1 00:00:10,143 --> 00:00:11,075 Code of Maya Kings 2 00:00:18,118 --> 00:00:21,884 They would tantalize explorers for hundreds of years, 3 00:00:25,392 --> 00:00:30,329 ruined cities lost in the jungles of Central America and Mexico. 4 00:00:32,899 --> 00:00:35,868 Inscrutable faces etched in stone. 5 00:00:40,774 --> 00:00:42,571 Mysterious writing. 6 00:00:48,014 --> 00:00:50,710 Who had left these messages from the past? 7 00:00:52,986 --> 00:00:58,253 It would take more than a century to unlock the secrets of the ancient Maya. 8 00:01:01,828 --> 00:01:04,422 Two extraordinary people would lead the way. 9 00:01:08,935 --> 00:01:10,732 Separated by 100 years, 10 00:01:11,271 --> 00:01:15,503 they would unveil one of the greatest mysteries of archeology. 11 00:01:51,177 --> 00:01:55,705 Code of Maya Kings 12 00:02:01,221 --> 00:02:04,816 Chichen ltza, Mexico 1842. 13 00:02:08,795 --> 00:02:11,730 An American lawyer named John Lloyd Stephens 14 00:02:11,898 --> 00:02:15,857 wanders the empty ruins looking for clues. 15 00:02:18,705 --> 00:02:21,640 He knows what he wants to find. 16 00:02:25,478 --> 00:02:29,073 It has kept him going through two harrowing journeys, 17 00:02:31,251 --> 00:02:34,812 exploring the desolate jungles of Central America. 18 00:02:40,860 --> 00:02:44,193 Kept him pushing on through mud and malaria, 19 00:02:44,430 --> 00:02:50,960 poisonous snakes, and insect-plagued nights under the stars. 20 00:02:57,076 --> 00:02:59,772 Stephens, the lawyer, was looking for proof, 21 00:03:01,881 --> 00:03:05,977 undeniable evidence that these ruins were not built by the Egyptians 22 00:03:06,186 --> 00:03:09,622 or the Phoenicians or the Lost Tribes of Israel. 23 00:03:13,293 --> 00:03:18,390 And here at Chichen ltza he thinks that he's found it at least. 24 00:03:20,066 --> 00:03:24,162 Writing unlike that of any other civilization he knows. 25 00:03:25,305 --> 00:03:30,766 The same writing he'd seen at other ruined cities hundred of miles away. 26 00:03:34,380 --> 00:03:37,816 Proof of an ancient empire of Native Americans 27 00:03:38,051 --> 00:03:41,509 more sophisticated than anyone believed possible. 28 00:03:49,295 --> 00:03:52,628 Stephens himself was a product of the New World. 29 00:03:54,000 --> 00:03:58,903 He was born in 1805, the son of a wealthy New York merchant. 30 00:04:02,108 --> 00:04:04,838 The city wasn't much more than a Dutch village, 31 00:04:05,178 --> 00:04:07,772 but it was the hub of a new nation. 32 00:04:08,715 --> 00:04:11,650 Stephens grew up along the Hudson River 33 00:04:11,884 --> 00:04:14,682 watching the ships come in from around the world. 34 00:04:17,757 --> 00:04:21,693 After reading law, he opened a practice on Wall Street. 35 00:04:24,197 --> 00:04:26,062 Soon he got into politics, 36 00:04:26,132 --> 00:04:29,693 campaigning vigorously for Andrew Jackson for President. 37 00:04:31,337 --> 00:04:36,172 But months of shouting to the crowds gave him a serious throat infection. 38 00:04:38,611 --> 00:04:42,513 His doctor prescribed a common remedy for wealthy young men- 39 00:04:43,182 --> 00:04:45,446 a grand tour of Europe. 40 00:04:48,488 --> 00:04:52,982 The ancient ruins of Italy and Greece only piqued his curiosity. 41 00:04:54,794 --> 00:04:57,092 Stephens went on to Egypt, 42 00:04:57,330 --> 00:04:59,890 and spent three months floating up the Nile, 43 00:05:00,133 --> 00:05:03,227 visiting the temples and monuments along the way. 44 00:05:09,742 --> 00:05:13,644 Only a decade before a Frenchman had deciphered the hieroglyphs, 45 00:05:13,880 --> 00:05:18,510 revealing the rich history of Egypt's kings and queens. 46 00:05:22,989 --> 00:05:27,221 Stephens was fascinated, and he still wasn't ready to go home. 47 00:05:30,129 --> 00:05:33,860 He'd seen pictures of a fantastic ancient city in Arabia, 48 00:05:34,100 --> 00:05:37,092 lost for century to all but the Bedouins. 49 00:05:43,209 --> 00:05:47,612 Everyone told him the journey was too perilous for an unaccompanied American, 50 00:05:50,883 --> 00:05:54,785 so Stephens disguised himself as a Turkish merchant 51 00:05:55,021 --> 00:05:57,751 and took the name Abul Hassis. 52 00:06:02,528 --> 00:06:05,292 In 1836, John Lloyd Stephens 53 00:06:05,531 --> 00:06:09,023 was the first American to set eyes on the ruins of Petra. 54 00:06:12,739 --> 00:06:16,675 In Roman times it had been one of the greatest cities of the East. 55 00:06:19,345 --> 00:06:22,371 Stephens still found it dazzling: 56 00:06:23,082 --> 00:06:25,744 "A temple delicate and limpid, 57 00:06:25,985 --> 00:06:29,785 carved like a cameo from a solid mountain wall, 58 00:06:30,022 --> 00:06:32,718 the first view of that superb facade 59 00:06:32,959 --> 00:06:36,360 must produce an effect which will never pass away." 60 00:06:38,464 --> 00:06:41,729 Stephens letters home were so vivid and imaginative, 61 00:06:41,968 --> 00:06:44,095 they were published in a monthly magazine. 62 00:06:46,572 --> 00:06:51,600 Soon, he was writing books recounting his exotic adventures around the world. 63 00:06:53,880 --> 00:06:56,974 The lawyer had become a literary sensation. 64 00:06:58,050 --> 00:07:01,713 He was a seasoned observer, he was an incredible observer. 65 00:07:01,988 --> 00:07:06,925 In fact, Herman Melville of Moby Dick fame, recalled one time 66 00:07:07,160 --> 00:07:11,096 when he was in church, Herman Melville was, he was a kid. 67 00:07:11,330 --> 00:07:14,663 He heard that Stephens was in the front row. 68 00:07:14,901 --> 00:07:17,699 And when Stephens left, Melville writes, 69 00:07:17,937 --> 00:07:22,704 "I thought this man must have great huge eyes that bulged through his head, 70 00:07:22,942 --> 00:07:26,139 he was such a good observer," because Melville had read his stuff. 71 00:07:30,750 --> 00:07:33,981 Back in New York the life of a sedentary lawyer 72 00:07:34,220 --> 00:07:36,711 no longer held any charm for Stephens. 73 00:07:37,056 --> 00:07:40,890 Instead, his mind was filled with thoughts of another journey, 74 00:07:41,527 --> 00:07:45,463 not so far away, but even more remote and daring. 75 00:07:50,236 --> 00:07:51,726 On his way home through London, 76 00:07:51,938 --> 00:07:54,168 he met an artist named rederick Catherwood 77 00:07:54,373 --> 00:07:57,035 who'd spent ten years in the Near East. 78 00:07:57,844 --> 00:08:01,405 They shared their interest in exotic travel. 