Exploring the Ancient Maya Civilization

Deep within the jungle. We're talking about a civilization discovered in the middle of a rainforest. Cryptic remains of a lost civilization. One that spanned a continent for more than a thousand years. They definitely had attributes of the supernatural. They were the ancient Maya. Their rulers filled vast cities with sky-high pyramids, ornate palaces, and lavish plazas. They were masters of their environment. They were very resourceful in figuring out how to harness the energy, creating amazingly sophisticated works of art and engineering, and sustaining a civilization for 1,500 years. Then, after generations of prosperity and innovation, the ancient civilization collapsed, turning bustling cities into ghost towns to be reclaimed by Mother Nature. Centuries later, answers to the mysteries surrounding these majestic people and the godlike kings who ruled them tell a story of conquest, ingenuity, and disaster. 869 A.D. In the lowlands of the Guatemalan jungle, the Maya are becoming desperate. Food and clean water are dwindling. Thousands of people are starving. And malnutrition and disease are ravaging the population. The Maya no longer trust their divine rulers to appease their gods. Political turmoil plagues the kingdoms, and one by one the great city-states are being abandoned. The ancient Maya civilization is crumbling. City after city, area after area begins to fail. Cities are abandoned, kings disappear, and what had been classic Maya culture really comes to an end. What happened to this great people? Even today scholars are still mystified. We know that people began to disappear. The question is how did that happen? The answer may lie in complex hieroglyphics known as the Maya Code. A hieroglyph is a complex way of conveying all the information that Maya people could think or express. And it's the only example in the Americas of a complete, complex system of writing. Today, these cryptic symbols reveal a history of brutal warfare, larger-than-life rulers, and the rise and fall of an enigmatic people. Hi, I'm Peter Weller and I'm standing on top of this beautiful temple deep in the rainforest of southern Mexico near the border of Guatemala and this is the heart of the civilization of the ancient Maya. For years archaeologists believed that the ancient Maya were peacefully separated in a forty or so independent city-states, each with their own dynasty of kings. From what we could tell, there seemed to be trade, communication, but there didn't seem to be any particular imperial aggression motivated by a thirst for land or power outside of a king's own territory. territory. But in the last half century, these theories are starting to fly in the face of a different story because hieroglyphs like this one, the remnants of the ancient Maya's advanced writing system, are painting a whole new picture. The touchy-feely 1960s and new age ideas of a gentle and loving people are being fast replaced by a much more complex reality of city-states, butting heads in bloody clashes. And now we have evidence that brutal battles and human sacrifice were fundamental components of the human race. components of life among the ancient Maya. But the evolution of the Maya civilization into this complex network of city-states didn't happen overnight. The Maya came into existence probably a couple of thousand years before Christ. By 500 BC, population was on the rise, and small communities were turning into the first major Maya sites located throughout Central America. Fully organized kingdoms were ruling the region by 250 AD with mighty rulers at the helm. They had powerful rulers, they were in competition with each other, and sometimes this competition led to war. For the Maya, it was war led by kings in the name of the gods. Maya kings were people like us, but for the Maya they definitely had... attributes of the supernatural. The price of devotion had brutal and sometimes deadly consequences. owed a blood debt to the gods. It wasn't that they didn't regard human life or human blood highly. Quite the contrary. Human blood and human life was the most precious, the most sacred thing that could be offered to the gods in order to repay the blood debt that was incurred at creation. Bloodletting and human sacrifice dominated the king's strategic thinking. They picked allies and attacked neighbors, all with an eye on appeasing their deities and staying autonomous. Unlike Rome, in the case of the Maya, we're not dealing with one empire. Instead, we're dealing with a series of rival kingdoms. By the 3rd century AD, Maya civilization was flourishing. No one city ever succeeded in dominating all the others. But one seat of power was on the rise. Its name was Tikal. Tikal is one of the few cities that... goes strong in the pre-Classic period before the time of Christ, and then it just continues pretty much unabated all the way until the end of the Classic period. This is a city that never really lost it. But in the 6th century, a rival power named Calakmul threatened Tikal's success. The Maya had these two great dynastic capitals, Calakmul and Tikal. Those two cities essentially locked horns. It's really Calakmul that seems to engage in this action. In which they engineer alliances all the way around Tikal, essentially boxing in their enemy. It would be up to an ambitious and visionary leader to build a center of military power, one that would take on Qalakmul. His name was Hikin Khan Qawin. He would construct one of the most iconic structures of the Maya, a pyramid that would stand the test of time. The Temple of the Giant Jaguar. The most valuable monument was one that took a lot of effort. So, a big temple pyramid is an indication of your power, your strength, your prestige. It's a way of drawing people into your city because it shows what an awesome, powerful ruler you are. Building in semi-tropical environments with rudimentary materials was a unique challenge, especially when the goal was to build vertically. using Stone Age technology. Most of the technology that we associate with big stone constructions were unknown to the Maya. They did not have beasts of burden. They didn't have metal tools. What the Maya did have was a virtually unlimited supply of malleable limestone and a great deal of manpower. Your labor was one of the things that you were required to give to the king on an annual basis. Blocks of limestone were quarried and then pushed, pulled, or carried by sheer force to the construction site. They used something that we call the tump line, and this is a rope that would pass around the forehead. And in that, they could carry literally at times hundreds of pounds of debris. Level by level, the pyramid was built skyward. Wooden scaffolding supported the laborers and the structure as it expanded. Skilled masons shaped the limestone with stone tools and wooden mallets. Though the interior was filled with unrefined rubble, the exterior was deceivingly manicured, covered in a strong mortar known as Maya stucco, and painted red. Even though they knew of the wheel, even though they knew of metal, they elected not to make practical use of either of these things. And I think in part it was because in their world view something was much more valuable if a lot of human labor went into it. At nearly 150 feet, the temple of the giant jaguar emerged, facing west toward the setting sun. The ancient skyscraper would command the attention of all who set foot in Tikal's grand plaza as a symbol of power and redemption. But Yekin Khan Kahuil's engineering marvel was just the beginning. In 736, Kahuil had defeated his ultimate rival, Kalakmul. Then, in 743 and 744, he attacked and eviscerated two critical Calakmul allies that surrounded Tikal. El Perú to the west and Naranjo to the east. Finally, the suffocating noose that had once strangled Tikal was broken. In celebration of this, he builds a whole series of major expansions to the palace, new pyramids. And when we look at Tikal today... In many cases, we're looking at the fruits of that success. He may have even launched the construction of the tallest of Tikal's structures, Temple 4. Made of 250,000 cubic yards of stone, the massive pyramid stretched more than 210 feet, or 22 stories high, nearly as tall as the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge. It jutted far above the dense rainforest canopy. With a 180 degree view of the city. In the distance, other Maya cities were also ambitiously building toward the sky. But at this moment, with King Yaqun Khan Khawil at the helm, Tikal was the unchallenged powerhouse of the Maya civilization. But Tikal was not alone. Out of sight, about 250 miles to the west, another dynasty is forging the construction of a great acropolis. There, in the 7th century, a king with a vision would emerge. He would turn one of the wettest cities in