Transcription
NARRATOR: The ancient Maya... one of the greatest civilizations in human history. Beneath the forests of Mexico and Central America lie the secrets of a sophisticated society that endured longer than the Roman Empire.
MAN: You're not supposed to have giant cities in a tropical forest.
NARRATOR: For decades archaeologists focused on the end of the ancient Maya.
MAN: Most Maya kingdoms were simply abandoned to the forest.
NARRATOR: But the start of Maya society holds as many mysteries as its fall.
MAN: When do we start seeing Maya civilization? That's a complex question.
NARRATOR: Now, a new discovery is blowing apart long held beliefs about the earliest Maya.
WOMAN: It would accommodate thousands, if not ten thousands, of people.
NARRATOR: A record-breaking monument has been found...
MAN: It's enormous. This is the most important finding in my career.
NARRATOR: ...hidden treasures unearthed...
WOMAN: And who's the lucky one?
WOMAN: Oi!
NARRATOR: ...and ancient skeletons exhumed.
WOMAN: This is the earliest dedicated burial ground that we know of in Central America.
NARRATOR: Shedding new light on a lost and ancient world.
MAN: It flips everything that we assumed.
NARRATOR: And exposing long lost secrets about the origin of the Maya civilization.
♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
Hidden beneath dense forests... lie the ruins of an ancient civilization. The lost world of the Maya. The Maya constructed towering pyramids... lavish temples... and vast cities. They developed writing... and mastered astronomy.
MAN: It was a world of mythology. It was a world of religion.
NARRATOR: The civilization occupied a Maya region that stretched from the south of modern-day Mexico into Belize, Guatemala and beyond. They were united by belief and ritual but never a single ruler or language. Today much of what we know about the ancient Maya comes from the so-called golden age, the Classic period between about 250 and 900 A.D. when many great city-states flourished. But it's around 400 or 500 B.C. that the hallmarks of a true civilization appeared.
HEATHER HURST: We see a lot of growth, we see towns and large cities being built in numerous, numerous locations. We see roads, we see giant agricultural terraces, we see new forms of artwork, we see writing.
DAVID STUART: Writing is a huge development in any civilization, in any era of the world.
FRANCISCO ESTRADA-BELLI: If they had any writing before 400 or 500 B.C., it has not survived, and they don't seem to have had much use of it.
NARRATOR: The big mystery is what happened before these developments? What is the origin of the Maya as a civilization? Now an archaeological breakthrough could answer these questions. A new discovery has been made on the western edge of the Maya region in the Mexican state of Tabasco at a site known as Aguada Fenix.
♪ ♪
Daniela Triadan leads a team of archaeologists from the University of Arizona. They thought this relatively unstudied landscape might hide undiscovered clues about the origin of the Maya. And their hunch paid off. Beneath the trees and farms of this area is something remarkable. A structure so immense that it had hidden in plain sight.
DANIELA TRIADAN: It is such a big scale that when you walk over the surface, it looks like a natural landscape. And all of this that we're standing on, that we're seeing here, is artificial. It is just unbelievable.
NARRATOR: From the air, thick vegetation obscures the true shape of what's here. But a powerful technology called LiDAR lets the team peer beneath the trees.
(engine rumbling)
The system fires laser pulses from an airplane to the ground, which pass through small gaps in the foliage and bounce back, generating precise three-dimensional maps of the land beneath.
♪ ♪
At a lab near Aguada Fenix, the team's co-leader, Takeshi Inomata, uses LiDAR images to examine the site.
TAKESHI INOMATA: If you want to make a detailed map, you spend a couple years and then cover only one square kilometer. But now with LiDAR, you can cover that area a thousand times wider in just a few days.
NARRATOR: The results expose something astonishing. An immense raised area with edges too regular and straight to be natural.
TAKESHI: There's something enormous. A very important site that nobody knew about before. That was a big surprise for us.
NARRATOR: This mysterious structure is almost 1.5 kilometers long and 400 meters wide. It's a giant raised platform larger than 85 football fields.
♪ ♪
TAKESHI: So, this is the main rectangular platform of Aguada Fenix. This a very well-designed intentional construction.
DANIELA: Nobody knew that this landscape is artificial until we had the high-resolution LiDAR. I'm standing on one edge of the platform, and I can actually see the other one. And the distance is unbelievable. And all of it was built by people.
NARRATOR: Now the team need to figure out exactly what they've found.
♪ ♪
(digging)
At the center of the platform, they're excavating directly into the structure.
TAKESHI, TRANSLATED: We need to clear this place. Clean it further.
WOMAN: Sí.
NARRATOR: By stripping away the soil layer by layer, they hunt for clues about the monument's construction. Their findings confirm that this is no natural feature.
TAKESHI: So, we see the series of constructions. You have this fill with red soil, and then covered by this white floor. So, we reconstruct the sequence.
NARRATOR: This entire platform was formed from layers of earth, carefully stacked by human hand to a height of 10 to 15 meters. The team have discovered something truly remarkable.