79 00:08:01,647 --> 00:08:05,606 Sensing a kindred spirit, Catherwood had showed him a curious book 80 00:08:05,852 --> 00:08:09,379 about a lost city in Central America hidden in the jungle. 81 00:08:10,256 --> 00:08:13,748 The book's authors thought the fabulous ruins of Palenque 82 00:08:13,993 --> 00:08:15,585 had been built by Egyptians, 83 00:08:15,828 --> 00:08:20,128 Carthaginians, maybe even the Lost Tribes of Israel. 84 00:08:20,399 --> 00:08:23,197 Anyone but the Native Americans. 85 00:08:23,703 --> 00:08:26,604 There was sort of a racism in here that said that 86 00:08:26,839 --> 00:08:30,002 everything great had come through the Greeks, the Egyptians, 87 00:08:30,243 --> 00:08:31,767 through the European tradition. 88 00:08:32,011 --> 00:08:35,811 And anything different appeared relatively 89 00:08:36,048 --> 00:08:38,915 to be a bunch of naked savages wandering through the woods. 90 00:08:41,821 --> 00:08:45,518 In 1839, no one believed the Native Americans 91 00:08:45,758 --> 00:08:48,818 capable of building a sophisticated civilization. 92 00:08:51,531 --> 00:08:54,830 Stephens' own government had little use for them. 93 00:08:55,368 --> 00:08:59,168 Only a year earlier they had uprooted thousands of Indians, 94 00:08:59,405 --> 00:09:03,068 sending them westward along the infamous Trail of Tears. 95 00:09:08,014 --> 00:09:11,450 The thought of a great ancient civilization in Central America 96 00:09:11,684 --> 00:09:14,278 seemed even more preposterous. 97 00:09:15,121 --> 00:09:19,285 A few travelers had reported sighting ruined cities like Palenque, 98 00:09:19,525 --> 00:09:22,016 but Stephens could find none of them on the map. 99 00:09:26,866 --> 00:09:30,802 It was a travel writer's dream, but only this time 100 00:09:31,037 --> 00:09:34,302 he would have to bring back evidence of whatever he found. 101 00:09:36,509 --> 00:09:39,569 But who better to accompany him than the artist Frederick Catherwood, 102 00:09:39,812 --> 00:09:41,871 now practicing architecture in New York? 103 00:09:50,656 --> 00:09:53,181 Only one small problem remained, 104 00:09:53,426 --> 00:09:56,054 the newly formed Central American Federation 105 00:09:56,295 --> 00:09:58,763 was fighting a bitter civil war. 106 00:09:59,365 --> 00:10:00,889 Using his political connections, 107 00:10:01,133 --> 00:10:05,399 Stephens secured a post as a Confidential Agent. 108 00:10:07,640 --> 00:10:12,077 He figured his diplomatic coat would protect him in dangerous territory. 109 00:10:24,991 --> 00:10:26,982 So in October 1839, 110 00:10:27,226 --> 00:10:30,992 Catherwood bid farewell to his wife and two young boys, 111 00:10:31,230 --> 00:10:35,724 and now they were here, deep in the jungles of Central America. 112 00:10:42,274 --> 00:10:45,471 The ruins of Copan was their first goals. 113 00:10:46,812 --> 00:10:49,303 But when they found the little village of the same name, 114 00:10:49,548 --> 00:10:52,483 no one there had ever head of nearby ruins. 115 00:10:54,086 --> 00:10:57,419 Finally, a knowledgeable Indian offered to guide them. 116 00:11:03,529 --> 00:11:05,087 But that was hours ago. 117 00:11:06,165 --> 00:11:10,397 Now they were beginning to think that the ruins were nothing but a legend. 118 00:11:18,110 --> 00:11:24,515 When suddenly, there they were, grander than their wildest dreams, 119 00:11:24,750 --> 00:11:26,615 the Ruins of Copan. 120 00:11:45,104 --> 00:11:48,505 Pyramids rose majestically out of the jungle. 121 00:11:50,776 --> 00:11:55,577 Great stone faces peered at them from intricately carved monuments, 122 00:11:55,815 --> 00:11:57,908 twice the size of a man. 123 00:12:02,054 --> 00:12:05,024 Stephens noticed hieroglyphs and judged them 124 00:12:05,024 --> 00:12:08,255 to be as fine as any he'd seen in Egypt, 125 00:12:09,095 --> 00:12:13,191 yet his experience told him that these carvings were unique. 126 00:12:17,436 --> 00:12:21,668 The silence of the once majestic city overwhelmed him: 127 00:12:23,676 --> 00:12:28,545 Copan lay before us like a shattered bark in the midst of the ocean, 128 00:12:28,781 --> 00:12:35,482 her masts gone, her crew perished, and none to tell whence she came. 129 00:12:35,788 --> 00:12:37,255 I think the description of Copan 130 00:12:37,490 --> 00:12:41,824 is the single most poetic description of a place he visits, 131 00:12:42,061 --> 00:12:46,828 for it is though he is walking around inside the Titanic, 132 00:12:47,066 --> 00:12:50,263 and he's looking at the shipwreck of a civilization. 133 00:12:52,772 --> 00:12:54,865 He walks from monument to monument. 134 00:12:55,107 --> 00:12:58,338 It is through he's looking into the faces of those 135 00:12:58,577 --> 00:13:02,377 who have recently been ruling this place: 136 00:13:03,048 --> 00:13:07,542 America, say historians, was peopled by savages. 137 00:13:07,987 --> 00:13:11,479 But savages never reared these structures, 138 00:13:11,724 --> 00:13:14,989 savages never carved these stones, 139 00:13:15,227 --> 00:13:20,893 architecture, sculpture and painting, all the arts which embellish life, 140 00:13:21,133 --> 00:13:24,102 had flourished in this overgrown forest, 141 00:13:24,336 --> 00:13:27,134 and yet none knew that such things had been, 142 00:13:27,373 --> 00:13:30,570 or could tell of their past existence. 143 00:13:31,310 --> 00:13:33,301 He's the first who is really able to say, 144 00:13:33,546 --> 00:13:34,877 Look at these stone figures; 145 00:13:35,114 --> 00:13:37,810 these must be portraits of their kings and queens. 146 00:13:38,050 --> 00:13:41,144 And he uses the word queen which is really quite astonishing, 147 00:13:41,387 --> 00:13:46,450 in seeing men and women in the monuments, for 100 years later, 148 00:13:46,692 --> 00:13:49,820 all the men and women that Stephens saw will have been reduced 149 00:13:50,062 --> 00:13:56,160 by 20th century archeologists to a group of anonymous calendar priests. 150 00:13:56,702 --> 00:14:00,570 Stephens has this kind of Yankee can-do observation. 151 00:14:00,806 --> 00:14:02,899 The best part of many of Stephens' insights is that 152 00:14:03,142 --> 00:14:05,372 they prove to be absolutely true. 153 00:14:09,014 --> 00:14:13,508 Yet Stephens was deeply puzzled by the mystery at the heart of Copan. 154 00:14:13,819 --> 00:14:16,447 Who could have built this extraordinary city? 155 00:14:18,757 --> 00:14:20,691 The local Indians didn't seem to know. 156 00:14:22,528 --> 00:14:25,088 Stephens needed their help to explore the ruins, 157 00:14:25,331 --> 00:14:27,959 but the owner of the land interfered. 