 No one knows how long it took to create these delicately flaked blades 434 00:34:47,318 --> 00:34:50,446 since no one today has the skill to make one. 435 00:34:57,829 --> 00:35:01,629 In all, nine flints were found in Rosalila 436 00:35:01,766 --> 00:35:06,635 perhaps corresponding to the nine Maya "Lords of the Night." 437 00:35:12,343 --> 00:35:15,744 It's been here for 1,300 years 438 00:35:17,648 --> 00:35:20,082 and it's unbelievable. 439 00:35:21,853 --> 00:35:23,821 It's a beautiful piece of art. I mean 440 00:35:23,955 --> 00:35:26,753 the finesse, the work in it is incredible. 441 00:35:27,525 --> 00:35:29,789 And I just feel like 442 00:35:30,728 --> 00:35:32,593 incredibly privileged, you know. 443 00:35:35,199 --> 00:35:37,497 You get caught up in the heat of the battle 444 00:35:37,635 --> 00:35:40,126 and you try not to forget to 445 00:35:40,271 --> 00:35:41,636 take your pictures, take your measurements. 446 00:35:41,772 --> 00:35:43,467 And at times you forget to think about it 447 00:35:43,608 --> 00:35:45,803 and to think of the face that it's human beings 448 00:35:45,943 --> 00:35:47,433 that did this a long time ago and that 449 00:35:47,578 --> 00:35:50,570 when they did it, this was very important to them. 450 00:35:50,715 --> 00:35:53,445 I'm touched by it, I really am. 451 00:35:54,485 --> 00:35:56,544 And it's a special feeling. 452 00:35:56,687 --> 00:35:58,985 It doesn't happen every day. 453 00:36:03,861 --> 00:36:07,092 It is likely the flints Agurcia found in Rosalila 454 00:36:07,231 --> 00:36:11,031 were placed there sometime in the 7 th century A. D. 455 00:36:11,169 --> 00:36:14,798 When the classic Maya civilization was at its peak. 456 00:36:25,883 --> 00:36:27,350 In many Maya kingdoms 457 00:36:27,485 --> 00:36:30,921 there was a boom in the construction of new buildings. 458 00:36:31,055 --> 00:36:33,888 Some cities were even connected by roads, 459 00:36:34,025 --> 00:36:36,755 and trade among them flourished. 460 00:36:42,233 --> 00:36:45,600 Copan lay on the southern frontier. 461 00:36:46,070 --> 00:36:47,469 But to the north 462 00:36:47,605 --> 00:36:50,472 events had taken place in the Maya world 463 00:36:50,608 --> 00:36:53,873 that would eventually shake it to its core. 464 00:37:02,620 --> 00:37:05,987 Tikal was one of their greatest Maya cities, 465 00:37:06,123 --> 00:37:10,753 a prosperous urban center that the envy of its neighbors. 466 00:37:13,397 --> 00:37:16,423 It was probably inconceivable to the kings of Tikal 467 00:37:16,567 --> 00:37:19,195 that any other kingdom posed a threat, 468 00:37:20,137 --> 00:37:23,072 but in the spring of 562, 469 00:37:23,207 --> 00:37:27,405 Caracol attacked Tikal and defeated it 470 00:37:29,180 --> 00:37:31,671 During the upheaval that followed in Tikal, 471 00:37:31,816 --> 00:37:35,343 members of the royal family moved away into the jungle 472 00:37:35,486 --> 00:37:37,784 and established their own city. 473 00:37:37,922 --> 00:37:41,653 Today, a research base camp marks the spot. 474 00:37:44,328 --> 00:37:47,195 What was once the great city of Dos Pilas 475 00:37:47,331 --> 00:37:50,858 has again been reclaimed by jungle. 476 00:37:53,137 --> 00:37:57,164 The effort to piece together a picture of its dramatic rise to power 477 00:37:57,308 --> 00:38:00,243 is being led by Arthur Demarest. 