Name: Lost World of the Maya (Full Episode) | National Geographic
Uploaded: 2024-12-06T14:10:32.000Z
Duration: 44 min 25 s
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Hidden beneath the vast canopy is a lost world of the ancient Maya.

Nearly 2 million square miles of lush green hide centuries-old cities riddled with mysteries.

But today, lasers in the sky are helping to expose these secrets.

It's kind of like having x-ray vision and seeing beneath the canopy without having the touch of a single leaf.

Archaeologists are using this new superpower to unearth treasures on the ground.

We are starting to get information from all kinds of places where we knew absolutely nothing.

It's changing our understanding of the Maya and helping to create a treasure map of Maya's lost world.

Today, what escapes eyes on the ground is often clear to hundreds of more powerful eyes in the sky.

New technologies are being applied to archaeology, and it's gathering more information than ever thought possible. 2018 was an exciting year for the Maya.

Across the Guatemala landscape, thousands of new ruins were popping up.

Once-hidden structures are being revealed through satellites and a laser-scanning technology called LiDAR.

One of the most exciting tools that we have in our hands that we're just beginning to use in the Amazon is LiDAR.

LiDAR scanning lets us see through the forest canopy to what lies below.

It works by firing streams of light pulses from an aircraft to the ground and timing the return of the pulse when it bounces back to the sensor.

This reconstructs shapes under the canopy, almost like seeing with x-ray vision.

Every time that we have found a new set of tools, we get an insight into something that we've never imagined possible in the Amazon.

And I think LiDAR is one of these things that's going to completely change how we understand the landscape.

The trees have always been what's kept us from understanding what's happening in the Amazon, and now we can see through them.

More than 800 square miles of the Maya Biosphere Reserve have been mapped to reveal massive feats of engineering for the very first time.

Taken together, the images point to a far more sprawling and sophisticated society.

Man-made structures appear, complex roads, temples, and palaces.

Engineering like this would make today's city planners proud.

Laser mapping is the latest tool used to help unlock mysteries of the ancient Maya world.

For decades, archaeologists have pieced together clues from ruins discovered the old-fashioned way, on foot.

Ten years ago, in the heart of Mexico's Yucatan region, the ruins of a forgotten Maya town called Kiwik emerged from the jungle, without the help of aerial LiDAR.

In 800 A.D., a local king ruled here and built an impressive pyramid shrine. 20,000 rocks, cut and stacked 30 feet high.

The ancient Maya often placed royal tombs under pyramids.

So, on a hunch, archaeologist George Bay decides to sink a shaft straight through Kiwik's pyramid.

This building represents an artifact that provides us with information about the evolution of Maya society.

By examining it, we hope to understand how Kiwik evolved.

Bay has been working in the Yucatan for three decades, coaxing from the earth a snapshot of what life must have been like for the little-known Maya who lived here, called the Northern or Poop Maya.

We have surprises. 21 feet into the hole, Bay and his team make an important find.

Though, to the untrained eye, it just looks like another piece of rubble.

And so, for us, this is a very distinctive type of stone.

And this back part of it is cut like this, angled, and that would have stuck into the wall.

These special vault stones were not used to build pyramids, but to hold up the ceilings of buildings.

Yet, inexplicably, here is one deep in the pyramid.

And when they dig under the base of the pyramid, they find something even more out of place, the foundation of an ancient building.

It consists of several steps in a talud shape.

Do you have an idea of when this might date to?

The pyramid dates to 800 A.D., but analysis of pottery fragments confirms the foundation under the pyramid is 300 years older, dating to 500 A.D.

To understand why requires a trip south, back to Guatemala, 600 B.C., the earliest days of Maya civilization.

Scholars always believed it was here, in a region called the Mirador Basin, that Maya civilization was born.

Early kings raised the jungles and built monumental cities.

Over the next thousand years, the Maya civilization became the most advanced in the Americas.

They mastered mathematics and astronomy, perfected the first written language of the Western Hemisphere, and produced stunning works of art.

But in 700 A.D., there was a massive breakdown.

War, political strife, and famine rocked the Maya world.

Cities abandoned, and hordes of refugees escape fleeing north.

As part of this wave, one refugee king sets down roots in Kiwi, founds the town, and soon after, builds a pyramid.

At least, that's what scientists had always thought.

With the discovery of the ancient building foundation, the dates don't add up.

The foundation dates from 500 A.D., but Maya refugees don't arrive here until at least two centuries later.

Was someone already occupying Kiwi when the refugees arrived?

Seventeen miles away, another discovery raises more questions.

Its location is being kept a closely guarded secret, for fear of looters.

Few archaeologists have seen the discovery in person, including Farimat Tekpul.

Getting to this discovery is no easy task.

It's 230 feet underground, in the bottom of a cave.

The tunnel is narrow, and only one person can fit through at a time.

HIDDEN TREASURE There is a wall here, marking an entrance that separates the two areas, a public space and a sacred space.

It appears that countless torches and ritual fires once burned here.

The Maya believed that caves were the dwelling place of gods.

Maya priests made pilgrimage here on special religious holidays, consuming hallucinogenic plants to commune with the deities.

The chamber is cluttered with broken pottery.

Here is an intentional deposit of ceramics where the Maya broke vessels as part of an offering.

They broke the vessel as part of an offering.

Scholars suspect that breaking ceramics released the power of the offering.

They would break the vessel and scatter it around the cave.

There is almost always one piece missing.

So we think that the Maya took one piece with them and perhaps buried it outside the cave.

Maya priests relied on ropes made of vines to get here.

But even with modern climbing gear, Fatima's journey still takes three hours.

She finally reaches the cave's most sacred point and discovers an extraordinary underworld.

Ancient Maya paintings adorn the walls of the cave's burial tomb.

One image uses the contours of the cave to create a unique three-dimensional jaguar.

Another portrays a mythical hunt with a ghost-like jaguar and deer.

What's striking about this painting is that the representations are not real.

They are in the underworld, in the world of death.

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Lost World of the Maya (Full Episode) | National Geographic

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