158 00:14:32,438 --> 00:14:36,101 Finally, it seemed that the only solution was to buy Copan. 159 00:14:36,809 --> 00:14:39,437 So the lawyer put on his diplomatic coat, 160 00:14:39,678 --> 00:14:41,942 and went to the village to negotiate. 161 00:14:43,082 --> 00:14:47,178 You are perhaps curious to know how old ruins sell in Central America. 162 00:14:47,419 --> 00:14:49,751 I paid $50 for Copan. 163 00:14:49,989 --> 00:14:52,787 There was never any difficulty about price. 164 00:14:53,025 --> 00:14:57,655 I offered that sum, for which Don Jose Maria thought me only a fool. 165 00:14:57,897 --> 00:14:59,023 If I had offered more, 166 00:14:59,265 --> 00:15:02,496 he would probably have considered me something worse. 167 00:15:07,773 --> 00:15:11,607 Ownership settled, the team set about surveying the ruined city, 168 00:15:11,844 --> 00:15:14,244 measuring and mapping its buildings. 169 00:15:18,484 --> 00:15:21,146 Catherwood is a remarkable character as well. 170 00:15:21,387 --> 00:15:23,617 I wish we knew more about him. 171 00:15:23,956 --> 00:15:26,720 One gains some sense of the Stephens personality, 172 00:15:26,959 --> 00:15:28,483 just from the written word. 173 00:15:28,727 --> 00:15:31,662 The Catherwood personality doesn't emerge much. 174 00:15:31,897 --> 00:15:36,095 Stephens treats him very formally, and he appears as Mr. Catherwood. 175 00:15:39,071 --> 00:15:43,838 At first Mr. Catherwood found it almost impossible to draw the monuments. 176 00:15:44,944 --> 00:15:49,972 Their tropical luxuriance defied his restrained British hand. 177 00:15:51,517 --> 00:15:54,611 Stephens mentions coming upon him in the woods one day. 178 00:15:54,853 --> 00:15:57,617 Catherwood is standing in front of a big upright monument. 179 00:15:57,856 --> 00:16:02,486 It is a statute of one of the Copan rulers, and all intricately carved. 180 00:16:02,795 --> 00:16:06,925 Catherwood's standing there almost obscured by a pile of crumpled paper, 181 00:16:07,166 --> 00:16:09,134 which represents the output so far 182 00:16:09,201 --> 00:16:13,604 that day of unsuccessful attempts to draw this thing. 183 00:16:16,442 --> 00:16:20,572 Fortunately, Catherwood had brought along a camera lucida a box 184 00:16:20,646 --> 00:16:25,049 with a prism inside which allowed him to trace a reflected image. 185 00:16:27,920 --> 00:16:30,252 To please the perfectionist Mr. Catherwood, 186 00:16:30,489 --> 00:16:32,582 every detail had to be correct. 187 00:16:48,207 --> 00:16:50,368 With the coming of Spring, they were ready to begin 188 00:16:50,542 --> 00:16:54,069 the search for the next great goal, Palenque. 189 00:16:56,815 --> 00:16:58,510 The territory to the north, 190 00:16:58,684 --> 00:17:02,711 through the Sierra Madras Mountains, was wild and uncharted. 191 00:17:14,099 --> 00:17:18,934 As one local said, the road to Palenque were only for birds. 192 00:17:22,374 --> 00:17:26,071 Snakes and clouds of mosquitoes dogged their steps. 193 00:17:30,582 --> 00:17:32,573 To Stephens the worst part was 194 00:17:32,684 --> 00:17:37,417 the local custom of carry a visitor up the steepest trail on a chair, 195 00:17:37,589 --> 00:17:39,750 strapped to the back of an Indian. 196 00:17:40,826 --> 00:17:46,093 I rose and fell with every breath, felt his body trembling under me, 197 00:17:46,331 --> 00:17:48,799 and his knees seemed giving way. 198 00:17:49,034 --> 00:17:53,368 The slightest irregular movement on my part may bring us both down together. 199 00:17:53,605 --> 00:17:54,902 I would have given him a release 200 00:17:55,140 --> 00:17:57,665 for the rest of the journey to be off his back. 201 00:18:21,233 --> 00:18:23,224 On and on they traveled. 202 00:18:31,944 --> 00:18:34,845 It took more than a month to reach the fabled ruins 203 00:18:35,080 --> 00:18:37,605 that had first inspired their journey. 204 00:18:46,725 --> 00:18:50,752 Palenque seemed to hang on the edge of the mountains. 205 00:18:51,930 --> 00:18:56,196 It's graceful buildings dominating the plain below. 206 00:18:58,604 --> 00:19:03,132 Wherever we moved, we saw the evidence of their tastes, 207 00:19:03,375 --> 00:19:07,334 their skills in arts, their wealth and power. 208 00:19:07,546 --> 00:19:12,210 In the midst of desolation and ruin, we looked back to the past, 209 00:19:12,417 --> 00:19:14,385 cleared away the gloomy forest 210 00:19:14,620 --> 00:19:20,081 and fancied every building perfect, lofty and imposing. 211 00:19:24,229 --> 00:19:27,255 Palenque's architecture was different from Copan's, 212 00:19:29,067 --> 00:19:34,733 but Stephens noticed many similarities, particularly the mysterious writings. 213 00:19:36,942 --> 00:19:42,107 Examining it carefully, he reached a remarkable conclusion: 214 00:19:43,549 --> 00:19:47,315 There is room for the belief that the whole of this country 215 00:19:47,553 --> 00:19:51,614 was once occupied by the same race, speaking the same language, 216 00:19:51,857 --> 00:19:54,792 or at least having the same written characters. 217 00:20:00,032 --> 00:20:03,934 The Indians Stephens met spoke many languages 218 00:20:04,736 --> 00:20:07,967 and were as mystified by the ruins as he was. 219 00:20:08,941 --> 00:20:13,776 Yet, intuitively, Stephens seemed to sense a link between them. 220 00:20:16,181 --> 00:20:20,015 Stephens, I think, is the first person who can make the connection 221 00:20:20,185 --> 00:20:26,146 between the Indians that he sees and meets and the ancient ruins. 222 00:20:27,859 --> 00:20:31,124 Whereas other people want to say, oh, these pathetic peasants, 223 00:20:31,363 --> 00:20:34,491 these miserable Indians, they could never have built this. 224 00:20:34,733 --> 00:20:36,860 We must look for some alternative solution 225 00:20:37,102 --> 00:20:39,366 to where these things would have come from. 226 00:20:39,605 --> 00:20:42,199 He believes that here is complete continuity. 227 00:20:42,441 --> 00:20:46,775 And that, I think, is one of the most radical ideas to come out of his book. 228 00:20:51,483 --> 00:20:55,180 At night, Stephens and Catherwood slept in the imposing ruin 229 00:20:55,420 --> 00:20:57,081 they called The Palace. 230 00:20:59,891 --> 00:21:03,418 The rainy season had begun, and the mosquitoes, 231 00:21:03,662 --> 00:21:06,722 venomous during the day, were even worse at night. 