478 00:38:02,613 --> 00:38:06,515 What he has learned is changing the way we think about the Maya. 479 00:38:07,084 --> 00:38:08,051 Forty or fifty years ago 480 00:38:08,185 --> 00:38:10,016 we thought of the Maya as this peace-loving, 481 00:38:10,154 --> 00:38:14,989 theocratic society, these scholarly kings who studied the movements 482 00:38:15,126 --> 00:38:17,856 of the planets and lived kind of in a world of their own. 483 00:38:17,995 --> 00:38:21,089 Now we know, from the recent hieroglyphic decipherments 484 00:38:21,232 --> 00:38:24,759 and from excavations like these that have found fortifications; 485 00:38:24,902 --> 00:38:27,769 that the Maya were a very violent people, 486 00:38:27,905 --> 00:38:30,635 one of the most warlike peoples of the New World, 487 00:38:30,775 --> 00:38:34,267 and that they were constantly engaged in warfare, 488 00:38:34,412 --> 00:38:37,279 battles of dynastic sucession, 489 00:38:37,415 --> 00:38:40,384 and earthly pursuits. 490 00:38:47,758 --> 00:38:49,157 In 1990 491 00:38:49,293 --> 00:38:54,060 Demarest's team discovered concrete evidence to support this view. 492 00:39:00,805 --> 00:39:05,003 It is a large, perfectly preserved hieroglyphic text, 493 00:39:05,142 --> 00:39:09,545 and on it it talks about a series of wars, battles, 494 00:39:09,680 --> 00:39:13,446 and conquests involving the big players-Tikal, 495 00:39:13,584 --> 00:39:16,018 Dos Pilas battling each other. 496 00:39:16,153 --> 00:39:17,882 And it records the outcomes. 497 00:39:18,022 --> 00:39:20,582 It's tremendous piece of information, 498 00:39:20,725 --> 00:39:22,090 and its decipherment, 499 00:39:22,226 --> 00:39:24,194 I think, is going to change the way we look 500 00:39:24,328 --> 00:39:28,560 at this very critical period in Maya history. 501 00:39:29,934 --> 00:39:30,992 This is really amazing. 502 00:39:31,135 --> 00:39:33,228 They're saying that he is the subordinate of this lord, 503 00:39:33,371 --> 00:39:34,497 presumably of Calakmul. 504 00:39:34,638 --> 00:39:36,333 It's an incredible title. 505 00:39:36,774 --> 00:39:39,572 It's saying we were competitive with Tikal. 506 00:39:39,910 --> 00:39:44,813 Well, we have to think about it. I mean is it subordination or... 507 00:39:44,949 --> 00:39:48,180 Epigraphers David Stuart and Steve Houston 508 00:39:48,319 --> 00:39:52,187 are called in to see how much of the text they can read. 509 00:39:52,323 --> 00:39:54,917 ...with references to Bonampak and Tonina. 510 00:39:55,059 --> 00:39:58,119 And then after that-X. 511 00:39:58,262 --> 00:39:59,524 And look, there it is. Atun. 512 00:39:59,663 --> 00:40:01,358 Yeah. This, Arthur, refers to a kind of altar. 513 00:40:01,499 --> 00:40:03,296 And here it refers to a dedication. 514 00:40:03,434 --> 00:40:06,403 It's referring to the stair. And look! It's a step. It's a step! 515 00:40:06,537 --> 00:40:08,402 It's a pyramid. 516 00:40:08,539 --> 00:40:11,030 Okay, what it's saying is that this event, 517 00:40:11,175 --> 00:40:11,698 this war event... 518 00:40:11,842 --> 00:40:14,709 And then over here you've got a new event involving Ruler A's father. 519 00:40:14,845 --> 00:40:18,042 The skull glyph here is the name of the ruler of Tikal. 520 00:40:21,185 --> 00:40:27,124 Initially, it seems that Maya warfare was to some extent ritualized. 