the world into a mecca of new world architecture. The view from the top of Temple 4 at Tikal was the backdrop for the Masassi temples in the movie Star Wars. 611 AD on the outskirts of the Maya world in Southeast Mexico a city by the name of Palenque is on the ropes it launches a last-ditch defense against regional powerhouse Calakmul Elenke's forces are overwhelmed and the king is killed with no male heir to the throne. Because Maya kings were thought to be divine lords, their lineage is key to survival. The end of a dynasty usually comes at the end of a war. spelled disaster. Yet at this critical moment, one of the greatest building campaigns in Maya history was about to begin in Palenque, and the king behind it would remain unknown until the middle of the 20th century. Music In 1949, some of the questions regarding the mysterious dynasty of Palenque are answered when archaeologist Alberto Rusluier is excavating this 75-foot-high temple, now called the Temple of the Inscriptions. Now, I'm in pretty good shape, but those guys had headdresses and big robes, obsidian knives and swords. I thought I'm in pretty good shape for an old guy anyway But I don't know how they did it And I don't know how Alberto Rusli did it But I still got a lot to go When he gets up into the sanctuary he looks around And he notices on the floor a row of holes covered with stone stoppers and he figures out that these holes were made for ropes in order to pull up the slab just like I'm on a trapdoor. So he pulls up the slab. This one exactly. And he follows a steep staircase filled with dirt and debris. He's never seen a Maya pyramid like this before. So his men start digging and digging and digging into the unknown. The wet stairs are very slippery from the moisture and time and the rain from the forest and he finally gets down to a plateau and he notices that the whole pathway doubles back and then continues. and he finds hidden doors, secret passageways, signs that a lot of thought and calculation went into building this structure. Finally, after three years, after three long years, he gets to the bottom of this this 80 foot stairway and there he sees a small corridor and in the corridors of the stone box and in the box are six skeletons the remains of souls who were sacrificed to protect the person for whom this temple was built but he still doesn't who that person was. And then he finally sees a huge door, a massive triangular stone. So his men and he open it and then they go in. And behind this huge triangular door is a vaulted crypt about 30 feet long and 23 feet high. And inside the crypt is this massive sarcophagus carved from one piece of limestone. And on top of this sarcophagus is this... magnificent lid with these expertly carved images of a king. Along this edge, by the way, which is covered with cinnabar, this red stuff, is poison to the touch to keep looters from coming in here and ruining it. And by the way, if the ancient Egyptians might have used this, we might have had more antiquities coming out of that country today. But along this edge is the image of a shield, and up in the sanctuary is another image of a shield. And the ancient Maya word for shield is pakal. So Alberto Rus had discovered the tomb of the most important Maya king, Pakal the Great. Pakal's ascension to the throne in 615 AD came during the most critical time for Palenque. With no direct heir, the elders of Palenque had turned to an outsider, a royal who lived outside the kingdom named Lady Sakkuk. Now she returned to Palenque with her adolescent son, Pakal. The future of Palenque hung in the balance as the young boy was crowned king by his mother. He was just 12 years old. She sort of kept the throne warm for him for over 10 years while he was growing up. As the young king grew into adulthood, In adulthood, Pakal had to deify himself to legitimize his rule. He declared his mother to be the living embodiment of the first mother, who created humans and the gods. He then was the son of a goddess, an exalted position that removed any question of his legitimacy. He was almost certainly a charismatic fellow. He had to have been. He had no power base. He had to do it almost on pure charisma and determination. As a Johnny-come-lately, as someone who needs to prove himself, he's going to be as splashy as possible. And so he constructs the most gaudy buildings imaginable. He is establishing all sorts of new architectural patterns. To authenticate his lineage, Picard set off on a building spree to revitalize his battered kingdom. One of his first orders of business, the renovation and expansion of the royal palace. An impressive structure that sits in the heart of the main plaza. More than 70,000 square feet, the palace would become a maze of galleries, chambers, stairways, courtyards and tunnels and was designed to reflect his ideas of grandeur. At first, Pakal's architects, like those throughout the Maya world, employed what is called the Corbeled Vault to support their soaring structures. Now this was a pretty straightforward structure where a series of lines of stones of ever-decreasing height are laid on top of each other. So it forms really a kind of inverted V shape with a row of capstones along the top. But the Corbeled Vault left something to be desired. This basic construction limited interior space and light and forced architects to build walls wider than even the space it enclosed. Driven by a determined king, Pekal's engineers now looked for solutions to this problem. What the Palenque designers succeeded in doing was lightening the weight. They produced sort of honeycomb structures on the top of these buildings. They could make their spans wider, area more light could come in. These innovations reduced the stress on the load-bearing walls, creating a more open and inviting feel than the traditional Maya buildings. Over 60 years, Pakal's builders became the best in the New World. But it wasn't until the end of his rule that Pakal commissioned one of the most complex and imaginative projects ever attempted by the Maya, the Temple of the Inscriptions. The discovery of the Temple of the Inscriptions changed all our ideas about Maya pyramids. They weren't supposed to be mortuary shrines. Inside, along a stairway leading down to the tomb, engineers built a psychoduct, or hollow tube. It's a conduit that allows someone on the top of the pyramid to speak into this speaking tube, and eventually you would be able to presumably communicate directly with Pakal in his tomb. This 20-ton sarcophagus was built to last an eternity. This actually had a lid which was rolled off to one side, and there was a cavity for his body to be put, so that when he eventually did die, the door was sealed and the stairway was blocked. His architects and sculptors designed a coffin rich in symbolism, portraying the resurrection of Pakal in the afterworld. Royal scribes were ordered to draw a grid to accommodate 640 glyphs that would tell the story of Pakal's reign. Many Maya pyramids don't leave much textual record on them. The opposite is the case in the Temple of the Inscriptions. Everything about it, from these huge tablets on the summit to the information inside, proclaims that this is the final resting place of the founder of one of the great Maya dynasties. In 683, during Pakal's 68th year as king, the 12-year-old boy who grew to be one of the great Maya rulers died at the age of 80. He was covered in red cinnabar and adorned in lavish jewelry. A jade mask was placed over his face. Though the legacy of Pakal the Great would be hard to match, his son had been waiting on the sidelines for nearly 50 years. With the clock ticking, he would launch a series of building projects harnessing the laws of physics and Mother Nature. In 1985, Pacal's burial mask was stolen from a museum in Mexico. Fortunately, four years later, the mask was recovered. 