232 00:21:09,534 --> 00:21:13,061 Catherwood was already racked with malaria, 233 00:21:15,240 --> 00:21:17,572 but somehow they kept on working, 234 00:21:21,079 --> 00:21:27,018 for 22 days and sleepless nights, bewitched by the beauty of Palenque. 235 00:21:39,131 --> 00:21:43,534 Exhausted, they pushed on, further north and east to the Yucatan, 236 00:21:45,037 --> 00:21:48,370 but Catherwood was too ill to continue. 237 00:21:51,476 --> 00:21:55,207 Vowing to return, they headed home to New York. 238 00:21:56,348 --> 00:22:01,149 In 10 months the two explorers had accomplished the impossible. 239 00:22:02,354 --> 00:22:06,586 They had rediscovered an ancient American civilization grander 240 00:22:06,792 --> 00:22:08,453 than anyone had ever dreamed. 241 00:22:08,660 --> 00:22:12,391 Now they were ready to astound the world with its story. 242 00:22:16,368 --> 00:22:21,931 Stephens's books was incredible popular when it appeared in the summer of 1841, 243 00:22:22,174 --> 00:22:23,869 Incidents of Travel in Central America, 244 00:22:24,109 --> 00:22:25,474 Chiapas, and Yucatan. 245 00:22:25,711 --> 00:22:29,340 Harper and Brothers had printed up a goodly print run, 246 00:22:29,414 --> 00:22:31,143 and it sold out pretty quickly. 247 00:22:34,619 --> 00:22:36,678 Stephens writes a real page-turner. 248 00:22:36,922 --> 00:22:38,913 It is such a personal view, 249 00:22:40,025 --> 00:22:44,655 and it becomes one of the great bestsellers of the entire 19th century. 250 00:22:44,896 --> 00:22:47,387 It goes through dozens of editions. 251 00:22:47,632 --> 00:22:50,302 And there is an enormous American 252 00:22:50,302 --> 00:22:53,965 desire to know more about this part of the world. 253 00:22:55,107 --> 00:22:57,701 They were lionized after the publication. 254 00:22:57,943 --> 00:22:59,740 They were quite the thing in New York. 255 00:22:59,978 --> 00:23:03,675 It was reviewed everywhere. 256 00:23:03,915 --> 00:23:07,612 Just an amazing publication epic, 257 00:23:07,786 --> 00:23:11,586 so the trip was a success and they planned to go again. 258 00:23:17,396 --> 00:23:19,660 Seventeen month after they'd left Mexico, 259 00:23:19,898 --> 00:23:22,492 Stephens and Catherwood were back in the Yucatan, 260 00:23:22,734 --> 00:23:24,429 exploring the city of Uxmal. 261 00:23:28,373 --> 00:23:29,897 On this second journey, 262 00:23:30,142 --> 00:23:34,442 they concentrated their efforts on this one region of Mexico. 263 00:23:36,381 --> 00:23:40,647 Inching their way through the jungle, they discovered many ruined cities 264 00:23:40,886 --> 00:23:46,620 entirely unknown, with names like Coba, Labna, and Sayil. 265 00:23:48,160 --> 00:23:50,685 Stephens felt they were racing against time. 266 00:23:50,796 --> 00:23:55,199 Everywhere they went, they found ruins collapsing into piles of rubble. 267 00:23:58,236 --> 00:24:02,570 Catherwood even learned how to sketch from his mule to save time. 268 00:24:06,411 --> 00:24:11,713 At Uxmal, the artist drew the face of a god on the side of a pyramid. 269 00:24:11,850 --> 00:24:15,377 Years later, it was destroyed. 270 00:24:15,620 --> 00:24:18,748 Catherwood's illustration is our only record of it. 271 00:24:20,025 --> 00:24:22,118 They performed the greatest service, 272 00:24:22,360 --> 00:24:25,921 perhaps, in freezing in time a set of observations 273 00:24:26,164 --> 00:24:29,622 and images of a land that no longer exists. 274 00:24:35,674 --> 00:24:37,642 They're romantic pictures, 275 00:24:37,809 --> 00:24:41,176 yet at the same time they're remarkably accurate. 276 00:24:42,514 --> 00:24:46,746 Many of Catherwood's renderings, for examples, of the Maya at Uxmal 277 00:24:46,918 --> 00:24:49,887 and Magna and other sites are the first depictions 278 00:24:50,121 --> 00:24:52,180 that we have of what Mayan people looked like. 279 00:24:55,293 --> 00:24:57,887 We had no earlier record. 280 00:25:01,066 --> 00:25:03,330 In the town of Balankanche, 281 00:25:03,602 --> 00:25:07,402 the explorers visited an ancient well deep underground. 282 00:25:08,139 --> 00:25:10,300 Catherwood was so inspired, 283 00:25:10,575 --> 00:25:13,544 he began his memorable sketch at the foot of the ladder. 284 00:25:14,913 --> 00:25:17,643 It was the wildest setting that could be conceived, 285 00:25:17,849 --> 00:25:22,377 men struggling up a huge ladder with earthen jars of water 286 00:25:22,487 --> 00:25:23,977 strapped to back and head, 287 00:25:24,055 --> 00:25:27,456 their sweating bodies glistening under the light of the pine torches. 288 00:25:32,063 --> 00:25:36,864 One of the last places they explored was Chichen ltza. 289 00:25:43,775 --> 00:25:47,973 Its architecture moved them more than any other city on this second journey. 290 00:25:52,617 --> 00:25:57,145 Most exciting of all was the revelation that this city had been linked 291 00:25:57,322 --> 00:26:01,224 to Copan and Palenque hundred of miles away. 292 00:26:03,028 --> 00:26:05,360 It was the first time in Yucatan 293 00:26:05,630 --> 00:26:08,030 that we had found hieroglyphics sculptured on stone 294 00:26:08,266 --> 00:26:10,359 which beyond all question bore the same type 295 00:26:10,602 --> 00:26:12,502 with those at Copan and Palenque. 296 00:26:12,837 --> 00:26:15,931 If one but could read it. 297 00:26:20,879 --> 00:26:24,406 Finally, Stephens felt he had the proof he'd been looking for. 298 00:26:26,952 --> 00:26:31,685 The mysterious writing was unique, unlike any he'd ever seen. 299 00:26:34,893 --> 00:26:37,726 Now he could convince the skeptics 300 00:26:37,963 --> 00:26:41,091 that the ruined cities had been built by Native Americans. 301 00:26:42,467 --> 00:26:46,699 These ruins are different than the works of any other known people. 302 00:26:46,905 --> 00:26:51,706 Of a new order, they stand alone. 303 00:26:58,583 --> 00:27:00,813 In the nine months of their second journey, 304 00:27:01,086 --> 00:27:05,420 Stephens and Catherwood managed to visit 44 ruined cities. 305 00:27:08,360 --> 00:27:12,057 And gather some treasures for an exhibit on their return. 306 00:27:15,634 --> 00:27:18,933 But they paid a heavy price for their adventures. 307 00:27:19,571 --> 00:27:23,302 Malaria would haunt both men for the rest of their lives. 308 00:27:27,812 --> 00:27:32,078 John Lloyd Stephens would fight the dread disease for ten years 309 00:27:32,283 --> 00:27:35,411 before succumbing to it in 1852. 