500 Nations: The Maya

[Music] in this hour we will travel back in time to three stunning civilizations that flourish long before the arrival of Europeans to the Anasazi of the southwest the mound builders of the Mississippi and the great pyramid builders of the Maya

in the 19th century 2,000 miles south of Cahokia a group of European explorers carved their way into jungles of southern Mexico they're buried for centuries and surrounded by massive pyramids they came upon a royal palace resplendent with grand rooms courts and a tower the Europeans recognized that by their own standards the site was a

legacy of greatness standing in the middle of the largest Indian nation in North America the Maya descendants of the pyramid builders the Explorers could not imagine that the towering architecture was the work of Indian people instead they speculated wildly about the lost civilization that could have built so grand in existence refugees from the

sunken continent of Atlantis a Lost Tribe of Israel seafarers from the Orient even beings from another planet they considered everything but the obvious in 1949 a Mexican archeologist came to the same magnificent ruins now known as Palenque he climbed the steps to the top of the largest pyramid the Temple of the inscription

there he noticed holes in the floor below the Capstone's he removed the slabs and discovered a rubble filled passageway descending deep into the pyramids heart after three years of excavation the passage was cleared at the bottom was a tomb that had been buried for over 1200 years it would unlock the history of Palenque and

helped to reveal the past of the Mayan people a past they left for the future to read for centuries Mayan glyphs were considered complex pictures stories like Egyptian hieroglyphics only in the 1980s did archaeologists finally recognize that it was true writing they were not looking at pictures to be interpreted but symbols for sounds to be read it was