Original subtitles

The dazzling cities of the ancient Maya, built by one of the most sophisticated

civilizations in history.

The Maya people were as advanced as any of the ancient civilizations of the

world. For 3,000 years, the ancient Maya dominated Central America.

They founded powerful kingdoms and built towering temples.

Ruled over by formidable kings and queens.

My rulers lived lives of incredible privilege, but there was a price to be

paid. But their lives remain shrouded in mystery.

Who were they, and how did they live and die?

With exclusive access...

Our experts embark on a groundbreaking two-year investigation, using space

technology to hunt for a long-dead king inside this intriguing temple.

Scanning the jungle with LiDAR to uncover astonishing secrets about the

scale of their kingdom.

We didn't have any clue how big they were.

and using pioneering geological techniques to hunt for answers about why

this great society collapsed.

They may have think it could have been the end of the world.

To solve these mysteries, we bring this remarkable world back to life in vivid

3D and explore the lavish tombs of kings.

to shed new light on the life and death of the ancient Maya.

The Maya were one of the most advanced ancient cultures the world has ever

seen. They were pioneers in art, architecture, writing and maths.

At its height, The Maya region covered more than 250,000 square kilometers

in Central America, with dozens of independent city-states, each ruled by a

powerful king, much like the kingdoms of ancient Greece.

David Sadat has been studying the Maya for over 40 years.

He investigates how they grew and thrived.

They developed a numerical system

Astronomy, that was incredibly precise. Huge pyramids, platforms.

By any standards, the Maya were astoundingly sophisticated.

How did these impressive people live and die?

And what caused their glorious civilization to break down?

Searching for answers, a unique team of Japanese experts heads to one of the

most important Maya cities of all.

Capan, in what is now Honduras.

In its heyday, Capan was a spectacular city, home to over 20,000 people.

Towering, brightly painted temples rose over 30 metres from the jungle floor.

It had wide-open plazas with stunning carvings and sculptures,

ball courts for sporting and ceremonial events, and magnificent

staircases.

For almost half a millennium, Capan was the capital of a vast kingdom.

covering 350 square kilometers, ruled by a powerful dynasty of 16 kings.

Yet, despite the legacy they left behind, much of their rise and fall

remains unknown.

How did Kapan's rulers become so successful, and what happened to them?

To solve these mysteries, the Japanese team gears up for a pioneering

experiment.

They are led by Seiichi Nakamura.

He hopes to find answers to riddles that have puzzled archaeologists for decades.

Could clues lie hidden inside the city's once magnificent temples?

One stands out, the mysterious Temple 11.

Seiichi believes that it contains the last resting place of one of Copan's 16

kings.

Archaeologists have searched for almost two centuries, but only around eight

royal tombs have ever been found.

Finding another could revolutionize experts' understanding of what happened

to them.

The team plans to use cutting edge space technology called muon imaging to scan

the structure and look for a tomb.

In 2017,

they used this innovative technique to scan Egypt's Great Pyramid.

The images revealed a mysterious hidden cavity.

Now, they hope to use the same technology to make an even more

spectacular discovery here in Kapan.

As cosmic rays hit the Earth's atmosphere, they create showers of

subatomic particles

called muons.

They pass through matter with ease, and with the right detection equipment, they

can reveal cavities in large objects, invisible even to X-rays.

By placing muon detection plates on large buildings, scientists can spot

previously undiscovered hidden spaces.

The team wants to apply the muon technique.

to Copan's Temple 11 and search for a tomb buried inside it.

Seiichi hopes this will be the first step to finding one of the missing kings

of Copan.

If they find a tomb, Not only could it reveal the untold history of the city,

it could also contain priceless treasures.

It's every archaeologist's dream, and they know it's happened before.

420 kilometers northwest of Copán lies Palenque, now in modern Mexico.

Rodrigo Liendo.

has been studying this magnificent city for more than 25 years.

This is the main plaza at Palenque.

Palenque was the capital of a vast territory in the northwestern lowlands.

It's famous for its remarkable architectural style.

Between the 5th and 9th centuries AD,

Palenque controlled an area of almost 130 square kilometers and was home to

more than 7,000 people.

At the heart of the city stands the Temple of Inscriptions.

At 60 meters wide and nearly 30 meters high, it's one of the most magnificent

monuments in the Maya world.

The actual function of this building remained in mystery for many centuries.

People really thought that this was probably just for ceremonial

performance, nothing else.

This incredible monument hides dramatic secrets.

Rodrigo explores inside.

He finds peculiar circular plugs in the floor.

There was a very long period of speculation about the function of this

strange feature here. And they are actually holes in two of the major slabs

that compose the floor.