310 00:27:39,624 --> 00:27:42,218 Frederick Catherwood would die tragically 311 00:27:42,394 --> 00:27:44,419 a few years later in a shipwreck. 312 00:27:48,333 --> 00:27:50,927 This is the only image we have of him. 313 00:27:56,441 --> 00:27:59,239 For there was another sad chapter to their story. 314 00:27:59,411 --> 00:28:04,940 The fate of the great exhibition they held on their return to New York. 315 00:28:06,751 --> 00:28:10,881 This fire started one night in July of 1842, 316 00:28:11,189 --> 00:28:16,718 and literally overnight it wiped out the physical originals- 317 00:28:16,961 --> 00:28:20,260 The drawings, some of the archeological stuff, 318 00:28:20,532 --> 00:28:24,832 the limestone carvings they had brought back at great labor. 319 00:28:25,203 --> 00:28:27,171 Thank goodness for the books. 320 00:28:27,639 --> 00:28:29,664 And I thank the Fates everyday 321 00:28:29,841 --> 00:28:32,969 that somebody at Harper and Brothers Publishers in New York 322 00:28:33,144 --> 00:28:36,011 had the foresight to heavily illustrate the book, 323 00:28:36,214 --> 00:28:39,911 because what a shame if the drawings had been lost. 324 00:28:43,822 --> 00:28:45,187 Fortunately, before he died, 325 00:28:45,890 --> 00:28:49,257 Catherwood issued exquisite folios of some of the drawings. 326 00:28:50,128 --> 00:28:53,723 They inspired generations of explores to follow the intrepid pair 327 00:28:53,998 --> 00:28:55,829 to the land of the Maya. 328 00:28:59,471 --> 00:29:02,167 But Stephens' insights would have a different fate. 329 00:29:05,276 --> 00:29:08,939 His greatest intuition-that the Maya had written the real stories 330 00:29:09,314 --> 00:29:13,045 of their lives on the monuments- would be ignored. 331 00:29:15,687 --> 00:29:17,211 The legions of archeologists 332 00:29:17,455 --> 00:29:20,652 who came after him were able to decipher some of the glyphs, 333 00:29:21,960 --> 00:29:25,521 but only those that spoke of numbers, dates and the stars. 334 00:29:33,171 --> 00:29:37,267 Carried away by the discovery that the ancient Maya were great astronomers, 335 00:29:37,742 --> 00:29:40,609 archeologists fashioned a picture of them as peaceful stargazers, 336 00:29:40,912 --> 00:29:43,403 obsessed with calendars and time. 337 00:29:50,688 --> 00:29:53,555 When John Lloyd Stephens had looked at the monuments, 338 00:29:53,691 --> 00:29:56,353 he had seen real kings and queens. 339 00:29:59,197 --> 00:30:00,824 One hundred years later, 340 00:30:00,865 --> 00:30:05,325 archeologists saw only the calculations of anonymous timekeepers. 341 00:30:11,142 --> 00:30:15,545 It would take a fresh set of eyes to finally unravel the secrets of Maya 342 00:30:15,713 --> 00:30:19,080 carvings and prove that Stephens was right. 343 00:30:24,255 --> 00:30:27,224 The story of Tatiana Proskouriakoff is not well known 344 00:30:27,358 --> 00:30:30,794 outside the realm of Maya studies. 345 00:30:32,130 --> 00:30:34,598 Yet, in that field she is a giant, 346 00:30:34,799 --> 00:30:37,666 a woman in a man's world who saw further 347 00:30:37,802 --> 00:30:40,100 and deeper than her more famous contemporaries. 348 00:30:45,643 --> 00:30:48,305 What we know of the ancient Maya today, 349 00:30:48,513 --> 00:30:52,108 the exciting revelations emerging from dozens of excavations 350 00:30:52,217 --> 00:30:53,809 is built on her work. 351 00:30:57,255 --> 00:31:02,318 Speaking of Copan, she was the first to describe its ruins as a puzzle. 352 00:31:03,261 --> 00:31:06,560 She was the one who supplied the missing piece. 353 00:31:11,236 --> 00:31:13,966 Tatiana, or Tanya, as her friends called her, 354 00:31:14,172 --> 00:31:17,664 was born in Tomsk, Siberia in 1909. 355 00:31:20,845 --> 00:31:24,246 Her mother, the daughter of a prominent general, was a physician. 356 00:31:24,482 --> 00:31:25,972 Her father, a chemist. 357 00:31:32,123 --> 00:31:34,921 World War I shattered their peaceful existence. 358 00:31:38,196 --> 00:31:41,859 In 1915, Tanya's father was sent to the United States 359 00:31:42,000 --> 00:31:44,594 to supervise arms manufacturing for the czar. 360 00:31:47,138 --> 00:31:49,299 With the coming of the Russian Revolution, 361 00:31:49,574 --> 00:31:53,635 the family was trapped and began a new life in suburban Philadelphia. 362 00:31:57,782 --> 00:31:59,909 At work on the first biography of Proskouriakoff, 363 00:32:00,285 --> 00:32:04,221 Char Solomon has been uncovering these early details of her life. 364 00:32:06,291 --> 00:32:08,486 Tanya's story is compelling to me 365 00:32:08,726 --> 00:32:11,752 because she was born in Russia at such a tumultuous time. 366 00:32:11,996 --> 00:32:15,090 She came to the United States. 367 00:32:15,300 --> 00:32:19,259 She acquired English as a second language, 368 00:32:19,437 --> 00:32:21,997 and mastered it in such a way that it 369 00:32:22,106 --> 00:32:25,872 became the equivalent of her first language. 370 00:32:26,077 --> 00:32:31,709 She chose a profession that was dominated by men at a time 371 00:32:31,816 --> 00:32:33,875 when many women did not choose to go that route. 372 00:32:38,222 --> 00:32:41,953 Tanya majored in architecture at Pennsylvania State University, 373 00:32:42,093 --> 00:32:44,653 one of the only women to do so in her graduating class. 374 00:32:50,735 --> 00:32:54,330 It was 1930, the height of the Great Depression. 375 00:32:57,008 --> 00:33:00,671 Tanya spent several dispiriting years looking for work, 376 00:33:00,945 --> 00:33:04,437 then settled for a job making drawings for a needlepoint shop. 377 00:33:07,719 --> 00:33:11,086 The search for good subjects led her to the Archeological Museum 378 00:33:11,155 --> 00:33:13,248 at the University of Pennsylvania. 379 00:33:17,028 --> 00:33:21,021 Tanya's skillful drawings attracted the attention of Linton Satterwaite, 380 00:33:21,299 --> 00:33:24,234 an archeologist looking for an artist to work at his dig, 381 00:33:24,435 --> 00:33:26,562 deep in the jungles of Guatemala. 382 00:33:28,973 --> 00:33:31,999 The ruined City of Peidras Negras was a big jump 383 00:33:32,110 --> 00:33:34,044 from her close-knit Russian family, 384 00:33:34,312 --> 00:33:36,974 but Tanya was ready for an adventure. 385 00:33:46,224 --> 00:33:50,684 The small party set off for Guatemala in the winter of 1936. 