National Geographic: Lost Kingdoms of the Maya Page #3

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in this corner.

It doesn't go with either one

of the first two individuals.

It's not the man

and the possible woman.

It's somebody different.

It wasn't uncommon for the Maya

to bury more than one family member

in the same space.

I like to think of it more like

a family mausoleum

where grandpa may have died

and you place him inside first.

Grandma dies. You put her inside too.

A number of years pass and maybe

the son or daughter dies.

You might move grandpa to the side

a little bit, grandma too,

and stick the son in.

And a little bit further along

a few more people in the family die

and eventually the mausoleum has quite

a lot of bone material inside.

This one's got a ring...

For archeologists,

tombs are like time capsules.

The objects buried with the dead

sometimes yield precise dates and names.

These help to fill out

our picture of

how the ancient Maya lived.

...in the lab it should pop out.

And sometimes what they find

is simply beautiful.

Like the tombs at Caracol,

the buildings of Copan contain

their share of buried history.

But finding it has often been an

elusive undertaking.

Honduran archeologist Ricardo Agurcia

has been working at Copan since 1978.

My primary interest was finding out

what happened to these people.

It's something that's part

of my heritage too.

It's something that's part

of my country.

And I grew up I mean

I wasn't very young

when I came to these ruins

the first time.

But it impacted me and it was

a fascinating issue-question that

you were always thinking about.

What happened to these people?

Who were they?

How did they do the things they did?

For the past four years

Agurcia has been excavating

a temple pyramid

that may tell us more about how

the people of Copan lived.

Temple 16 is a typical royal structure

in terms of its construction.

And there in lies

the archeologists' challenge.

For the Maya,

certain spaces were sacred,

so they built their temples one

on top of another.

Workers would collapse the upper levels

of an existing structure,

encase what was left with heavy fill,

and build a new structure around it.

As Agurcia's crew remove the fill,

they create a labyrinth of tunnels.

Working in tunnels tends

to be very confusing.

You're working like

in three dimensions.

You're going up, down, sideways,

in between.

And oftentimes you get lost

and you can't really understand

what you're looking at.

The flat wall on the left

used to be the outer wall

of an older temple.

Only by following its walls

to their ends

can Agurcia determine

building's original dimensions.

I only traveled a short distance

and bingo, we hit another wall.

It still goes farther

on towards the south.

So we then tried going up to see

whether we had the bottom part

of a substructure

or the higher part of it

and started going up.

And you can see here the terraces

going up of

what was a very large pyramid.

It goes up, as far as we've traced it,

eight stories high and each one

curving back and going further up.

What Agurcia found next was

totally unexpected.

There was yet a third structure

inside the first two,

this one was different.

The building Agurcia calls Rosalila

was perfectly preserved.

The loose dirt was removed,

exposing a set of giant masks

still tinged with traces

of the original paint.

Most of the masks we found before

were perhaps a meter or two tall

and would extend as much as five,

six meters.

But these masks just kept going

and going and going

and to this moment

we still haven't found the end of them

Hey, partner.

How's it going, boss?

Wo-o-o.

You haven't been here in a while,

have you?

Wow! Whoa!

Can you believe it?

Red paint all over the place.

Yeah, we've got lots of good paint.

We're coming down below the molding

and we've got two birds out.

We've got one over here on the left

and he's facing north.

And I think we have another one.

You see, he's got his beak bent

over his eye.

All the feathers behind him.

All the feathers radiating out

and also it's higher up

than anything else in the Acropolis.

So this thing shone out

for miles around.

It's outrageous, it's just outrageous.

Adorned with brightly painted sculpture

Rosalila once crowned

the highest point in Copan.

Framing the central doorway,

two giant birds face the setting sun.

Above them undulating serpents extend

their bodies toward the sky.

For the archeologists,

the careful treatment given Rosalila

poses a question.

We're all just itching to know

what Rosalil is all about.

Why was it left there for 150 years

and nobody touched it other than

to maintain it?

Why was it buried intact?

They didn't touch any of it

when they buried it.

All the rest of them they smashed

to pieces

to build something bigger

and better over it.

Why was it so revered that is had

to be mummified when it was buried?

And most of all, what's inside of it?

What is that thing housing?

And that's what we're hoping Ricardo

will find.

But before any new discoveries are made

the rainy season descends on Copan.

The archeologists return home

and all excavations are suspended

until it ends.

Nearly six months later

the rain is over.

The weather clears.

At last the excavation of temple 16

can be resumed.

For another half year workers continue

to peel away the dirt from Rosalila.

And just before the rains resume,

the enigmatic temple yields

one more surprise.

From a small cache found in a doorway,

Agurcia removes something

buried 1,300 years ago.

Look at this. It's a black kind of a...

Oh, man!

It doesn't fit.

It's close enough.

You would not believe how sharp

the edges on these things are.

What they have found

is a bundle of blades

chipped from an especially

sacred material

flint, the firestone.

They were probably used on

ceremonial occasions

and the faces may

depict royal ancestors,

or sacrificial victims.

No one knows how long it took to

create these delicately flaked blades

since no one today has the skill

to make one.

In all, nine flints were found

in Rosalila

perhaps corresponding

to the nine Maya "Lords of the Night."

It's been here for 1,300 years

and it's unbelievable.

It's a beautiful piece of art.

I mean

the finesse,

the work in it is incredible.

And I just feel like

incredibly privileged, you know.

You get caught up in the heat of

the battle

and you try not to forget to

take your pictures,

take your measurements.

And at times you forget

to think about it

and to think of the face

that it's human beings

that did this a long time ago and that

when they did it,

this was very important to them.

I'm touched by it, I really am.

And it's a special feeling.

It doesn't happen every day.

It is likely the flints Agurcia found

in Rosalila

were placed there sometime

in the 7th century A.D.

when the classic Maya civilization

was at its peak.

In many Maya kingdoms

there was a boom in the construction

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