The mysterious holes baffled archaeologists until they realized

that if they passed a rope through the holes, they could lift the slab and look

underneath.

They found an amazing discovery.

The first step to a staircase that goes downward inside the building.

The team spent two years excavating this staircase.

The expectation of finding something really great grew and grew.

Every single step that was uncovered was one step closer to this.

Huge discovery.

Hidden at the end of the tunnel lies the find of a lifetime.

An ancient tomb sitting in the heart of the pyramid.

In the center is a spectacular 20-ton stone sarcophagus.

It's so big.

the temple must have been built around it.

Under a lid covered with intricate carvings are the remains of a man,

surrounded by priceless treasures.

Who is he?

When experts examined inscriptions on the temple, they discovered a name.

Pakal the Great.

Pakal the Great was the most important king in Palenque's history. It was a

period of peace, of incredible developments in architecture,

craftsmanship. Pakal took Palenque to its peak in political power.

What can objects buried with Pakal reveal about the treasures that the

Japanese team might discover in their new investigation?

In the tomb, archaeologists found exquisite jade jewellery, shells and a

spectacular death mask.

The mask is completely green, made of mainly pure jade of the most

excellent quality.

So this is a priceless piece of craftsmanship. Probably one of the most

spectacular works of art done by ancient Maya people.

The mask has important spiritual significance.

The mask represented the person in his youth.

This was an attempt to freeze youth for eternity in his way to

the underworld.

The splendor and wealth of this incredible tomb made headlines around

the world.

The discovery of Pakal Stone was one of the most significant archaeological

discoveries of the last century. It was a game changer.

Could the groundbreaking new investigations at Copan reveal an even

greater king inside this temple?

Archaeologist René Vielle has been working at Copan for 40 years.

He investigates these intriguing images.

In the early 20th century, the archaeologists were puzzled by those

inscriptions. They did not know what those inscriptions represented, if it

was a language or if it was just a pictorial writing.

Experts knew that decoding these baffling designs would revolutionize

their understanding of the Maya.

But they were impossible to read.

The idea was that all these writings were related to calendar and

religion. You know, in archaeology when there is something we cannot understand,

we say it's religious.

What secrets are locked inside this mysterious code?

Maya expert Panos Kratimenos finds answers in the pages of an ancient book.

It's known as the Dresden Codex, and it's about 800 years old.

Before the Spanish conquest, there would have been thousands of these codices

around the Maya world.

Partially, they didn't survive only to preservations, but the greatest single

loss of these books was caused by the Spanish conquerors burning them as

idolatry in the work of the devil.

Only four codices have survived for centuries.

Scholars believed that they held the key to understanding the Maya inscriptions,

and through those, the entire Maya culture.

You have wonderful illustrations of people, animals, supernatural deities,

but they're completely surrounded by these symbols that for a long time we

had no idea what they actually meant.

It's like trying to put together a jigsaw puzzle with a large part of the

pieces missing and with no picture as reference.

But over decades of painstaking analysis, scholars gradually began to

spot clues.

In this image from the Dresden Codex, we can see an illustration of a dog with

writing all around it. So it stands to reason that somewhere in that text is

probably the word for dog. This realization was one of the big pieces of

the puzzle in deciphering Meyer hieroglyphs.

It took dozens of scholars over a century to decipher the text. When they

finally did, they realized this is one of the most sophisticated writing

systems ever seen.

Western languages use the 26 letters of the alphabet to create the words in

their vocabulary.

Chinese writing uses over 50,000 symbols.

that can stand for whole words or concepts.

Maya writing has 800 glyphs written in paired columns from left to right.

They represent both syllables and whole words.

Balam, the word for jaguar, can be written as a picture, as three separate

syllables, or a combination of both.

making Maya writing extremely complex.

Deciphering the Maya inscriptions was one of the most important archaeological

breakthroughs of the 20th century.

Even today, we only understand about 85% of the glyphs, but what we understand

already has completely transformed our understanding of the Maya.

What can these hieroglyphs reveal about the mysterious kings of Copan?

and how they lived and died.

René Vielle takes a closer look.

We know now that these texts deal with historic events, the historic

people, because we have the names, for example, of the kings of Copan.

The glyphs tell the story of the lives of Copan's rulers, recording births,

deaths, and key events.

They are also propaganda.

commissioned by kings to glorify themselves for future generations.

Could the Japanese team be on the brink of discovering one of these proud kings

inside this temple?

They believe there is a royal burial chamber

somewhere within the structure.

But it's huge, and the tomb might be anywhere.

This old excavation tunnel could be the perfect place to put the photographic

films they are using to scan the temple.