521 00:40:27,258 --> 00:40:30,056 It was more devoted to religious ends. 522 00:40:30,194 --> 00:40:33,322 Literally, these guys dressed up in silly outfits, 523 00:40:33,464 --> 00:40:36,456 archaic costumes with big Paleolithic spears 524 00:40:36,600 --> 00:40:39,125 and went out there and met in some place 525 00:40:39,270 --> 00:40:40,737 and knocked each other around. 526 00:40:40,871 --> 00:40:43,738 One of them was captured and brought back and sacrificed. 527 00:40:51,348 --> 00:40:54,146 What the hieroglyphs on the stairway seem to confirm 528 00:40:54,285 --> 00:40:57,652 is that sometime in the 8th century A. D. 529 00:40:57,788 --> 00:41:03,021 Ritualized warfare gave way to campaigns of expansion. 530 00:41:03,160 --> 00:41:06,960 The kings of Dos Pilas attacked town along the Pasion River, 531 00:41:07,097 --> 00:41:11,193 and thereby seized control of a vital trade route. 532 00:41:11,902 --> 00:41:15,429 It looks like there was a change in warfare 533 00:41:15,573 --> 00:41:21,170 that led to an intensification and to a shifting to warfare for conquest, 534 00:41:21,312 --> 00:41:24,645 actually absorbing the territory of others. 535 00:41:24,782 --> 00:41:28,718 This seems to have somehow gotten out of hand. 536 00:41:28,853 --> 00:41:31,447 An arms race, in a way, started. 537 00:41:31,589 --> 00:41:33,989 Attacking centers becomes acceptable. 538 00:41:34,124 --> 00:41:37,719 Attacking population bases, burning temples, that kind of thing. 539 00:41:47,238 --> 00:41:51,675 The new warfare would eventually come to Caracol as well. 540 00:41:51,809 --> 00:41:54,300 The eighth century and ninth century 541 00:41:54,445 --> 00:41:57,175 at Caracol and throughout the Maya area 542 00:41:57,314 --> 00:42:02,274 was a time of tremendous change and a lot of warfare. 543 00:42:02,419 --> 00:42:04,114 Caracol, up to that point in time, 544 00:42:04,255 --> 00:42:06,280 had been very successful in warfare. 545 00:42:06,423 --> 00:42:10,382 What happens, we think at least, is that in this late time horizon, 546 00:42:10,528 --> 00:42:14,328 it's not just a question of defeating a neighboring civilization 547 00:42:14,465 --> 00:42:16,262 and taking them into your realm, 548 00:42:16,400 --> 00:42:19,801 but talking large numbers of captives to sacrifice. 549 00:42:19,937 --> 00:42:22,132 I think people were really scared. 550 00:42:25,609 --> 00:42:27,270 Picture yourself in a Maya city. 551 00:42:27,411 --> 00:42:29,845 And here you're been having warfare and you say okay, 552 00:42:29,980 --> 00:42:31,777 I'm going to be captured and I'm going to be put to work 553 00:42:31,916 --> 00:42:34,180 probably have to give three months out of the year 554 00:42:34,318 --> 00:42:36,377 to that foreign country over there. 555 00:42:36,520 --> 00:42:38,579 But rather than that happening to you, 556 00:42:38,722 --> 00:42:40,713 you've got this marauding army that comes in, 557 00:42:40,858 --> 00:42:42,655 pulls all the men together, 558 00:42:42,793 --> 00:42:44,988 and rather than marching them off to work in the fields, 559 00:42:45,129 --> 00:42:48,257 they instead cut off their heads and mount them on sticks 560 00:42:48,399 --> 00:42:50,333 and make huge skull platforms. 561 00:42:50,467 --> 00:42:52,697 Now that would strike terror into you. 562 00:42:52,836 --> 00:42:56,636 That would be enough to say, "My god, let's get out of here!" 563 00:43:06,784 --> 00:43:10,550 Even Dos Pilas would finally face the terror. 