684 AD. The mighty King Pakal has engineered Palenque to be one of the finest Maya capitals ever known. After 68 years on the throne, his body is buried in a tomb that rivals those built for the Egyptian pharaohs. Now it is up to his son to build upon his father's legacy and cement his own reign. His name was Khan Balam. Pakal was the founder of a dynasty, but his son was a great consolidator. He was someone that was going to make sure that that dynasty would continue. The 48-year-old king immediately threw himself into an ambitious three-pyramid complex that would stand as his own monument for the ages. He designed and constructed the Cross Group, one of the most intricate and beautiful groups of ceremonial temples ever constructed in the Maya world. These are his memorial, and they tower above the palace. They look down on the works of his father, and in some ways I think they represent a statement of individuality, that he himself is going to leave his imprint on the city, just as his father did. He ordered his engineers to build three intricate structures, the Temple of the Cross, the Temple of the Foliated Cross, and the Temple of the Sun. Khan Balam's engineers would take a giant leap forward, using sophisticated geometric calculations unsurpassed anywhere in the world, based on the Maya's creation of a complete number system. One of the many ways in which the Maya were ahead of their time was in their creation of what we would refer to as zero. With a similar combination of a shell, which represented zero or completion, and then a dot. number one and then the five. By just placing them in different positions, they were able to multiply, you know, and reach incredible numbers. The Greeks and Romans were tremendous engineers, theologians, historians, and so forth, but were very limited by their mathematical system because they didn't have a zero. So here you have the irony that they were able to produce great public works, philosophy, and whatnot, but are really pretty lousy mathematicians compared to the mind. Khan Balam's engineers'advanced mathematical observations may have included the discovery of proportions like the square roots of rectangles and something called the golden mean, a naturally occurring proportion that can be seen in animals, nature, and even the human body as 1 to 1.618. Measure a person from his head to his belly button, belly button to his feet you get a proportion very close to 1 to 1.618 the golden mean some scholars believe this proportion has been appearing in structures for thousands of years at places like the pyramids of Giza in Egypt and the Parthenon in Greece da Vinci's Vitruvian man is a study of this proportion and some even say he painted the Mona Lisa using this ratio in her features With nothing more than some sticks and a cord, Khan Balam's engineers may have been able to measure the square roots of rectangles. In the Temple of the Cross, these shapes would be used to mark the two main piers of the façade, the width of the medial doorway and the interior walls. The golden ratio can be seen in the rear chambers and the base of the structure, with the side wall as 1 and the back wall as 1.618. By using repeated squares and natural proportions in the Temple of the Cross, a beautifully calculated floor plan took shape, full of geometry, mythological history, and a king's own legacy. But not all engineering in Palenque was done with an eye on the afterlife. Palenque's engineers also had to focus on more practical needs. One of the names of Palenque is La Camja, which means place of great waters. We have four rivers running through Palenque year round. We have dozens of springs. We have water. everywhere. These riches came with challenges. Palenque was surrounded by steep hills, natural springs, and creeks that carved their way through the base of the site, leaving only bits and pieces of flat, water-free land for building. Unlike most Maya cities, cities the problem facing Palenque wasn't how to store water for the dry season it was how to deal with an overabundance of water as you can see everything is green here it rains every day so to meet this challenge the city planners devised a unique way of diverting the pre-existing streams by building subterranean aqueducts that would channel the water underground thus saving more land on top for cultivation these tunnels were lined with limestone and they were covered with our old friend from Egypt and Greece, the Korbel Vault. Series of protruding stones, one on top of the other, formed sort of an arch overhead. Now, these ceilings were so sturdy, they could support the massive weight of Palenki's giant plazas overhead. So the people were walking along with the water rushing underneath them, being diverted away from the city, just like it is where I live today in New York City. What's even more impressive is that there are signs that Maya engineers may have figured out a way to create water pressure. They built water tunnels that ran through the rugged terrain into the city, often directed uphill. As they got closer to the main structures, the pipes got incrementally smaller. Like Roman fountains, the water pressure gained momentum as it coursed through increasingly narrower tunnels. eventually allowing for running water throughout Palenque's buildings. We have beautiful systems of sweat baths and swimming pools and aqueducts. In its day, it would have rivaled any of the Roman aqueduct systems. We don't see this use of water pressure anywhere else, and it doesn't appear again until the Spanish bring the technologies with them. Together, Khan Balam and his father Pakal ruled Palenque for nearly 100 years. pushing Maya engineering to a level never seen before. The future seemed bright for this city on the rise, but its years of glory are about to come to a sudden end. Something is happening in the Maya world that will cause the classic city-states to implode. The Maya had developed the concept of zero by the 4th century AD, but the Europeans wouldn't understand the concept until 800 years later. By the 8th century, Palenque, Tikal, and the other kingdoms of the Maya world were expanding across the continent. Tall pyramids, unparalleled city planning, and sumptuous royal palaces advertised the glory of the great kings. Then, suddenly, these cities began to unravel, one after another. Royal sculptors stopped carving their monuments with historical information and kings halted their construction projects. Maya civilization had plunged into darkness. It's not that the entire Maya lowlands is abandoned overnight it's that you know one Kingdom falls here and another one ten years later falls over here then another one over here. The causes There remains a great debate among scholars. We're really talking about a society that was pushing itself to the limits. There is no one single explanation for this implosion, but scholars seem to believe that environmental catastrophe led to a full-blown meltdown for the Maya civilization. The soil no longer produced crops, thus lack of food and polluted water produced malnutrition and disease. The Maya could no longer count on their kings to intercede with their gods because their great society was in a death spiral and their king so long counted on for guidance and prosperity were powerless to stop it. So sadly, but slowly and surely, the people voted with their feet and the ancient Maya left their beautiful cities forever. There were no signs of mass graves. They did not vanish. Where did the millions of Maya go? If you wanted to go where it was happening, you moved north. Go north, young man. The cities that die in the south, and that's the only way to describe it is they just go into oblivion, are never really replaced. But there are locations all around the Yucatan Peninsula where the cities not only thrive, but they begin to grow. explosively. This growth was enhanced by an elaborate network of causeways called Sakhbays or white roads. The Sakhbays weren't just local transport, they were emblems of the great political power of two allied cities that had the wherewithal to create this magnificent royal ...procession way between their two kingdoms. As much as 60 miles long in some places, they were a marvel of engineering. They would place huge rocks on both sides of the crossway, and then filling whatever was in between with cobbles and unfinished rocks and stones. And then they covered all the surface with stucco. Nice plaster, and then upon it they created this smooth surface. In the Yucatan Peninsula, the Sac Bays often charted a course through the rough terrain in perfectly straight lines. It's not easy to cut a line 60 miles that doesn't deviate even a degree. I would really like to know what instruments they use. We have no record of it. These causeway systems allowed for rebirth, movement, and trade in the north. And it is there that the ragged survivors of the southern lowlands hope to find a second chance, in a Yucatan city called Chichen Itza. Chichen Itza came to be the largest and most powerful city from about 800 to 1050 or so that had a real knack of being a big tent. So it was a very cosmopolitan place, and I'm sure it traded handsomely on that reputation. One of the buildings unique to the site was El Caracol, an astronomical observatory. The Maya were obsessed with both time and the stars, and spent centuries looking to the sky for answers. The Maya probably had something called a gnomon, which is a series of two crossed bars, and by looking at the intersection of those two bars, they were able to focus on something. With just basic tools. The Maya were able to track the movement of the stars and planets and the passing of time. Like Stonehenge, this was a place where people could make solar and lunar observations. The staircase in the front of the building faced 27.5 degrees northwest, out