They need to make sure the films are in the right place and pointing in the

right direction.

If they get this wrong, they could miss the tune completely.

The team also need to check their equipment will

work here.

The last time they used it was in the dry deserts of Egypt.

Here at Copan, the tropical jungle conditions create a different challenge.

The dust, heat, and humidity make working difficult.

But Seiichi is optimistic they will find a royal tomb nearby.

Finding the tomb of one of Copan's lost kings could shed new light on the rise

and fall of this great kingdom.

What can mysterious carvings reveal about the city's ruling dynasty?

David Sadat investigates an ornate stone altar found in Copan's main plaza.

It shows the 16 rulers of Copan during this golden age.

Four figures to a side, and it starts here with Green Quetzal Macaw, the

founder of the Copan dynasty, until we come to the last ruler

of Copan, Ruler 16.

Who were these enigmatic kings?

David searches the city's Acropolis for clues.

The Acropolis platform in its heyday would have been an impressive elevated

citadel where some of the grandest and most spectacular rituals would have

unfolded. He's convinced it could hide the last resting place of one of Copan's

16 rulers.

To confirm his suspicions, his team spent 15 years carefully tunnelling

under the complex.

We were looking for the tombs because we regarded them as time capsules that

would contain the proof of the real history of Copan.

After digging three kilometres of tunnels, David's team made the discovery

of a lifetime.

Hidden beneath the Acropolis is a brightly painted temple from the 6th

century. Buried beneath it, David finds a warren of tombs.

Inside one of them is a skeleton on a stone slab surrounded by precious

offerings. Among them, a large jade chest piece, a ring with an

intricate carved pattern, a set of earrings.

and four teeth decorated with jade.

This is clearly a rich burial.

Who does it belong to? And what can it reveal about how the kings of Copan came

to power?

Searching for clues to the identity of the tomb's occupant, the team found

something spectacular.

Look at that.

A magnificent carving showing two birds.

This clue was immediately obvious to us because it was composed on one side of a

huge green quetzal bird and on the other side a great red

scarlet macaw. So he spells out the complete name of the Copan founder.

First green quetzal macaw.

The beautiful design indicates that this must be the tomb of the first king of

Copan. When experts analyzed his skeleton, they discovered something

surprising. He was not from this area.

David believes the mighty Copan dynasty was founded by an outsider who took over

the city in the 5th century AD.

The archaeological investigations have proven to us that the Maya were writing

true history about themselves.

I think this is probably the crowning achievement of my archaeological career.

But it's not the only stunning discovery inside this magnificent temple.

Nearby, David finds another tomb.

To our great astonishment, it was the tomb of a woman.

With really one of the largest treasure trove of jade jewels and giant

pearls and pottery, really one of the richest burials found anywhere in the

Maya world.

The woman's extraordinary wealth and burial close to the founder suggest this

must be his wife.

Analysis of her bones.

shows she is local, suggesting the first king of Copan may have married his way

to the top.

The question was, who was she? Was she just a wife, or was she a queen?

This richness of her tomb is testimony that women

could become incredibly wealthy and probably supremely powerful in their own

right.

But to this day, one of the most enduring mysteries and secrets of the

Copan Acropolis is that we do not know this woman's name.

The first king and his wife are two of only around eight royal burials found in

Copan. At least half the members of this mysterious dynasty are still unaccounted

for.

At the end of a tunnel...

David finds another astonishing ancient structure.

It's a 13-meter temple, once painted vivid red.

An inscription reveals that it was built in the 6th century, about 200 years

before the outer monument.

The team nicknames this hidden temple Rosalila.

The real surprise was that Rosalila...

was buried absolutely intact and purposely buried by later rulers.

Maya kings often put new temples on top of older ones.

Each wanted to build bigger and better monuments than his predecessor.

But temples were about more than just showing off.

Temples could face the setting sun They could also face the rising sun.

They can be essentially astronomical clocks because how the sun rose and set

over the year was an important consideration for them.

Why is astronomy so important to the Maya?

Panos Kratimenos searches the Dresden Codex for clues.

A large theme in the Dresden Codex is charting the course of celestial bodies

across the sky. Here we can see a series of numbers with a dot representing one,

a bar representing five, and this shell-shaped glyph representing zero.

The Codex is like an almanac, counting the number of days until an event like

an equinox or a full moon will happen.

It shows the Maya were skilled astronomers.

They're able to track various celestial bodies across the sky with extreme

precision, as good as, if not slightly better, than what we're capable of doing

today, and all without the modern technology that we're used to, like

telescopes.

They had to be precise, because getting the date wrong could be fatal.