386 00:33:57,101 --> 00:33:59,968 On their way, they stopped at Palenque, 387 00:34:00,238 --> 00:34:02,468 the graceful ruined city that had captivated 388 00:34:02,740 --> 00:34:07,006 the explorers Stephens and Catherwood almost 100 years before. 389 00:34:09,313 --> 00:34:11,440 Tanya was equally entranced. 390 00:34:13,384 --> 00:34:16,945 She, in older years, said that 391 00:34:17,121 --> 00:34:21,285 when she first saw the elegant little Temple of the Sun, 392 00:34:21,492 --> 00:34:24,325 she knew she had found her vocation, 393 00:34:24,495 --> 00:34:30,525 that there would never be anything else that would get her as much as that. 394 00:34:33,538 --> 00:34:37,975 Tanya's pencil responded easily to the intricacies of Maya art. 395 00:34:42,680 --> 00:34:47,208 The young Russian American had felt the pulse of an ancient mystery. 396 00:34:51,255 --> 00:34:54,122 But settling in the Peidras Negras wasn't easy. 397 00:34:56,427 --> 00:35:00,955 Tanya had to learn how to survey and draw the dilapidated ruins. 398 00:35:04,102 --> 00:35:07,799 As an outsider, as a woman who had learned a profession 399 00:35:07,972 --> 00:35:13,968 and trying to find a way into it, I'm sure she was clearly little Tanya, 400 00:35:14,178 --> 00:35:17,306 allowed to sit there with her drafting pen 401 00:35:17,448 --> 00:35:20,542 and make observations about Peidras Negras. 402 00:35:20,751 --> 00:35:26,212 I think she had to pay for every step she took, but she really, 403 00:35:26,357 --> 00:35:30,589 I think, was someone who was able to compete effectively with the boys. 404 00:35:36,067 --> 00:35:38,535 In Mayan archeology in the 1932s, 405 00:35:39,003 --> 00:35:41,767 'the boys' were a pretty formidable bunch. 406 00:35:43,841 --> 00:35:46,935 This was a group of people that came together, 407 00:35:47,211 --> 00:35:53,411 people from mostly lvy League, Harvard and Penn and other places. 408 00:35:53,651 --> 00:35:56,279 They were all great friends. 409 00:35:56,420 --> 00:35:59,412 They were all, as most archeologists were at the time, 410 00:35:59,724 --> 00:36:01,316 people of independent means. 411 00:36:01,492 --> 00:36:03,790 They could do what they durn well pleased. 412 00:36:06,397 --> 00:36:11,425 Even in the bush these silver-spoon archeologists managed to live well. 413 00:36:13,037 --> 00:36:16,336 At Peidras Negras, dinner was a formal occasion, 414 00:36:16,541 --> 00:36:18,133 beginning with cocktails. 415 00:36:23,714 --> 00:36:26,512 Somewhere around 5 o'clock they would dress, 416 00:36:26,784 --> 00:36:28,911 and they would dress elegantly. 417 00:36:30,354 --> 00:36:33,323 Tanya had a white dress, full-length dress, 418 00:36:33,858 --> 00:36:35,257 that she packed along with her. 419 00:36:35,459 --> 00:36:39,919 She would slough through the mud to get to the dining hut, 420 00:36:40,965 --> 00:36:45,527 and then sort of tuck the muddy bottom of her dress down behind her feet, 421 00:36:45,670 --> 00:36:47,365 so that no one would notice. 422 00:36:51,542 --> 00:36:56,172 There was a little bit of challenging banter also between Tanya and Linton. 423 00:36:56,347 --> 00:36:59,805 He had suggested that one of the structures 424 00:37:00,151 --> 00:37:02,676 did not have a staircase going up one side, 425 00:37:02,787 --> 00:37:05,813 and she felt strong that 426 00:37:05,923 --> 00:37:08,585 there would have been and challenged him on that point. 427 00:37:08,793 --> 00:37:11,887 So he said, well, if you really believe that 428 00:37:12,096 --> 00:37:13,688 there was a staircase there, 429 00:37:13,798 --> 00:37:16,028 then you have to dig and find me the proof, which she did. 430 00:37:16,234 --> 00:37:18,566 And to her delight, she found the staircase. 431 00:37:21,772 --> 00:37:25,037 Tanya began to sketch reconstructions of the ruins 432 00:37:25,142 --> 00:37:27,201 based on the archeological data. 433 00:37:30,481 --> 00:37:32,142 Her drawings were so impressive, 434 00:37:32,283 --> 00:37:35,480 they earned her a sketching tour of other Maya cities. 435 00:37:38,856 --> 00:37:41,347 Her first stop was Copan. 436 00:37:45,696 --> 00:37:50,030 Noted Mayanist lan Graham shared an office with Tanya in her later years 437 00:37:50,134 --> 00:37:52,364 at Harvard's Peabody Museum. 438 00:37:53,104 --> 00:37:55,937 He remembers her tails of Copan in the thirties. 439 00:37:57,208 --> 00:38:05,172 Anyway, she landed, the sole female in this isolated camp. 440 00:38:09,887 --> 00:38:12,754 There were some fairly spirited characters there. 441 00:38:12,890 --> 00:38:16,792 One was an amazing man called Gus Stromsvik. 442 00:38:18,396 --> 00:38:22,264 Gustav Stromsvik, the Norwegian archeologist 443 00:38:22,733 --> 00:38:25,133 who worked for the Carnegie Institution, 444 00:38:25,336 --> 00:38:27,236 fell deeply in love with her. 445 00:38:27,471 --> 00:38:31,840 And Tanya had a period in which she tried to decide 446 00:38:31,909 --> 00:38:34,707 what this relationship was going to mean in her life. 447 00:38:34,912 --> 00:38:39,349 Stromsvik was a very dynamic personality. 448 00:38:39,483 --> 00:38:40,541 He was very outgoing. 449 00:38:40,651 --> 00:38:45,054 He was a raconteur, and she loved people who could tell good stories, 450 00:38:45,156 --> 00:38:46,646 she loved to laugh. 451 00:38:47,058 --> 00:38:48,582 So she was drawn to him. 452 00:38:48,926 --> 00:38:53,761 But on the other hand, Stromsvik had a very serious drinking problem. 453 00:39:01,405 --> 00:39:06,502 Particularly on Saturday nights, the life there was spent pretty wild. 454 00:39:09,280 --> 00:39:11,407 Tanya seemed to handle it perfectly well. 455 00:39:11,716 --> 00:39:12,614 It's amazing. 456 00:39:12,850 --> 00:39:16,809 She led such a protective life in her Russian family 457 00:39:16,954 --> 00:39:21,448 and in her suburban life in Philadelphia. 458 00:39:21,692 --> 00:39:25,719 But she had grit. 459 00:39:30,601 --> 00:39:33,468 Tanya's next stop was Chichen ltza, 460 00:39:33,704 --> 00:39:37,572 center of the Mayan world in this golden age of archeology. 461 00:39:39,009 --> 00:39:42,001 The ancient city was undergoing a renaissance, 462 00:39:42,446 --> 00:39:45,142 as archeologists from the Carnegie Institution 463 00:39:45,282 --> 00:39:46,840 pieced it back together. 464 00:39:49,820 --> 00:39:53,449 Half of rebuilding has gone hand in hand with the work of 465 00:39:53,924 --> 00:39:56,324 Welcoming the throngs of visitors was the man 466 00:39:56,527 --> 00:39:58,188 who would serve as the spokesman for the Maya 467 00:39:58,329 --> 00:40:02,231 for more than 20 years, Carnegie's Sylvanus Morley, 468 00:40:02,333 --> 00:40:06,292 known for his oversized straw hats and ebullient personality. 