of line with other structures, but in almost perfect alignment with Venus'most northerly position in the sky. It was closely aligned with the celestial bodies and occurrences, such as the movement of Venus and the solstices. In the higher tower of the building, three openings survive today. They are small, narrow, and irregularly placed, but they align along astronomical sight lines. In the Karakol, we can see in its orientations, in its peculiar displacements, in its odd alignment of buildings, A focus on what Venus was doing at the time. Venus is a kind of variable actor up there in the skies. Sometimes it moves in this direction, sometimes it moves in that direction. The catacomb seems to be about looking at Venus when it's come to the end of a certain kind of motion. This astute astronomical observation allowed the Maya to build their interlocking calendars. that were more accurate than any other used in the ancient world. The Maya had two calendars, one ritual and then, you know, the solar calendar, that is very, very similar to what we use in the Western world. The Maya measured the solar year to be 365 days. Their measurements for the revolution of Venus and the occurrence of lunar eclipses were equally on target. In just 200 years, the Maya had achieved a rebirth in the wake of the catastrophic destruction of their southern cities. But now the north would face an even deadlier enemy. One that was capable of annihilating the Maya while leaving their cities intact. Chichen Itza is renowned for its well of sacrifice. It is said that humans and precious objects were tossed into the sinkhole as offerings to the rain god, Chak. In the 9th century, the classic Maya city suddenly and mysteriously collapsed, ending the era of greatest prosperity and growth. Rebirth in the north gave the Maya an opportunity to combine astronomy and engineering on an unprecedented scale. At Chichen Itza, signs of continuing obsession with the skies left a permanent mark on Maya architecture. The cornerstone of Chichen Itza was the 98-foot El Castillo, or the castle, built in the 9th or 10th century. The 365 steps equal the number of days in the Maya civil calendar. 52 panels on each side represented the Maya's 52-year cycle. Nine terraced levels equaled the 18-month Maya solar calendar. And the temple's axis was perfectly aligned so that specific shadows were cast twice a year. For any Maya standing and looking at the northwestern sector of the Castillo, they would see a balustrade and then a combination of shadows and the sun hitting that part just before sunset. And then several triangles form. And then at the very bottom of this balustrade, you have a nice... Harved serpent head, a snake coming down from heaven, and that is indicating the arrival of the rainy season. The Maya saw this phenomenon as a manifestation of the deity Kukulkan, the feathered serpent. The Mayas were able to actually record the equinox. That day and the year were night and day, you know, last the same. Every year, March 21st. you see the descent of Kukulkan. Surrounding El Castillo, the civic buildings took on a new characteristic, spaciousness, with a broad open plaza, temples, marketplaces, a ball court, and colonnades. So the colony hall not only housed the feasting events, but maybe individuals were brought into the plaza, you know, the general public was probably invited. Depending on the occasions to come to the plaza and witness the arrival of this, you know, traders, the merchants. Greek or Roman in appearance, these round columns were used as a new type of structural support and were an architectural first in the Maya world. The benefit of a column is that it allows you to create flat roofs. You're not investing all of your energy in creating stone buildings that are going to be... containing corbel vaults which may or may not collapse. The columns were simple in design. Round drums were placed one on top of the other, filled with rubble in between. A square section was placed at the top, and then flat rooftops made of stucco and wood were added to form expansive covered interiors. It involves people more openly in the life of the building and of what's happening within it than would have been possible with Maya pyramids of the full classic period. Those pyramids are mostly about exclusivity. It's about showing a space, holding it up high, but allowing very, very few people to look into it. The open column structures are much more inviting. But the welcoming atmosphere didn't last long. After more than 200 years of domination over the Yucatan, Chichen Itza suffered a fate similar to its neighbors in the south. It mysteriously collapsed. When the Spanish arrived on the shores of the Yucatan Peninsula in 1517, every large cosmopolitan center of the Maya world had been abandoned. Even so, a splintered Maya civilization, living in small villages across the countryside, put up a sustained fight against the conquistadors. It proved difficult to conquer because rather than taking a king captive or an emperor, as they did with the Aztec, they had to conquer one village at a time. And once they'd moved on to the next village, there'd be one behind them that would then begin to rise in revolt. Maya warriors killed conquistadors by the thousands, but their weapons proved useless against a more potent enemy, disease. Within a hundred years, 90% of the population of the New World was... Gone. The Maya who survived faced further persecution. Friar Diego de Landa had been sent from Spain to convert the Maya to Christianity, and he ruthlessly enforced his religious teachings. Diego de Landa was a young idealist who came to the New World trying to save souls, trying to win converts to what he referred to as the one true faith. But the Maya didn't believe that they should instantly And forevermore reject all of their own beliefs. On July 12, 1562, Landa ordered an auto de fe, or burning of the Maya texts, believing they were the writing of the devil. This was the end of thousands of years of accumulated knowledge of Maya civilization, one of the great tragedies in human history. In a lucky twist of fate, four codices survive the inferno and wear and tear of time. By the 19th century, some of these books that happened to escape the clutches of these friars and their destructive urges began to make their way into public attention. Today, their survival story is just another mystery in the complex history of the Maya. The fact that they were able to sustain an urban civilization in the rainforest for a thousand five hundred years through all sorts of logistical and other challenges is one that we should admire and one from which we can stand to learn a great deal. Just as the Maya looked from the ground to the sky for guidance, we are now looking from the sky to the ground for answers. In recent years, NASA and the University of New Hampshire have been experimenting with remote sensing technology to see if they can determine where undiscovered cities might be hidden. Mounds of earth covered in trees that appear on readings may actually be ruins of ancient cities that have not been touched for centuries. More answers to the Maya mysteries may be right beneath our feet. Maya archaeology is just beginning. There are innumerable cities, innumerable temples, innumerable settlements that we have not been able to study and excavate. I think we're entering a golden age of Maya archaeology, and I can only see in the next century a time in which this will become one of the best understood civilizations of the ancient world. We now know that the Maya... We're an innovative and creative and majestic people with their own particular taste for violence. But what is the real allure of the Maya? What is this mystique that draws generation after generation the world over to this complex and sophisticated civilization? Is it the architecture with its serene palaces and temples, or the intricacies of hieroglyphs and art in a complex writing system? Or is it the astounding comprehension of astronomy and mathematics with the concept of zero, unparalleled in antiquity, Or is it simply because these remarkable people carved entire cities, not just villages and towns, but magnificent cities right out of some of the most inhospitable landscape in the entire world? In the rainforest between Honduras and the Yucatan, there are literally hundreds and hundreds of Maya sites that are untouched. In Palenque alone, there are 1,500 buildings that lie unexcavated, including temples larger than that one. And if you consider the archaeological treasures yet to be found in cities like Tikal and Chichen Itza, I say, and I'm sure I'm not alone, that the real allure of the Maya, the real magic and mystique of this civilization, are the mysteries that still lie buried deep within this jungle. I'm Peter Weller for the History Channel.