The calendar was crucially important to the Maya because they had to keep track

of the time of year in order to be able to plant and harvest their crops

correctly.

Many Maya temples had a dual purpose.

Not only were they giant funerary monuments for kings and queens, they

helped keep track of time.

Could the Japanese team be about to find one of Copan's missing rulers inside

this temple?

And can inscriptions reveal his identity?

Close to the temple, René Vielle investigates another magnificent

monument known as the Hieroglyphic Stairway.

The ancient city of Copan is home to some of the most spectacular carvings

and monuments the Maya ever built.

And one magnificent temple is unique.

It is completely covered with stunning carved hieroglyphs. What is it for?

René Vielle investigates the astonishing construction known as the Hieroglyphic

Stairway.

The Hieroglyphic Stairway is one of the most important monuments in all the Maya

world. because it is the longest inscription known in Maya. This

sculpted library is 21 meters high and contains 62 steps,

carved with more than 2,000 glyphs. It records the history of Copan and its

kings. The first version...

of the geographic stairway was built by the 13th king. He could not finish it

because he had a tragic end.

And it was completed by his grandson, the 15th king.

After Copan's king was killed by a rival, the city fell into decline.

Ruler 15 tried to revive the city's fortunes.

A huge monument to him stands guard in front of Temple 11.

It could provide a clue to who might be buried inside.

The 15th king remodeled all the southern part of the Ritz Plaza.

He represents himself at the bottom of all this construction.

That is the reason why we think that it must be the 15th king who is buried

there.

The fate of Copan's 13th king was not uncommon in the Maya world.

Rulers walked a dangerous line between power and politics.

Dozens of independent city-states were ruled by powerful kings.

But were they allies or enemies?

The answer may lie in another spectacular Maya site in what is now

Guatemala.

Its name is Tikal.

Tikal flourished for more than 1,000 years and at its height in the 8th

century was home to an estimated 60,000 people.

Edwin Roman has been researching the ancient Maya for more than 20 years.

Over 100 years ago, the first explorers came to Tikal. And since then, Tikal has

been hosting a lot of archaeological projects.

We thought that we knew everything.

They were wrong.

Now, new technology is helping experts make a huge leap forward in their

understanding of how Maya kingdoms rose and fell.

That technology is Lidar.

Lidar uses aircraft equipped with lasers to scan the jungle and reveal objects

hidden beneath the trees.

Researchers from the Pakunam LiDAR Initiative surveyed over 2,000 square

kilometers of Guatemalan rainforest.

Their lasers revealed thousands of previously unknown Maya temples and

monuments, a discovery that changed everything.

Before we were able to see only most of the big structures.

Now we can see everything.

And what is more surprising about it is the extent of the cities.

We didn't have any clue how big they were.

This epic scanning project has revealed a colossal 60,000 previously unknown

Maya structures.

It shows the Maya population was more than 10 million strong, ten times bigger

than previously thought.

Stripping away the trees, also exposes roads linking one city to another.

What we are learning about these images is how some cities were allied to

another one and how they were interconnected through roads.

But what is amazing is that why not all the cities have it?

Some Mayan kings created alliances to help them become more powerful.

But the LiDAR reveals that others weren't so amicable.

This is the wall of Tikal. It's covering the entire landscape.

Right here, it's all around Tikal.

This huge defensive wall shows that the people of Tikal weren't welcoming their

neighbors in.

They were trying to keep them out.

Before, in the beginning, we thought the Mayas were peaceful.

Now we can see the amount of energy that they have to put to protect themselves.

And where this picture is showing us, is that Tikal was in a landscape of fear.

These groundbreaking new images suggest that in the Maya world, warfare was

common. Many kingdoms were locked in centuries-long rivalries with their

neighbors. But why were the people of Tikal so afraid?

Edwin believes the LiDAR could lead him to a clue.

When we received this image, they found there was a structure.

Previously, they thought there was just a natural hill.

What is unusual about this structure is the shape.

It's nothing that we ever see in the Maya War.

Edwin ventures to investigate the strange structure.

Early explorers had to hack through the jungle, not knowing what they would

find.

Now his high-tech map guides him straight to the location.

Now we can actually start to see it right there.

Arriving at the mysterious mound, Edwin confirms what the LiDAR suggested.

This is not a Maya building.

When we first saw this pyramid,

Teotihuacan was one of the most powerful city-states in Mesoamerica, home to

around 100,000 people.

Edwin believes this newly discovered structure is evidence that invaders from

Teotihuacan occupied Tikal in the 4th century AD.

