Ancient Metropolis: The True Scale Of Mayan Cities | Treasure Tombs of the Ancient Maya | Odyssey

[Music] 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 2-year investigation

using space technology to hunt for a long dead King inside this intriguing Temple scanning the jungle with liar to uncover astonishing secrets about the scale of Their Kingdoms 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 [Music] 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 kilm in Central America with dozens of independent city states each ruled by a powerful King much like the kingdoms of ancient Greece David sedat has been studying the meire 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 at

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 kapan in what is now Honduras in its Heyday kapan was a spectacular City home to over 20,000 people towering brightly painted temples Rose over 30 m 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 kapan was the capital of a vast

Kingdom covering 350 square km 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 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 seichi 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 seichi believes that it contains the last resting place of one

of Copan 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 [Music] [Music] 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 C IC 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 cop's Temple 11 and search for a tomb buried inside it seichi hopes this will be the first step to finding one of the missing Kings of [Music] 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 km Northwest of Copan lies pelen now in modern Mexico Rodrigo Endo has been studying This Magnificent City for more than 25 years this is uh the main pla at palen palen was the capital of a vast territory in the Northwestern lowlands it's famous for its remarkable architectural style between the fifth and 9th centuries ad pelen controlled an area of almost 130 square km and was home to more than 7,000 people at the Heart of the City stands the Temple

of inscriptions at 60 M wide and nearly 30 m high it's one of the most magnificent monuments in the Maya [Music] world the actual function of this building remain 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 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 2 years Excavating this staircase the expectation of finding something really great grew and grew every single step that was UN cover was one step closer to this huge [Music] 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 is who is he when experts examined inscriptions on the temple they discovered a name pakal the great bakal the great was the most important King in palen's history it was a period of Peace of incredible developments in architecture craftsmanship took palen to its Peck 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 jewelry 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 craftmanship probably one of the most spectacular works of art done by Ancient Maya people The Mask has important spiritual significance mask represented the person in his youth this was an attempt to freeze youth for eternity in his way to the underworld treat yourself to the best gift in history this holiday season enjoy unlimited access to award-winning podcasts and

thousands of hours of original history documentaries released weekly exclusively on History hit there are topics for all history lovers from Pompei to D-Day sign up via the link in the description for an exclusive discount don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to explore the past like never before with history hit the Splendor and wealth of this incredible tomb made headlines around the world the discovery of pakal was one of the most significant archaeological discoveries of the last century it was a GameChanger could the groundbreaking new investigations at Copan reveal an even greater King inside this

Temple and can strange carvings help to point the way the city of Copan was one of the most important in the Maya world its monuments are covered with mysterious imagery Clues to how the Maya lived and died Renee Vel has been studying the site for 40 years in the early 20 Century the archeologist 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 old the 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 ctim menos finds answers in the pages of an ancient book it's known as The Dresden Codex and and it's about 800 years old before the Spanish Conquest there would have been thousands of these codices around the Maya world uh partially they didn't survive o to preservation but the greatest single loss of these books was caused by

the Spanish conquerors burning them as idolatry into 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 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 dresen 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 Mya 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 and 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 Renee Vel takes a closer look we know now that these text deal with historic events and historic people because we have the names for example of the kings of kopan the glyphs tell the story of the lives of Copan rulers recording births deaths and key events they are also propaganda commissioned by Kings to glorify themselves for future [Music] 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 tomb 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 [Music]

challenge the dust heat and humidity make working difficult but seichi is optimistic they will find a royal tomb nearby finding the tomb of one of Copan lost Kings could shed new light on the rise and fall of this great [Music] Kingdom what can mysterious carvings reveal about the city's ruling Dynasty David sedat investigates an ornate Stone altar found in Copan main plaza it shows the 16 rulers of Copan during its golden age four figures through aside and it starts here with green Ketel MAA 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 6 rulers to confirm his suspicions his team spent 15 years carefully tunneling 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 3 kilm of

tunnels David's team made the discovery of a lifetime [Music] 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 [Music] 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 Kettle bird and on the other side a great red Scarlet mcov so he spelled out the complete name of the Copan founder first green Kel ma 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 fth century ad the AR iological 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 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 carried 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 uh 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 M 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 purposefully buried by later rulers Mya Kings often

put new temples on top of older ones each wanted to build bu 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 cim menos 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 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 lost Kings inside one such Temple and what can stunning inscriptions reveal about the city's mysterious [Music] Dynasty 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 Ravel investigates the astonishing construction known as the hieroglyphic stairway the yogic stairway is one of the most important monuments in all the Maya word because it is the longest inscription known in Maya your Lees this sculpted library is 21 M 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 heric 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 the 15th king after Copan 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 remodled all the southern part of the r Plaza it represents himself at the bottom of all his construction and this is the reason why we think that it must be the

15th King who is buried there the fate of Copan 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 were they allies or enemies the answer May lie in another spectacular Maya sight in what is now Guatemala its name is tial tial 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 years over

a 100 years ago the first explorers came to tial and since then tial 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 Liar Liar uses aircraft equipped with lasers to scan the jungle and reveal objects hidden beneath the trees researchers from the pacunam liar initiative surveyed over 2,000 square kilm 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 surprised about it is the extense 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 10 times bigger than previously thought stripping away the trees also exposes roads linking one city to another where 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 is not all the cities have it some Mayan kings created alliances to help them become more powerful but the liar reveals that others weren't so Amic this is the wall of tial they discovering the entire landscape right here was all around tial this huge defensive wall shows that the people of tial weren't welcoming their neighbors in they were trying to keep them out before in the beginning we thought the 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 then tial 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 tal so afraid Edwin believes the liar could lead him to a clue when we received this image they found there was a Structure previously they thought it was just a natural hill what is inusual about this structure is their shape it's nothing that we ever

seen 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 the location now we can actually start to see it right there arriving at the mysterious Mound Edwin confirms what the liar suggested this is not a Maya building when we first saw this pyramid was kind of weird the layout and that were took our attention because the only structure that similar to that is 1,000 km from here in City call it teot

wakan teot wakan was one of the most powerful city states in meso America home to around 100,000 people Edwin believes this newly discovered structure is evidence that Invaders from teot wakan occupied takal in the 4th Century ad it suggests that in Maya Society competition and Power power struggles were widespread war was really important for the Maya always they were in some kind of battle between neighbors like any culture around the world they want to try to get 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 tal in 562 they sacrificed the city's King on his own altar the snake kings were masters of Maya Warfare later they also defeated pelen 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 [Music] IT tesi 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 lake bed sedment 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 anci ancient mea kings were buried in lavish tombs surrounded by treasures and one grave offering was essential Jade why did the Mayer favor Jade Above All Else Mary Lou ridinger 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 to tools this made it unique and valuable they felt that the Jade was indestructible

it has a shelf life of 400 million years is 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 broma form 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 jadeed she tests another

piece sank that proves that it's Jade so let's take this and make something beautiful out of it today technicians use Diamond tip swords to cut Jade but the meire only had stone tools how could they cut something as tough as Jade in the only Stone in Guatemala that was harder than Jade is garnet so they were using a bracet Garnet on the edge of their wooden tools in order to carve Jade Maya Craftsman 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 obtain power the world is all about who controls the resources it's 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 seichi Nakamura and his team be close to making a new discovery inside this [Music] Temple the team has installed photographic plates inside the tunnels it

will take several months to complete the scanning process while they wait seichi decides to excavate a collapsed Temple it's close to kanan'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 Royal Dynasty seichi believes it begins with the tragic death of the 13th King in the 8th Cent 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 seichi 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 [Music] [Music] world