564 00:43:10,688 --> 00:43:13,919 On the Hieroglyphic Stairway itself lie the ruins 565 00:43:14,058 --> 00:43:16,925 of a hastily erected stockade. 566 00:43:17,061 --> 00:43:18,221 Archaeologically, 567 00:43:18,362 --> 00:43:20,626 this defensive wall is one of the most important 568 00:43:20,764 --> 00:43:22,789 and exciting features that we've found here. 569 00:43:22,933 --> 00:43:26,425 One of the reasons why this masonry line is so neat 570 00:43:26,570 --> 00:43:31,735 and is placed so well is that it is made out of neatly carved blocks 571 00:43:31,875 --> 00:43:32,899 which were ripped off. 572 00:43:33,043 --> 00:43:35,307 They're the facings from the palaces around you. 573 00:43:35,446 --> 00:43:39,109 So they literally tore down the royal palace and built this, 574 00:43:39,249 --> 00:43:42,241 running it up against their hieroglyphic stairway 575 00:43:42,386 --> 00:43:45,617 to create this desperate defensive system. 576 00:43:47,257 --> 00:43:51,318 A picture of the city in its final days begins to emerge. 577 00:43:53,797 --> 00:43:56,664 In a frantic attempt to keep the invaders out, 578 00:43:56,800 --> 00:44:00,201 the citizens of Dos Pilas erect two defensive walls 579 00:44:00,337 --> 00:44:04,774 around the center of the city and move inside for protection. 580 00:44:12,916 --> 00:44:16,477 These are low house platforms that held little huts 581 00:44:16,620 --> 00:44:19,555 that filled the central ceremonial plaza here at Dos Pilas 582 00:44:19,690 --> 00:44:22,420 at the time of the siege and the collapse. 583 00:44:22,559 --> 00:44:25,858 And it indicates that again the desperation 584 00:44:25,996 --> 00:44:28,658 of those final moments of this great kingdom 585 00:44:28,799 --> 00:44:32,098 was so great and its fall had been so complete that, 586 00:44:32,236 --> 00:44:36,696 at this point, you had the population living within the ceremonial plaza, 587 00:44:36,840 --> 00:44:38,364 below the towering temples, 588 00:44:38,509 --> 00:44:41,410 below the monuments of the strutting great kings. 589 00:44:41,545 --> 00:44:43,843 It's almost as if you had a population 590 00:44:43,981 --> 00:44:46,347 squeezed in living on the White House lawn, 591 00:44:46,483 --> 00:44:50,249 holding out at the very end of the collapse of American civilization. 592 00:44:50,387 --> 00:44:53,823 That's what you have here that moment in time. 593 00:45:03,567 --> 00:45:08,027 Copan, meanwhile, is struggling with problems of a different sort. 594 00:45:11,041 --> 00:45:15,501 When one of its most powerful rulers is captured and beheaded, 595 00:45:15,646 --> 00:45:19,878 faith in the divine authority of the kings wavers. 596 00:45:27,725 --> 00:45:33,186 At the same time, the population in the Copan Valley continues to grow. 597 00:45:34,264 --> 00:45:35,697 Basically, the Copanecs 598 00:45:35,833 --> 00:45:38,768 became the victims of their own success. 599 00:45:38,902 --> 00:45:40,301 And as this city grew 600 00:45:40,437 --> 00:45:43,304 and became more vibrant and more attractive, 601 00:45:43,440 --> 00:45:46,204 eventually all this nice, fertile, 602 00:45:46,343 --> 00:45:48,903 alluvial bottomland was covered by houses, 603 00:45:49,046 --> 00:45:52,038 and they were basically cutting themselves off 604 00:45:52,182 --> 00:45:53,979 from their own food source. 