It suggests that in Maya society, competition and power struggles were

widespread.

access to resources that came from a different kingdom

in maya warfare the king himself would

lead raiding parties into small-scale skirmishes the main goal was not to

kill but to take prisoners to be sacrificed to the gods and the biggest

prize was the king legend has it that when the infamous Snake Kings

conquered Tikal in 562, they sacrificed the city's king on his own altar.

The Snake Kings were masters of Maya warfare.

Later, they also defeated Palenque, forcing the queen to surrender the city.

After centuries of domination, in the 9th century AD,

The Maya mysteriously abandoned their cities.

Did warfare tear them apart, or is there another reason?

It's the greatest enigma in Maya studies.

Now, in Mexico, another team attempts to finally solve it.

Takeshi Nakagawa believes clues to what happened to the Maya could be hidden at

the bottom of this lake.

He sets up for a pioneering geological investigation.

Lakebed sediment contains traces of the environment from centuries gone by.

From pollution to weather conditions, to plant and animal remains, this lake is

right next to an abandoned Maya site.

The team builds a floating platform to collect samples from the deepest part of

the lake.

They hope to find evidence of the Maya collapse preserved in the sediment.

But what can other precious clues found deep underground reveal about the rise

and fall of this great civilization?

Ancient Maya kings were buried in lavish tombs surrounded by treasures.

And one grave offering was essential, jade.

Why did the Maya favor jade above all else?

Mary Lou Reidinger is an expert in Maya trade.

Jade was the most valuable thing that the Maya had in their entire cultural

inventory.

Jade is exceptionally rare and harder than steel.

In a world without metal tools, this made it unique and valuable.

They felt that the jade was indestructible.

It has a shelf life of 400 million years. It's going to last forever, so it

represented immortality.

Jade boulders blend seamlessly into their surroundings.

To find out if a stone really is jade, Mary Lou tests it in a lab.

The test uses a mixture of two extremely dense liquids, bromiform and methylene

iodide.

Almost any other stone will float in the mixture.

But because of its extreme density, Jade will sink.

So this is a piece of stone that I suspect is not jade.

The stone floats.

It's not heavy enough to be jade.

She tests another piece.

It sank.

That proves that it's jade.

So let's take this and make something beautiful out of it.

Today,

Technicians used diamond-tipped saws to cut jade, but the Maya only had stone

tools. How could they cut something as tough as jade? And the only stone in

Guatemala that was harder than jade was garnet. So they were using abrasive

garnet on the edge of their wooden tools in order to carve jade.

Maya craftsmen would take weeks or even months to cut one stone.

But jade was not only beautiful, it meant power.

Controlling the jade trade was the most important thing for these cultures.

They formed political alliances with the people who were closest to the source of

the jade in order to attain power.

The world is all about who controls the resources.

It goes on every day in the world today.

Jade was a vital part of Maya culture.

It was buried in tombs alongside kings and queens, many of which have now been

lost to history.

Could Seiichi Nakamura and his team be close to making a new discovery inside

this temple?

The team has installed photographic plates inside the tunnels.

It will take several months to complete the scanning process.

While they wait, Seiichi decides to excavate a collapsed temple.

It's close to Copan's magnificent hieroglyphic stairway.

He thinks it could conceal the tomb of another of the city's missing kings.

This ruined monument is known as Temple 7.

If there is a tomb inside, it could hold vital clues to the downfall of Copan's

royal dynasty.

Seiichi believes it begins with the tragic death of the 13th king in the 8th

century AD.

After the 13th king was captured and killed by a rival, Copan fell into

decline.

Could finding his son's tomb inside this temple reveal what went wrong?

Objects inside the tomb could provide evidence of the city's wealth and

political connections at the time

All vital clues to what caused its downfall.

Soon, the team finds something gruesome.

Human bones.

Nearby are incense burners and pieces of jade more than 1,000 years old.

It's evidence that Maya priests performed a ritual here.

Seiichi believes this ritual could have been to celebrate the completion of the

building.

Could it be linked to the construction of a royal tomb?

And what can more human remains found in another part of the city reveal about

these chilling Maya practices?

The Maya were a deeply sophisticated civilization.

With stone tools, they built spectacular cities, controlled

powerful kingdoms far bigger than ever imagined.

They crafted stunning treasures to bury with their fallen kings and queens,

hidden for millennia in astonishing tombs.

As the team continue their investigations under the temples at

Copan,

They hope to unlock the secrets of how this great civilization rose up and

what ultimately brought it to its knees.

Next time, what can mysterious human remains reveal about the dark side of

Maya religion?

Those heads had been severed.

How did they use advanced engineering to survive against the odds?

And what caused their ultimate collapse?

They may have think it could have been the end of the world.