Deep within the jungle. We're talking about a civilization discovered in the middle of a rainforest. Cryptic remains of a lost civilization.

One that spanned a continent for more than a thousand years. They definitely had attributes of the supernatural. They were the ancient Maya. Their rulers filled vast cities with sky-high pyramids, ornate palaces, and lavish plazas.

They were masters of their environment. They were very resourceful in figuring out how to harness the energy, creating amazingly sophisticated works of art and engineering, and sustaining a civilization for 1,500 years. Then, after generations of prosperity and innovation, the ancient civilization collapsed, turning bustling cities into ghost towns to be reclaimed by Mother Nature. Centuries later, answers to the mysteries surrounding these majestic people and the godlike kings who ruled them tell a story of conquest, ingenuity, and disaster. 869 A.D.

In the lowlands of the Guatemalan jungle, the Maya are becoming desperate. Food and clean water are dwindling. Thousands of people are starving. And malnutrition and disease are ravaging the population. The Maya no longer trust their divine rulers to appease their gods.

Political turmoil plagues the kingdoms, and one by one the great city-states are being abandoned. The ancient Maya civilization is crumbling. City after city, area after area begins to fail. Cities are abandoned, kings disappear, and what had been classic Maya culture really comes to an end. What happened to this great people?

Even today scholars are still mystified. We know that people began to disappear. The question is how did that happen? The answer may lie in complex hieroglyphics known as the Maya Code. A hieroglyph is a complex way of conveying all the information that Maya people could think or express.

And it's the only example in the Americas of a complete, complex system of writing. Today, these cryptic symbols reveal a history of brutal warfare, larger-than-life rulers, and the rise and fall of an enigmatic people. Hi, I'm Peter Weller and I'm standing on top of this beautiful temple deep in the rainforest of southern Mexico near the border of Guatemala and this is the heart of the civilization of the ancient Maya. For years archaeologists believed that the ancient Maya were peacefully separated in a forty or so independent city-states, each with their own dynasty of kings. From what we could tell, there seemed to be trade, communication, but there didn't seem to be any particular imperial aggression motivated by a thirst for land or power outside of a king's own territory.

territory. But in the last half century, these theories are starting to fly in the face of a different story because hieroglyphs like this one, the remnants of the ancient Maya's advanced writing system, are painting a whole new picture. The touchy-feely 1960s and new age ideas of a gentle and loving people are being fast replaced by a much more complex reality of city-states, butting heads in bloody clashes.

And now we have evidence that brutal battles and human sacrifice were fundamental components of the human race. components of life among the ancient Maya. But the evolution of the Maya civilization into this complex network of city-states didn't happen overnight.

The Maya came into existence probably a couple of thousand years before Christ. By 500 BC, population was on the rise, and small communities were turning into the first major Maya sites located throughout Central America. Fully organized kingdoms were ruling the region by 250 AD with mighty rulers at the helm. They had powerful rulers, they were in competition with each other, and sometimes this competition led to war. For the Maya, it was war led by kings in the name of the gods.

Maya kings were people like us, but for the Maya they definitely had... attributes of the supernatural. The price of devotion had brutal and sometimes deadly consequences.

owed a blood debt to the gods. It wasn't that they didn't regard human life or human blood highly. Quite the contrary.

Human blood and human life was the most precious, the most sacred thing that could be offered to the gods in order to repay the blood debt that was incurred at creation. Bloodletting and human sacrifice dominated the king's strategic thinking. They picked allies and attacked neighbors, all with an eye on appeasing their deities and staying autonomous.

Unlike Rome, in the case of the Maya, we're not dealing with one empire. Instead, we're dealing with a series of rival kingdoms. By the 3rd century AD, Maya civilization was flourishing. No one city ever succeeded in dominating all the others.

But one seat of power was on the rise. Its name was Tikal. Tikal is one of the few cities that...

goes strong in the pre-Classic period before the time of Christ, and then it just continues pretty much unabated all the way until the end of the Classic period. This is a city that never really lost it. But in the 6th century, a rival power named Calakmul threatened Tikal's success. The Maya had these two great dynastic capitals, Calakmul and Tikal. Those two cities essentially locked horns.

It's really Calakmul that seems to engage in this action. In which they engineer alliances all the way around Tikal, essentially boxing in their enemy. It would be up to an ambitious and visionary leader to build a center of military power, one that would take on Qalakmul. His name was Hikin Khan Qawin. He would construct one of the most iconic structures of the Maya, a pyramid that would stand the test of time.

The Temple of the Giant Jaguar. The most valuable monument was one that took a lot of effort. So, a big temple pyramid is an indication of your power, your strength, your prestige. It's a way of drawing people into your city because it shows what an awesome, powerful ruler you are.

Building in semi-tropical environments with rudimentary materials was a unique challenge, especially when the goal was to build vertically. using Stone Age technology. Most of the technology that we associate with big stone constructions were unknown to the Maya.

They did not have beasts of burden. They didn't have metal tools. What the Maya did have was a virtually unlimited supply of malleable limestone and a great deal of manpower.

Your labor was one of the things that you were required to give to the king on an annual basis. Blocks of limestone were quarried and then pushed, pulled, or carried by sheer force to the construction site. They used something that we call the tump line, and this is a rope that would pass around the forehead.

And in that, they could carry literally at times hundreds of pounds of debris. Level by level, the pyramid was built skyward. Wooden scaffolding supported the laborers and the structure as it expanded. Skilled masons shaped the limestone with stone tools and wooden mallets. Though the interior was filled with unrefined rubble, the exterior was deceivingly manicured, covered in a strong mortar known as Maya stucco, and painted red.

Even though they knew of the wheel, even though they knew of metal, they elected not to make practical use of either of these things. And I think in part it was because in their world view something was much more valuable if a lot of human labor went into it. At nearly 150 feet, the temple of the giant jaguar emerged, facing west toward the setting sun.

The ancient skyscraper would command the attention of all who set foot in Tikal's grand plaza as a symbol of power and redemption. But Yekin Khan Kahuil's engineering marvel was just the beginning. In 736, Kahuil had defeated his ultimate rival, Kalakmul.

Then, in 743 and 744, he attacked and eviscerated two critical Calakmul allies that surrounded Tikal. El Perú to the west and Naranjo to the east. Finally, the suffocating noose that had once strangled Tikal was broken. In celebration of this, he builds a whole series of major expansions to the palace, new pyramids.

And when we look at Tikal today... In many cases, we're looking at the fruits of that success. He may have even launched the construction of the tallest of Tikal's structures, Temple 4. Made of 250,000 cubic yards of stone, the massive pyramid stretched more than 210 feet, or 22 stories high, nearly as tall as the towers of the Brooklyn Bridge. It jutted far above the dense rainforest canopy.

With a 180 degree view of the city. In the distance, other Maya cities were also ambitiously building toward the sky. But at this moment, with King Yaqun Khan Khawil at the helm, Tikal was the unchallenged powerhouse of the Maya civilization. But Tikal was not alone.

Out of sight, about 250 miles to the west, another dynasty is forging the construction of a great acropolis. There, in the 7th century, a king with a vision would emerge. He would turn one of the wettest cities in the world into a mecca of new world architecture. The view from the top of Temple 4 at Tikal was the backdrop for the Masassi temples in the movie Star Wars.