605 00:45:54,118 --> 00:45:56,951 As time went by, all of the forest was eliminated. 606 00:45:57,087 --> 00:45:59,920 This caused widescale erosion throughout the valley. 607 00:46:00,057 --> 00:46:02,321 This eventually resulted in less rainfall, 608 00:46:02,459 --> 00:46:05,326 and people just weren't table to live here any more. 609 00:46:16,006 --> 00:46:19,498 It is now the middle of the eighth century. 610 00:46:19,643 --> 00:46:24,444 Throughout the southern Maya world the power of the kings is waning. 611 00:46:27,751 --> 00:46:31,710 Disease and hunger are becoming commonplace. 612 00:46:32,823 --> 00:46:36,020 People begin to drift away from the cities. 613 00:46:36,660 --> 00:46:41,097 In Europe the Dark Ages are halfway over. 614 00:46:41,832 --> 00:46:43,800 Here in the jungle, 615 00:46:43,934 --> 00:46:46,528 they are just beginning. 616 00:46:50,007 --> 00:46:52,771 Slowly, one by one, 617 00:46:52,910 --> 00:46:55,606 the great southern cities are abandoned 618 00:46:59,783 --> 00:47:01,307 In 761 619 00:47:01,451 --> 00:47:05,353 the king of Dos Pilas is captured and killed. 620 00:47:05,489 --> 00:47:10,449 > From that point on there are no more hieroglyphic inscriptions here. 621 00:47:13,096 --> 00:47:17,897 The last written date at Palenque is 799. 622 00:47:26,176 --> 00:47:30,272 Twenty years later, Copan falls silent 623 00:47:37,521 --> 00:47:41,582 Caracol stops recording in 859. 624 00:47:44,728 --> 00:47:49,961 The last inscription date at Tikal is written in 879. 625 00:47:53,437 --> 00:47:55,428 Only a handful of Maya cities 626 00:47:55,572 --> 00:48:00,009 in the south survive beyond the first years of the tenth century. 627 00:48:01,879 --> 00:48:04,541 The northern cities of the Yucatan Peninsula 628 00:48:04,681 --> 00:48:08,048 places like Uxmal and Chichen itza 629 00:48:08,185 --> 00:48:11,484 will prosper for several hundred years longer. 630 00:48:13,123 --> 00:48:16,251 But they are no longer ruled by divine kings, 631 00:48:16,393 --> 00:48:20,056 and gradually the old ways of building 632 00:48:20,197 --> 00:48:24,156 and writing, and worshiping slip away. 633 00:48:41,485 --> 00:48:45,649 The Classic Maya civilization is at an end. 634 00:49:01,638 --> 00:49:02,502 One of the thins, I think, 635 00:49:02,639 --> 00:49:05,870 that strikes the public consciousness about the Maya civilization is 636 00:49:06,009 --> 00:49:10,241 to see this sophisticated culture with its monuments and architecture 637 00:49:10,380 --> 00:49:13,645 and science and writing system in the jungle, 638 00:49:13,784 --> 00:49:15,251 covered, destroyed 639 00:49:15,385 --> 00:49:17,444 an area that's now abandoned today. 640 00:49:17,587 --> 00:49:19,578 I think that there's an immediate 641 00:49:19,723 --> 00:49:21,247 impact when you see that. 642 00:49:21,391 --> 00:49:24,224 It reminds us that we can fail, 643 00:49:24,361 --> 00:49:29,321 that civilization is a complex phenoneman, and we can screw up. 644 00:49:29,466 --> 00:49:33,800 And the consequences can be totally catastrophic. 645 00:49:39,109 --> 00:49:43,773 Yet, while the Classic Maya civilization may have disappeared, 646 00:49:43,914 --> 00:49:46,439 the Maya people have not. 647 00:49:46,583 --> 00:49:51,043 For 3,000 years they have survived the ambitions of their own kings 648 00:49:51,188 --> 00:49:53,816 and those of foreign conquerors. 