469 00:40:13,177 --> 00:40:14,337 At Chichen ltza, 470 00:40:14,445 --> 00:40:18,176 he lived in grand style in a Spanish colonial manor house. 471 00:40:21,685 --> 00:40:25,451 Every evening a Chinese cook would prepare dinner for Morely 472 00:40:25,523 --> 00:40:27,684 and his band of archeologists. 473 00:40:31,829 --> 00:40:34,297 Envious colleagues referred to them as the club. 474 00:40:39,970 --> 00:40:42,438 On special evenings Morley would lead his guests to the ruins 475 00:40:42,506 --> 00:40:44,872 of the Maya ball court for a concert, 476 00:40:46,911 --> 00:40:49,744 amplified by the court's amazing acoustics. 477 00:40:54,351 --> 00:40:57,218 Tanya would join the others in the moonlight in this fitting place 478 00:40:57,421 --> 00:41:01,357 to conjure the spirits of the departed Maya. 479 00:41:04,228 --> 00:41:09,427 For to the Carnegie Club, the Maya were a band of priestly stargazers, 480 00:41:10,000 --> 00:41:12,366 unlike any other people who had ever lived. 481 00:41:16,607 --> 00:41:19,075 These ancient wise men had never fought wars. 482 00:41:20,811 --> 00:41:23,803 Instead, they had spent their time inventing an elaborate calendar 483 00:41:24,381 --> 00:41:28,784 and a system of writing used for nothing but recording time. 484 00:41:33,524 --> 00:41:37,221 The author of this view of the Maya was Sir Eric Thompson, 485 00:41:38,262 --> 00:41:40,560 an acerbic Englishman whose intellect dominated Maya studies 486 00:41:40,631 --> 00:41:42,861 for nearly 50 years. 487 00:41:44,268 --> 00:41:48,034 No one, not even Morely questioned his authority. 488 00:41:50,007 --> 00:41:52,305 As Thompson began to formulate his ideas, 489 00:41:52,510 --> 00:41:54,637 no one had the strength of character to resist. 490 00:41:54,778 --> 00:41:56,245 Morely was the one who tried. 491 00:41:56,447 --> 00:41:59,439 In Morely's early works he offers a rather different picture. 492 00:41:59,884 --> 00:42:03,820 He is overwhelmed by Thompson's point of view and adopts it. 493 00:42:04,688 --> 00:42:07,555 This makes it very difficult for a new voice to find a path, 494 00:42:07,958 --> 00:42:10,950 and particularly when one can imagine that the name of Tanya 495 00:42:11,262 --> 00:42:13,321 is probably generally preceded by little. 496 00:42:16,700 --> 00:42:20,101 Thompson may have been able to cow the other members of the Carnegie Club, 497 00:42:20,504 --> 00:42:22,438 but he hadn't bargained on Tanya Proskouriakoff. 498 00:42:26,010 --> 00:42:32,347 My general sense of her is absolutely contrary in a kind of way that if you said, 499 00:42:32,516 --> 00:42:34,916 well, it looks like rain, she would say, 500 00:42:35,152 --> 00:42:36,449 ah, there's not a drop of rain in that cloud. 501 00:42:37,721 --> 00:42:40,451 She was the kind of person if you said, 502 00:42:40,591 --> 00:42:41,580 Oh, it's too warm in here, 503 00:42:41,892 --> 00:42:44,360 she would immediately go turn up the thermostat 504 00:42:44,595 --> 00:42:46,119 and make it a little warmer. 505 00:42:46,196 --> 00:42:49,097 She just had a kind of contrary personality. 506 00:42:49,266 --> 00:42:53,362 I think that helped her also then say, 507 00:42:53,604 --> 00:42:55,333 well, if you say the Maya are peaceful, 508 00:42:55,706 --> 00:42:57,936 let's look at them from another point of view. 509 00:42:59,310 --> 00:43:02,871 Bit by bit, Tanya began to ask different questions than her colleagues. 510 00:43:04,815 --> 00:43:07,340 She also started to study the living Maya, 511 00:43:07,718 --> 00:43:10,186 convinced that they had something to teach her as well. 512 00:43:14,091 --> 00:43:16,685 When she was in highlands Chiapas, 513 00:43:16,894 --> 00:43:21,228 she took some lessons learning how to weave on the hand loom 514 00:43:21,432 --> 00:43:22,956 that the Maya work with. 515 00:43:23,133 --> 00:43:27,536 At the same time, the same young woman was helping her to learn Maya. 516 00:43:27,705 --> 00:43:31,300 This is something a lot of people don't know about Tanya is that 517 00:43:31,375 --> 00:43:34,435 she did study Yucatex Maya. 518 00:43:40,517 --> 00:43:45,113 Tanya's intuition that the living Maya could provide the valuable link 519 00:43:45,889 --> 00:43:48,858 to the past was borne out by a fabulous discovery in 1946. 520 00:43:55,366 --> 00:44:00,326 An American filmmaker named Giles Healey persuaded a Maya Indian 521 00:44:00,571 --> 00:44:02,368 to show him one of their secret place. 522 00:44:03,507 --> 00:44:08,877 The Indian lead Healy to Bonampak, a lost city buried in the jungle. 523 00:44:14,451 --> 00:44:17,011 Peering into a building, Healy was astounded to find faces 524 00:44:17,087 --> 00:44:19,885 looking back at him from the walls. 525 00:44:28,232 --> 00:44:29,961 Armies were locked in a furious battle. 526 00:44:33,003 --> 00:44:36,666 Other scenes showed prisoners of war and victims of human sacrifice. 527 00:44:41,612 --> 00:44:47,209 Try as Thompson might, it was impossible to convince anyone, I think, 528 00:44:47,384 --> 00:44:56,725 that these depicted a peaceful Maya, for in the Bonampak murals 529 00:44:56,894 --> 00:44:58,589 we see one of the greatest battle paintings 530 00:44:58,762 --> 00:45:00,491 ever created in the history of humankind. 531 00:45:04,368 --> 00:45:06,268 Proskouriakoff had not been allowed 532 00:45:06,437 --> 00:45:09,372 to write a single interpretive word on the Bonampak paintings, 533 00:45:10,574 --> 00:45:13,441 but I've always wondered if it did not play some role 534 00:45:13,711 --> 00:45:16,612 in shaping how she looked at the Maya world. 535 00:45:19,850 --> 00:45:22,614 Sir Eric Thompson effectively barred the door at Bonampak, 536 00:45:23,120 --> 00:45:24,348 preventing other Mayanists from 537 00:45:24,488 --> 00:45:26,854 pursuing the bloody implications of its murals. 538 00:45:30,561 --> 00:45:33,189 Nevertheless, the flaws were beginning to show 539 00:45:33,297 --> 00:45:35,424 in his vision of the peaceful Maya. 540 00:45:41,939 --> 00:45:45,102 A few years later, another piece of the puzzle would slide into place. 541 00:45:48,545 --> 00:45:51,981 In a bookstore in Mexico, Tanya found a revolutionary new book 542 00:45:52,182 --> 00:45:54,377 by a Russian named Yuri Knorozov. 