611 AD on the outskirts of the Maya world in Southeast Mexico a city by the name of Palenque is on the ropes it launches a last-ditch defense against regional powerhouse Calakmul Elenke's forces are overwhelmed and the king is killed with no male heir to the throne. Because Maya kings were thought to be divine lords, their lineage is key to survival. The end of a dynasty usually comes at the end of a war.

spelled disaster. Yet at this critical moment, one of the greatest building campaigns in Maya history was about to begin in Palenque, and the king behind it would remain unknown until the middle of the 20th century. Music In 1949, some of the questions regarding the mysterious dynasty of Palenque are answered when archaeologist Alberto Rusluier is excavating this 75-foot-high temple, now called the Temple of the Inscriptions.

Now, I'm in pretty good shape, but those guys had headdresses and big robes, obsidian knives and swords. I thought I'm in pretty good shape for an old guy anyway But I don't know how they did it And I don't know how Alberto Rusli did it But I still got a lot to go When he gets up into the sanctuary he looks around And he notices on the floor a row of holes covered with stone stoppers and he figures out that these holes were made for ropes in order to pull up the slab just like I'm on a trapdoor. So he pulls up the slab. This one exactly.

And he follows a steep staircase filled with dirt and debris. He's never seen a Maya pyramid like this before. So his men start digging and digging and digging into the unknown.

The wet stairs are very slippery from the moisture and time and the rain from the forest and he finally gets down to a plateau and he notices that the whole pathway doubles back and then continues. and he finds hidden doors, secret passageways, signs that a lot of thought and calculation went into building this structure. Finally, after three years, after three long years, he gets to the bottom of this this 80 foot stairway and there he sees a small corridor and in the corridors of the stone box and in the box are six skeletons the remains of souls who were sacrificed to protect the person for whom this temple was built but he still doesn't who that person was. And then he finally sees a huge door, a massive triangular stone.

So his men and he open it and then they go in. And behind this huge triangular door is a vaulted crypt about 30 feet long and 23 feet high. And inside the crypt is this massive sarcophagus carved from one piece of limestone.

And on top of this sarcophagus is this... magnificent lid with these expertly carved images of a king. Along this edge, by the way, which is covered with cinnabar, this red stuff, is poison to the touch to keep looters from coming in here and ruining it.

And by the way, if the ancient Egyptians might have used this, we might have had more antiquities coming out of that country today. But along this edge is the image of a shield, and up in the sanctuary is another image of a shield. And the ancient Maya word for shield is pakal.

So Alberto Rus had discovered the tomb of the most important Maya king, Pakal the Great. Pakal's ascension to the throne in 615 AD came during the most critical time for Palenque. With no direct heir, the elders of Palenque had turned to an outsider, a royal who lived outside the kingdom named Lady Sakkuk. Now she returned to Palenque with her adolescent son, Pakal. The future of Palenque hung in the balance as the young boy was crowned king by his mother.

He was just 12 years old. She sort of kept the throne warm for him for over 10 years while he was growing up. As the young king grew into adulthood, In adulthood, Pakal had to deify himself to legitimize his rule. He declared his mother to be the living embodiment of the first mother, who created humans and the gods. He then was the son of a goddess, an exalted position that removed any question of his legitimacy.

He was almost certainly a charismatic fellow. He had to have been. He had no power base.

He had to do it almost on pure charisma and determination. As a Johnny-come-lately, as someone who needs to prove himself, he's going to be as splashy as possible. And so he constructs the most gaudy buildings imaginable.

He is establishing all sorts of new architectural patterns. To authenticate his lineage, Picard set off on a building spree to revitalize his battered kingdom. One of his first orders of business, the renovation and expansion of the royal palace.

An impressive structure that sits in the heart of the main plaza. More than 70,000 square feet, the palace would become a maze of galleries, chambers, stairways, courtyards and tunnels and was designed to reflect his ideas of grandeur. At first, Pakal's architects, like those throughout the Maya world, employed what is called the Corbeled Vault to support their soaring structures. Now this was a pretty straightforward structure where a series of lines of stones of ever-decreasing height are laid on top of each other.

So it forms really a kind of inverted V shape with a row of capstones along the top. But the Corbeled Vault left something to be desired. This basic construction limited interior space and light and forced architects to build walls wider than even the space it enclosed.

Driven by a determined king, Pekal's engineers now looked for solutions to this problem. What the Palenque designers succeeded in doing was lightening the weight. They produced sort of honeycomb structures on the top of these buildings. They could make their spans wider, area more light could come in. These innovations reduced the stress on the load-bearing walls, creating a more open and inviting feel than the traditional Maya buildings.

Over 60 years, Pakal's builders became the best in the New World. But it wasn't until the end of his rule that Pakal commissioned one of the most complex and imaginative projects ever attempted by the Maya, the Temple of the Inscriptions. The discovery of the Temple of the Inscriptions changed all our ideas about Maya pyramids. They weren't supposed to be mortuary shrines.

Inside, along a stairway leading down to the tomb, engineers built a psychoduct, or hollow tube. It's a conduit that allows someone on the top of the pyramid to speak into this speaking tube, and eventually you would be able to presumably communicate directly with Pakal in his tomb. This 20-ton sarcophagus was built to last an eternity.

This actually had a lid which was rolled off to one side, and there was a cavity for his body to be put, so that when he eventually did die, the door was sealed and the stairway was blocked. His architects and sculptors designed a coffin rich in symbolism, portraying the resurrection of Pakal in the afterworld. Royal scribes were ordered to draw a grid to accommodate 640 glyphs that would tell the story of Pakal's reign.

Many Maya pyramids don't leave much textual record on them. The opposite is the case in the Temple of the Inscriptions. Everything about it, from these huge tablets on the summit to the information inside, proclaims that this is the final resting place of the founder of one of the great Maya dynasties.

In 683, during Pakal's 68th year as king, the 12-year-old boy who grew to be one of the great Maya rulers died at the age of 80. He was covered in red cinnabar and adorned in lavish jewelry. A jade mask was placed over his face. Though the legacy of Pakal the Great would be hard to match, his son had been waiting on the sidelines for nearly 50 years. With the clock ticking, he would launch a series of building projects harnessing the laws of physics and Mother Nature. In 1985, Pacal's burial mask was stolen from a museum in Mexico.

Fortunately, four years later, the mask was recovered. 684 AD. The mighty King Pakal has engineered Palenque to be one of the finest Maya capitals ever known.

After 68 years on the throne, his body is buried in a tomb that rivals those built for the Egyptian pharaohs. Now it is up to his son to build upon his father's legacy and cement his own reign. His name was Khan Balam. Pakal was the founder of a dynasty, but his son was a great consolidator. He was someone that was going to make sure that that dynasty would continue.