649 00:49:53,957 --> 00:49:57,757 And once again they are under assault. 650 00:50:02,933 --> 00:50:06,266 In Guatemala, during the past three decades, 651 00:50:06,403 --> 00:50:11,204 the Maya have been caught in a civil war they barely comprehend. 652 00:50:11,942 --> 00:50:16,208 In that time, 100,000 Maya have been killed 653 00:50:16,346 --> 00:50:19,873 and another 40,000 have "disappeared." 654 00:50:20,017 --> 00:50:23,544 No one can count the number of widows and orphans. 655 00:50:26,390 --> 00:50:29,291 And through it all, they endure. 656 00:50:30,494 --> 00:50:32,894 They weave their huipils. 657 00:50:33,397 --> 00:50:35,490 They farm their corn. 658 00:50:51,081 --> 00:50:53,413 I feel that the Maya of today are very much 659 00:50:53,550 --> 00:50:55,984 in the same traditions as the Classic Maya. 660 00:50:56,119 --> 00:50:58,383 What they've lost is that big covering 661 00:50:58,522 --> 00:51:01,685 that overlay of nobility, and they dropped it themselves. 662 00:51:01,825 --> 00:51:04,487 They basically told the kings, that's it. 663 00:51:04,628 --> 00:51:05,595 You're not working anymore. 664 00:51:05,729 --> 00:51:08,254 And they went and they continued their own lives. 665 00:51:11,768 --> 00:51:15,226 I don't like it when people talk about the Maya collapse, 666 00:51:15,372 --> 00:51:16,703 because they never collapsed. 667 00:51:16,840 --> 00:51:19,365 They evolved. They went through different hard times 668 00:51:19,509 --> 00:51:22,034 good times, bad times, but they're still with us. 669 00:51:22,179 --> 00:51:23,771 They still maintain their customs; 670 00:51:23,914 --> 00:51:27,213 they still maintain their ways of organizing their societies. 671 00:51:27,918 --> 00:51:30,853 And it's very exciting to see how much of the ancient 672 00:51:30,987 --> 00:51:34,184 Maya way of life is still alive and well. 673 00:51:59,149 --> 00:52:00,980 What we're digging up or coming up with, 674 00:52:01,118 --> 00:52:02,551 it's part of our history. 675 00:52:02,686 --> 00:52:04,449 And the men that lived here 676 00:52:04,588 --> 00:52:07,148 are some of the greatest men we've ever had. 677 00:52:07,290 --> 00:52:10,054 And it's a fact that we're getting to know more and more and more 678 00:52:10,193 --> 00:52:11,660 about the life of these people 679 00:52:11,795 --> 00:52:13,422 more than I ever thought was possible. 680 00:52:13,563 --> 00:52:15,758 I think if somebody had asked me as a graduate student whether 681 00:52:15,899 --> 00:52:16,991 we would know what we know today 682 00:52:17,134 --> 00:52:18,362 about the Maya at Copan, 683 00:52:18,502 --> 00:52:20,470 there's no way I would have believed him 684 00:52:23,373 --> 00:52:25,466 What is happening now 685 00:52:25,609 --> 00:52:27,668 is the people who made these places 686 00:52:27,811 --> 00:52:31,212 people like Yax Pak or Bird Jaguar or Pacal 687 00:52:31,348 --> 00:52:32,872 are getting back their voices 688 00:52:33,016 --> 00:52:34,677 They are becoming real to us 689 00:52:34,818 --> 00:52:37,719 and speaking to the people of the 20th century 690 00:52:37,854 --> 00:52:40,550 about who built this place and why, 691 00:52:40,690 --> 00:52:41,987 and what they felt, 692 00:52:42,125 --> 00:52:44,025 and what they thought about the world. 693 00:52:44,161 --> 00:52:48,291 These are not anonymous people any more.