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Rare Maya panels found in Guatemala
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Rare Maya panels found in Guatemala
By
Sarah Grainger
GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Archeologists
have uncovered carved stucco panels
depicting cosmic monsters, gods and serpents
in Guatemala's northern jungle that are the
oldest known depictions of a famous Mayan
creation myth.
The newly discovered panels, both 26 feet
long and stacked on top of each other, were
created around 300 BC and show scenes from
the core Mayan mythology, the Popol Vuh.
It took investigators three months to
uncover the carvings while excavating El
Mirador, the biggest ancient Mayan city in
the world, the site's head researcher,
Richard Hansen, said on Wednesday.
The Maya built soaring temples and elaborate
palaces in Central America and southern
Mexico, dominating the region for some 2,000
years, before mysteriously abandoning their
cities around 900 AD.
The El Mirador basin was deserted much
earlier with the large urban population
leaving a complex network of roads and
waterways and a massive pyramid now covered
under thick vegetation.
The earliest written version of the Popol
Vuh was discovered in the early 1700s by a
Spanish colonial priest and the panels are
the first known sculptural depictions of the
main characters in the myth -- two hero
twins, Hansen said.
"This is pre-Christian, it has tremendous
antiquity and shows again the remarkable
resilience of an ideology that's existed for
thousands of years," Hansen, an Idaho State
University archeologist who has worked at El
Mirador for over a decade, said.
On one panel, the twins are depicted
surrounded by cosmic monsters and above them
is a bird deity with outstretched wings. On
the other, there is a Mayan corn god framed
by an undulating serpent, said Hansen who
worked as a consultant for Mel Gibson's 2006
movie about the Maya, "Apocalypto."
Spread over more than 500,000 acres (2,000
square km), El Mirador is three times the
size of Guatemala's famous Tikal ruins, a
popular tourist destination.
But El Mirador's conservation is threatened
by drug traffickers who use the area to ship
cocaine and heroin across the porous border
with Mexico, deforestation by locals,
looters who steal ancient artifacts to sell
on the black market and wild animal
poachers.
Last year, President Alvaro Colom announced
the creation of a massive park in the dense
jungle of northern Guatemala's Peten region,
which would encompass both El Mirador and
the already excavated Tikal.
The plan includes the construction by 2020
of a silent, propane powered train to carry
thousands of tourists to the ruins,
currently only accessible by helicopter or a
two-day hike through the jungle.
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