|
|
Search for the Lost Cave People
|
|
|
|
Program Overview
|
|
|
The Maya are often credited with inventing the first complex writing system on
the American continent, but recent archeology shows that a little-known people
called the Zoque developed a sophisticated script long before the Maya. Who
were the Zoque? Were they responsible for such technological advances as a
calendrical system and sophisticated numerical systems?
Some 300 caves carved into canyon walls in the Rio la Venta Gorge, located in
the Chiapas jungle in Central America, may hold some answers. The relative
inaccessibility and extreme dryness of the caves have preserved clothes, rope,
and wooden implements—artifacts that rarely survive in Central America. NOVA
follows a team of archeologists as they uncover artifacts that could reveal
new understandings about the Zoque and their place in Mesoamerican history.
|
|