543 00:45:56,820 --> 00:45:58,481 Always interested in things Russian, 544 00:45:59,389 --> 00:46:02,950 she avidly read his new theory of Maya writing. 545 00:46:03,393 --> 00:46:06,851 Eventually, it would prove the key to deciphering the glyphs. 546 00:46:10,400 --> 00:46:13,733 But for years Sir Eric Thompson would condemn the new theory 547 00:46:13,837 --> 00:46:14,804 as Communist propaganda. 548 00:46:21,178 --> 00:46:25,706 In the late 1950s, Carnegie closed down its Mezo-America program, 549 00:46:26,416 --> 00:46:30,147 a victim of new priorities. 550 00:46:30,187 --> 00:46:32,849 But Tanya was kept on as a research 551 00:46:32,990 --> 00:46:35,049 associate with an office at Harvard's Peabody Museum. 552 00:46:40,831 --> 00:46:45,825 Her days in the field were over, but her greatest work had just begun. 553 00:46:46,069 --> 00:46:49,800 In her little apartment in Cambridge, Tanya was on to something. 554 00:46:51,408 --> 00:46:57,074 When reading through Tanya's diaries, I can see that in the 1950s 555 00:46:57,247 --> 00:47:02,241 she made a very conscious decision to become more private in her life. 556 00:47:04,555 --> 00:47:07,649 She began working much more intensively with the hieroglyphics. 557 00:47:10,794 --> 00:47:14,423 In her mind Tanya had returned to Peidras Negras, 558 00:47:16,700 --> 00:47:19,191 the site of her first experience with the Maya. 559 00:47:22,206 --> 00:47:23,867 Puzzling over the monuments, 560 00:47:24,208 --> 00:47:26,938 she noticed a peculiar pattern with the glyphs. 561 00:47:29,680 --> 00:47:33,047 Over and over, the same glyphs were linked to dates 562 00:47:34,351 --> 00:47:38,447 and on each of the monuments none of the dates exceeded a human lifespan. 563 00:47:44,862 --> 00:47:48,025 Suddenly to Tanya the evidence was clear: 564 00:47:48,498 --> 00:47:51,433 The monuments were marking the stages of an individual's life. 565 00:47:55,505 --> 00:47:58,440 Where others had seen only cold calculations, 566 00:47:58,575 --> 00:48:00,770 Tanya Proskouriakoff saw the lives of human beings. 567 00:48:06,917 --> 00:48:10,120 It was a conclusion that cut to the heart of everything 568 00:48:10,120 --> 00:48:11,644 Sir Eric Thompson believed. 569 00:48:13,657 --> 00:48:15,488 Tanya marshaled her facts, 570 00:48:15,726 --> 00:48:18,490 then showed Thompson her article before sending it to the publisher. 571 00:48:19,863 --> 00:48:23,299 And when she talked with him before he had read it, 572 00:48:23,467 --> 00:48:28,564 he disagreed strongly with what her ideas of the Maya were. 573 00:48:28,772 --> 00:48:31,673 When he took the article home and he read it, 574 00:48:32,242 --> 00:48:34,710 he came back the next day and said, well, actually, 575 00:48:34,912 --> 00:48:36,504 I believe you're right which were very big words 576 00:48:36,613 --> 00:48:42,142 from someone who was considered a giant in the field at the time. 577 00:48:42,686 --> 00:48:46,019 And from that time on, when you saw a Maya monument 578 00:48:46,223 --> 00:48:49,090 you knew that it didn't deal with gods and priests, 579 00:48:49,393 --> 00:48:51,327 it deal with human beings, and that was the importance. 580 00:48:51,361 --> 00:48:53,563 In one sense, everything that we've done since then in hypography 581 00:48:53,563 --> 00:48:55,258 and in the interpretation of the hieroglyphs 582 00:48:55,299 --> 00:48:57,426 has been a footnote to what Tanya did. 583 00:48:57,801 --> 00:48:59,564 She did the general breakthrough. 584 00:48:59,836 --> 00:49:02,600 When she and Yuri Knorozov in Russia 585 00:49:02,706 --> 00:49:06,005 came up with through hieroglyphic keys, that was it. 586 00:49:06,877 --> 00:49:09,869 We went on a roll. 587 00:49:15,719 --> 00:49:17,710 Once the code breakers went to work, 588 00:49:17,955 --> 00:49:20,515 a more human image of the Maya began to emerge. 589 00:49:21,892 --> 00:49:24,827 Written in the monuments were the stories of their lives, 590 00:49:27,464 --> 00:49:32,731 their ancestors, their battles and conquests. 591 00:49:35,839 --> 00:49:39,036 Across the centuries the Maya came alive, 592 00:49:39,810 --> 00:49:42,870 kings and queens, rulers of fabulous cities 593 00:49:45,248 --> 00:49:48,081 full of the voices of the people echoing out of the past. 594 00:49:52,889 --> 00:49:55,016 Things were changing at such a dramatic rate. 595 00:49:55,158 --> 00:49:57,524 We can read about, I would guess, 596 00:49:57,594 --> 00:50:02,088 75 or 80 percent of the inscriptions that the Maya wrote. 597 00:50:02,833 --> 00:50:08,829 Given that in 1960 we could barely read any of it, that's extraordinary. 598 00:50:11,041 --> 00:50:14,977 David Stuart began deciphering Maya glyphs when he was just a boy. 599 00:50:17,114 --> 00:50:19,275 Tanya Proskouriakoff is one of his heroes. 600 00:50:22,085 --> 00:50:24,451 He met her shortly before she died, 601 00:50:24,654 --> 00:50:27,987 when she was continuing her careful scholarship at the Peabody. 602 00:50:30,861 --> 00:50:36,026 In 1998, Stewart took her ashes to Peidras Negras 603 00:50:36,733 --> 00:50:39,258 for burial at a sight high above the ancient city she had loved. 604 00:50:40,804 --> 00:50:43,466 We didn't realize how poignant the ceremony was going to be. 605 00:50:44,708 --> 00:50:47,609 Most of us were students or young people in the field, 606 00:50:47,778 --> 00:50:51,179 in our 30s at the oldest. 607 00:50:51,348 --> 00:50:54,715 And it sort of dawned on everyone that here 608 00:50:55,085 --> 00:50:57,747 was the remains of this great lioness, this legendary figure. 609 00:50:57,821 --> 00:51:01,882 The Guatemalans who were there were very emotional about this 610 00:51:02,225 --> 00:51:09,825 because this was the woman who had brought the Maya back to history. 611 00:51:17,707 --> 00:51:21,370 At the end of his pioneering journey to Central America in 1840, 612 00:51:22,112 --> 00:51:24,171 the explorer, John Lloyd Stephens 613 00:51:24,347 --> 00:51:25,939 had been the first to state with conviction: 614 00:51:27,150 --> 00:51:32,019 One thing I believe, that its history is graven on its monuments. 615 00:51:35,926 --> 00:51:39,555 More than 100 years later, we finally knew that Stephens was right. 616 00:51:46,002 --> 00:51:56,003 At Palenque, Copan, Chichen ltza, and dozens of ruins in between, 617 00:51:58,281 --> 00:52:01,717 the ancient Maya now speak for themselves.