The 48-year-old king immediately threw himself into an ambitious three-pyramid complex that would stand as his own monument for the ages. He designed and constructed the Cross Group, one of the most intricate and beautiful groups of ceremonial temples ever constructed in the Maya world. These are his memorial, and they tower above the palace. They look down on the works of his father, and in some ways I think they represent a statement of individuality, that he himself is going to leave his imprint on the city, just as his father did. He ordered his engineers to build three intricate structures, the Temple of the Cross, the Temple of the Foliated Cross, and the Temple of the Sun.

Khan Balam's engineers would take a giant leap forward, using sophisticated geometric calculations unsurpassed anywhere in the world, based on the Maya's creation of a complete number system. One of the many ways in which the Maya were ahead of their time was in their creation of what we would refer to as zero. With a similar combination of a shell, which represented zero or completion, and then a dot.

number one and then the five. By just placing them in different positions, they were able to multiply, you know, and reach incredible numbers. The Greeks and Romans were tremendous engineers, theologians, historians, and so forth, but were very limited by their mathematical system because they didn't have a zero.

So here you have the irony that they were able to produce great public works, philosophy, and whatnot, but are really pretty lousy mathematicians compared to the mind. Khan Balam's engineers'advanced mathematical observations may have included the discovery of proportions like the square roots of rectangles and something called the golden mean, a naturally occurring proportion that can be seen in animals, nature, and even the human body as 1 to 1.618. Measure a person from his head to his belly button, belly button to his feet you get a proportion very close to 1 to 1.618 the golden mean some scholars believe this proportion has been appearing in structures for thousands of years at places like the pyramids of Giza in Egypt and the Parthenon in Greece da Vinci's Vitruvian man is a study of this proportion and some even say he painted the Mona Lisa using this ratio in her features With nothing more than some sticks and a cord, Khan Balam's engineers may have been able to measure the square roots of rectangles.

In the Temple of the Cross, these shapes would be used to mark the two main piers of the façade, the width of the medial doorway and the interior walls. The golden ratio can be seen in the rear chambers and the base of the structure, with the side wall as 1 and the back wall as 1.618. By using repeated squares and natural proportions in the Temple of the Cross, a beautifully calculated floor plan took shape, full of geometry, mythological history, and a king's own legacy. But not all engineering in Palenque was done with an eye on the afterlife. Palenque's engineers also had to focus on more practical needs.

One of the names of Palenque is La Camja, which means place of great waters. We have four rivers running through Palenque year round. We have dozens of springs. We have water. everywhere.

These riches came with challenges. Palenque was surrounded by steep hills, natural springs, and creeks that carved their way through the base of the site, leaving only bits and pieces of flat, water-free land for building. Unlike most Maya cities, cities the problem facing Palenque wasn't how to store water for the dry season it was how to deal with an overabundance of water as you can see everything is green here it rains every day so to meet this challenge the city planners devised a unique way of diverting the pre-existing streams by building subterranean aqueducts that would channel the water underground thus saving more land on top for cultivation these tunnels were lined with limestone and they were covered with our old friend from Egypt and Greece, the Korbel Vault. Series of protruding stones, one on top of the other, formed sort of an arch overhead.

Now, these ceilings were so sturdy, they could support the massive weight of Palenki's giant plazas overhead. So the people were walking along with the water rushing underneath them, being diverted away from the city, just like it is where I live today in New York City. What's even more impressive is that there are signs that Maya engineers may have figured out a way to create water pressure.

They built water tunnels that ran through the rugged terrain into the city, often directed uphill. As they got closer to the main structures, the pipes got incrementally smaller. Like Roman fountains, the water pressure gained momentum as it coursed through increasingly narrower tunnels. eventually allowing for running water throughout Palenque's buildings. We have beautiful systems of sweat baths and swimming pools and aqueducts.

In its day, it would have rivaled any of the Roman aqueduct systems. We don't see this use of water pressure anywhere else, and it doesn't appear again until the Spanish bring the technologies with them. Together, Khan Balam and his father Pakal ruled Palenque for nearly 100 years.

pushing Maya engineering to a level never seen before. The future seemed bright for this city on the rise, but its years of glory are about to come to a sudden end. Something is happening in the Maya world that will cause the classic city-states to implode.

The Maya had developed the concept of zero by the 4th century AD, but the Europeans wouldn't understand the concept until 800 years later. By the 8th century, Palenque, Tikal, and the other kingdoms of the Maya world were expanding across the continent. Tall pyramids, unparalleled city planning, and sumptuous royal palaces advertised the glory of the great kings. Then, suddenly, these cities began to unravel, one after another. Royal sculptors stopped carving their monuments with historical information and kings halted their construction projects.

Maya civilization had plunged into darkness. It's not that the entire Maya lowlands is abandoned overnight it's that you know one Kingdom falls here and another one ten years later falls over here then another one over here. The causes There remains a great debate among scholars. We're really talking about a society that was pushing itself to the limits. There is no one single explanation for this implosion, but scholars seem to believe that environmental catastrophe led to a full-blown meltdown for the Maya civilization.

The soil no longer produced crops, thus lack of food and polluted water produced malnutrition and disease. The Maya could no longer count on their kings to intercede with their gods because their great society was in a death spiral and their king so long counted on for guidance and prosperity were powerless to stop it. So sadly, but slowly and surely, the people voted with their feet and the ancient Maya left their beautiful cities forever.

There were no signs of mass graves. They did not vanish. Where did the millions of Maya go? If you wanted to go where it was happening, you moved north.

Go north, young man. The cities that die in the south, and that's the only way to describe it is they just go into oblivion, are never really replaced. But there are locations all around the Yucatan Peninsula where the cities not only thrive, but they begin to grow.

explosively. This growth was enhanced by an elaborate network of causeways called Sakhbays or white roads. The Sakhbays weren't just local transport, they were emblems of the great political power of two allied cities that had the wherewithal to create this magnificent royal ...procession way between their two kingdoms. As much as 60 miles long in some places, they were a marvel of engineering. They would place huge rocks on both sides of the crossway, and then filling whatever was in between with cobbles and unfinished rocks and stones.

And then they covered all the surface with stucco. Nice plaster, and then upon it they created this smooth surface. In the Yucatan Peninsula, the Sac Bays often charted a course through the rough terrain in perfectly straight lines.

It's not easy to cut a line 60 miles that doesn't deviate even a degree. I would really like to know what instruments they use. We have no record of it.

These causeway systems allowed for rebirth, movement, and trade in the north. And it is there that the ragged survivors of the southern lowlands hope to find a second chance, in a Yucatan city called Chichen Itza. Chichen Itza came to be the largest and most powerful city from about 800 to 1050 or so that had a real knack of being a big tent. So it was a very cosmopolitan place, and I'm sure it traded handsomely on that reputation. One of the buildings unique to the site was El Caracol, an astronomical observatory.

The Maya were obsessed with both time and the stars, and spent centuries looking to the sky for answers. The Maya probably had something called a gnomon, which is a series of two crossed bars, and by looking at the intersection of those two bars, they were able to focus on something. With just basic tools. The Maya were able to track the movement of the stars and planets and the passing of time.

