|
|
 |
|
 |
 |
| LOST AND FOUND | |
 September 11, 2000  |
|
|
Archaeologist Arthur Demarest tells the story behind the excavation of an ancient Mayan city.
|
|
 RAY
SUAREZ: It's a tale that suggests an "Indiana Jones" sequel.
In July, a team of archaeologists found themselves literally standing
on top of a major discovery: an ancient Mayan palace that stands three
stories high and contains over 170 rooms. Inside archaeologists found
artifacts and treasures that date back to the eighth century. The ruins
were discovered under a tangle of vegetation in Cancuen, Guatemala. With
us now is the leader of the expedition, Dr. Arthur Demarest, a professor
of anthropology and archaeology at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
|
|||||||||||||||||||
| What was found? | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
Professor, maybe we can start with just what it is you found. Maybe you can describe the place for us.
RAY SUAREZ: So you went in with certain expectations about looking for a place at other explorers had seen before, but you had no idea what you were getting into? ARTHUR DEMAREST: Not really, no. I mean, I specialize in going into remote areas where no one's ever worked before. I've done that throughout my whole career, and that is where you find the greatest discoveries, obviously because you're working in terra incognita. But it also... There are a lot of difficulties in working in those areas. |
 |
|||||||||||||||||||
| A place of serpents? | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
RAY SUAREZ: "Cancuen" is supposed to mean in the ancient Mayan language "a place of serpents." Does it live up to its name 1,000 years later?
RAY SUAREZ: Is this kind of place, an ancient building like this, a dangerous place for you to work as you're trying the figure out where everything is and what you've got? ARTHUR DEMAREST: Well, you have to work slowly, and you have to explore individually and watch your step, because these... the rooms... you could fall in, not only into a serpents nests, but into chambers below. When we do systematic excavation we're going to have to do it very slowly with a restorer working with us, because otherwise it could be very dangerous. |
||||||||||||||||||||
| What has been learned so far? | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
RAY SUAREZ: What have you been able to figure out about this city so far?
RAY SUAREZ: So this was a rich place? ARTHUR DEMAREST: Very rich from what we've found so far. The site is located at the beginning of the Pasion River, and controls the trade on that river. And that river was really the superhighway of the Maya world. And what we found near the palace are workshops in jade. We found a jade boulder that was 35 pounds that they were slicing plaques off of. We found the tools for working jade and all kind of fragments of artifacts. We found workshops in pyrite, which is what we call fool's gold. But they used sheets of pyrite to make mirrors. And we see the stages of production of that and workshops in volcanic glass. A lot of the most precious things in the Maya world were being controlled by this king and being worked into fine artifacts by his artisans and then traded down river.
ARTHUR DEMAREST: Well, the site is... All we know... We're really just beginning, and it's speculating at this point to say anything. But the site does seem to challenge a lot of theories, including my own, about the nature of Maya kingdoms and the nature of Maya power. We've seen the kings of this civilization as basing their power primarily on religion and also on warfare. But in this case, the king's power seems to be entirely derived from commerce and from control of these precious goods and trade in these precious goods. |
||||||||||||||||||||
| Why has this city been lost for so long? | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
RAY SUAREZ: You yourself and people who have been writing about your discovery have described Cancuen as a lost city. And you've mentioned how big it is, how rich it was. How did this city get lost? At one point there were people pretty familiar with it, and then a couple centuries later no one knew it was there.
|
 |
|||||||||||||||||||
| The excavation continues | ||||||||||||||||||||
|
RAY SUAREZ: How many more years of work do you think remain to be done at this site, now that it's been uncovered? ARTHUR DEMAREST: I would say at least ten. I had gone in based on the impressions of the previous explorations thinking two and actually programmed that into my plans, but I think it's going to be at least a decade. The palace will be very slow going. RAY SUAREZ: Professor Demarest, thanks for being with us. ARTHUR DEMAREST: Thank you. |
||||||||||||||||||||
 |
        |
|
| Support the kind of journalism done by the NewsHour...Become a member of your local PBS station. | ||
| ||
| PBS Online Privacy Policy Copyright ©1996- MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. All Rights Reserved. | ||
| ||
ARTHUR
DEMAREST, Vanderbilt University: Well, it's a very large site. It's
an ancient city, really, buried in the rain forest in a very remote
area that's been pretty much overlooked by previous exploration. And
right in the center of the city is this palace, which we knew was there,
but we had no idea of its extent until this season when we completed
mapping of it.
ARTHUR
DEMAREST: Yes. Yeah, there's a lot of snakes. It's very dense rain forest
over the core of the site. And the palace itself, because of the complexity
of the architecture and all the chambers and rooms, is really full of
snakes. In fact, I realized that it was a three-story palace when I
was climbing across the top of what appeared to be a very high platform.
In fact, then I sunk into the vegetation and realized that there was
a courtyard in the center of this platform and I was actually in an
ancient courtyard surrounded by rooms. But sinking into it, as happens
throughout this palace, you find snake nests, and you're really surrounded
by serpents at that point, so the name is very appropriate. And you
simply have to freeze and wait for them to clear off. 
ARTHUR
DEMAREST: Quite a bit. I mean, given that we just really started at
this six months ago, the hieroglyphic inscriptions, hieroglyphic stairways,
alters have given us a picture of a dynasty that survived there for
over 1,000 years and survived through a very unique combination of alliances
with other great cities. And it's very different also because there
are no temples at this site. That's one of the reasons why I think it
was overlooked for so long. Instead, they were using sacred caves nearby
and sacred hills for worship. And the site itself seems to be focused
on this political alliance in the palace area and then workshops where
they control trade. This site controlled the trade and most of the precious
goods of the Maya world. 
RAY
SUAREZ: So are there things that you and your team are going to learn
about the Maya that we just didn't know before? 
ARTHUR
DEMAREST: Well, the explorers that went through the area, I think the
name tells you something. The very dense vegetation covers a great deal
there. And the early explorers who identified most of these sites that
we archaeologists follow up on really did some of their worst work there.
They never got away from the river, and they missed the palace. And
even the later teams underestimated it greatly, I think again because
of its remoteness. It's in an area that has been a zone of conflict
between the army and the guerrillas for the past half century of the
civil war and is only now becoming pacified. And so it's also the remoteness
of the location. And I think the real... the real final factor is the
lack of temples. These large parametal structures with temples above
them are what attract the archaeologists and they're what attract the
looters to knowing that this is a major site. But in this case, this
area has these extremely steep... hills that have caves in them eroded
into the limestone. And we already know from our surveys those were
full of artifacts and they were using those as temples rather than temples
at the site. But it fooled the looters and the archaeologists into thinking
it was a minor site. And I think that's one reason why this enormous
place has been overlooked.