Like Stonehenge, this was a place where people could make solar and lunar observations. The staircase in the front of the building faced 27.5 degrees northwest, out of line with other structures, but in almost perfect alignment with Venus'most northerly position in the sky. It was closely aligned with the celestial bodies and occurrences, such as the movement of Venus and the solstices. In the higher tower of the building, three openings survive today. They are small, narrow, and irregularly placed, but they align along astronomical sight lines.

In the Karakol, we can see in its orientations, in its peculiar displacements, in its odd alignment of buildings, A focus on what Venus was doing at the time. Venus is a kind of variable actor up there in the skies. Sometimes it moves in this direction, sometimes it moves in that direction. The catacomb seems to be about looking at Venus when it's come to the end of a certain kind of motion.

This astute astronomical observation allowed the Maya to build their interlocking calendars. that were more accurate than any other used in the ancient world. The Maya had two calendars, one ritual and then, you know, the solar calendar, that is very, very similar to what we use in the Western world.

The Maya measured the solar year to be 365 days. Their measurements for the revolution of Venus and the occurrence of lunar eclipses were equally on target. In just 200 years, the Maya had achieved a rebirth in the wake of the catastrophic destruction of their southern cities. But now the north would face an even deadlier enemy. One that was capable of annihilating the Maya while leaving their cities intact.

Chichen Itza is renowned for its well of sacrifice. It is said that humans and precious objects were tossed into the sinkhole as offerings to the rain god, Chak. In the 9th century, the classic Maya city suddenly and mysteriously collapsed, ending the era of greatest prosperity and growth. Rebirth in the north gave the Maya an opportunity to combine astronomy and engineering on an unprecedented scale.

At Chichen Itza, signs of continuing obsession with the skies left a permanent mark on Maya architecture. The cornerstone of Chichen Itza was the 98-foot El Castillo, or the castle, built in the 9th or 10th century. The 365 steps equal the number of days in the Maya civil calendar.

52 panels on each side represented the Maya's 52-year cycle. Nine terraced levels equaled the 18-month Maya solar calendar. And the temple's axis was perfectly aligned so that specific shadows were cast twice a year. For any Maya standing and looking at the northwestern sector of the Castillo, they would see a balustrade and then a combination of shadows and the sun hitting that part just before sunset.

And then several triangles form. And then at the very bottom of this balustrade, you have a nice... Harved serpent head, a snake coming down from heaven, and that is indicating the arrival of the rainy season.

The Maya saw this phenomenon as a manifestation of the deity Kukulkan, the feathered serpent. The Mayas were able to actually record the equinox. That day and the year were night and day, you know, last the same. Every year, March 21st. you see the descent of Kukulkan.

Surrounding El Castillo, the civic buildings took on a new characteristic, spaciousness, with a broad open plaza, temples, marketplaces, a ball court, and colonnades. So the colony hall not only housed the feasting events, but maybe individuals were brought into the plaza, you know, the general public was probably invited. Depending on the occasions to come to the plaza and witness the arrival of this, you know, traders, the merchants. Greek or Roman in appearance, these round columns were used as a new type of structural support and were an architectural first in the Maya world. The benefit of a column is that it allows you to create flat roofs.

You're not investing all of your energy in creating stone buildings that are going to be... containing corbel vaults which may or may not collapse. The columns were simple in design. Round drums were placed one on top of the other, filled with rubble in between. A square section was placed at the top, and then flat rooftops made of stucco and wood were added to form expansive covered interiors.

It involves people more openly in the life of the building and of what's happening within it than would have been possible with Maya pyramids of the full classic period. Those pyramids are mostly about exclusivity. It's about showing a space, holding it up high, but allowing very, very few people to look into it. The open column structures are much more inviting.

But the welcoming atmosphere didn't last long. After more than 200 years of domination over the Yucatan, Chichen Itza suffered a fate similar to its neighbors in the south. It mysteriously collapsed.

When the Spanish arrived on the shores of the Yucatan Peninsula in 1517, every large cosmopolitan center of the Maya world had been abandoned. Even so, a splintered Maya civilization, living in small villages across the countryside, put up a sustained fight against the conquistadors. It proved difficult to conquer because rather than taking a king captive or an emperor, as they did with the Aztec, they had to conquer one village at a time. And once they'd moved on to the next village, there'd be one behind them that would then begin to rise in revolt.

Maya warriors killed conquistadors by the thousands, but their weapons proved useless against a more potent enemy, disease. Within a hundred years, 90% of the population of the New World was... Gone.

The Maya who survived faced further persecution. Friar Diego de Landa had been sent from Spain to convert the Maya to Christianity, and he ruthlessly enforced his religious teachings. Diego de Landa was a young idealist who came to the New World trying to save souls, trying to win converts to what he referred to as the one true faith.

But the Maya didn't believe that they should instantly And forevermore reject all of their own beliefs. On July 12, 1562, Landa ordered an auto de fe, or burning of the Maya texts, believing they were the writing of the devil. This was the end of thousands of years of accumulated knowledge of Maya civilization, one of the great tragedies in human history. In a lucky twist of fate, four codices survive the inferno and wear and tear of time. By the 19th century, some of these books that happened to escape the clutches of these friars and their destructive urges began to make their way into public attention.

Today, their survival story is just another mystery in the complex history of the Maya. The fact that they were able to sustain an urban civilization in the rainforest for a thousand five hundred years through all sorts of logistical and other challenges is one that we should admire and one from which we can stand to learn a great deal. Just as the Maya looked from the ground to the sky for guidance, we are now looking from the sky to the ground for answers.

In recent years, NASA and the University of New Hampshire have been experimenting with remote sensing technology to see if they can determine where undiscovered cities might be hidden. Mounds of earth covered in trees that appear on readings may actually be ruins of ancient cities that have not been touched for centuries. More answers to the Maya mysteries may be right beneath our feet. Maya archaeology is just beginning.

There are innumerable cities, innumerable temples, innumerable settlements that we have not been able to study and excavate. I think we're entering a golden age of Maya archaeology, and I can only see in the next century a time in which this will become one of the best understood civilizations of the ancient world. We now know that the Maya... We're an innovative and creative and majestic people with their own particular taste for violence. But what is the real allure of the Maya?

What is this mystique that draws generation after generation the world over to this complex and sophisticated civilization? Is it the architecture with its serene palaces and temples, or the intricacies of hieroglyphs and art in a complex writing system? Or is it the astounding comprehension of astronomy and mathematics with the concept of zero, unparalleled in antiquity, Or is it simply because these remarkable people carved entire cities, not just villages and towns, but magnificent cities right out of some of the most inhospitable landscape in the entire world?

In the rainforest between Honduras and the Yucatan, there are literally hundreds and hundreds of Maya sites that are untouched. In Palenque alone, there are 1,500 buildings that lie unexcavated, including temples larger than that one. And if you consider the archaeological treasures yet to be found in cities like Tikal and Chichen Itza, I say, and I'm sure I'm not alone, that the real allure of the Maya, the real magic and mystique of this civilization, are the mysteries that still lie buried deep within this jungle.

I'm Peter Weller for the History Channel.

Transcript for:Exploring the Ancient Maya Civilization

Transcript for:
Exploring the Ancient Maya Civilization