♪ ♪
It's an ancient monument larger by volume than anything ever found in the Maya region before. Formed from some four million cubic meters of earth, a volume larger than Egypt's Great Pyramid. When it was finished, this artificial plateau must have dominated the landscape.
DANIELA: This whole construction had several construction episodes and was built directly on the bedrock.
NARRATOR: The platform has built-in access ramps-- four in total--forming gentle sloping paths to the top. This mysterious monument was built for something important, but what?
DANIELA: You could probably spend decades working at the site. So, what we have been trying to do is we have been trying to strategically excavate to get the most information or the most important information at the beginning.
NARRATOR: And the first piece of information to figure out that will help answer how Aguada Fenix fits into our current knowledge of the Maya is when this platform was built.
♪ ♪
(bird chirping)
There are no inscriptions or writing that might contain a date anywhere to be found, so the team need to carefully hunt for organic material that can be dated. And at the heart of the platform they uncover a clue that may prove decisive to their investigation.
MAN: Carbón.
NARRATOR: This piece of charcoal is the burnt residue of organic matter. By measuring the ratio of radioactive and stable carbon isotopes, archaeologists can determine the age.
CLAUDIA, TRANSLATED: This is the most important thing we're looking for, because it is the key to giving a date to the elements we have here.
(speaking Spanish)
NARRATOR: When the team analyze pieces of charcoal found deep within the structure, they discover something that will transform everything they thought they knew about the people of the Maya region. That ancient builders began constructing Aguada Fenix around 1100 B.C. and continued to build at the site until 800 B.C.. This is not only the largest ancient monument ever unearthed in the Maya region but also the oldest. Now the team has a real mystery to solve: Was Aguada Fenix built by the earliest Maya? Archaeologists traditionally thought that the development of Maya civilization was gradual, with small villages beginning to emerge between 1000 to 350 B.C. and the population becoming increasingly settled, culminating in the huge monuments the Maya would become famous for. Aguada Fenix turns that idea on its head.
TAKESHI: Certainly this is the most important finding in my career. It has really a huge implication for the understanding of development of Maya civilization.
NARRATOR: Takeshi and Daniela need to hunt for more clues that might prove a link to the Maya. They want to know what it was used for and how it was built.
NARRATOR: Ancient builders of the giant platform at Aguada Fenix assembled it in layers using clay and earth.
TAKESHI: We see that the construction happened over various episodes. They built one version. Then years later they came back and then did another version of construction on top of the earlier one.
NARRATOR: So where did the construction material come from? Daniela has uncovered evidence that suggest the builders didn't have to travel far.
♪ ♪
DANIELA: So, here we're on the southern part of the platform, You see the slope, and that's the actual edge of the platform. We have these type of holes all around Aguada Fenix, and we think those are the burrow pits that they use for the soils to actually construct the big platform.
NARRATOR: There were no pack animals or carts at the time, so everything had to be moved on foot.
TAKESHI: People were taking soil from various places, but a relatively nearby area, and then brought in to this platform and then put this soil there.
NARRATOR: The discovery allows investigators to build a picture of what the construction must have looked like. And it was immense. The builders of Aguada Fenix needed to move some four million cubic meters of earth. A task that took 10 to 13 million days of the builders' work and that was completed in some 200 years. The construction of Aguada Fenix from earth might seem simple. But new evidence to the north of the site suggests that the people who built this platform were sophisticated engineers.
♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
Takeshi's team has unearthed a mysterious stone structure. It's a dike, built to control water, and the remains of a canal.
TAKESHI: This is probably the dike that the ancient people built. And then this may have been the canal where water can run out. Then in here we found white material which make some nice living or walking surface. On top of it, they built this dike with stones and soil mix.
NARRATOR: The discovery shows that the builders of Aguada Fenix had a sophisticated knowledge of hydraulic engineering.
TAKESHI: Possibly they may have had some kind of arrangement to adjust the water level. Some cases they may let the water flow from here, or some cases they may stop the water to control the water level.
NARRATOR: This new find shows that the builders could modify the landscape around their giant platform.
♪ ♪
They might have used the dike to control the flow of rain or floodwater, artificially raising the level of a natural lake beside their immense monument, perhaps to ensure a steady supply of water or even for symbolic reasons.
♪ ♪
TAKESHI: This water management work itself was probably pretty substantial work. And then probably they shaped this shore of the lake, made it in a straight line over there, the southern part. And then the other side, they made a pretty elaborate waterfront area with a straight shore.
NARRATOR: The discovery is evidence of the sophistication and engineering knowledge of the ancient builders of Aguada Fenix. Now a find at the platform itself suggests that it was built using a surprising method.
♪ ♪
Digging 2.5 meters below the surface... archaeologist Maria Belen Mendez has unearthed something strange.
MARIA BELEN MENDEZ, TRANSLATED: I have never seen this kind of organized and systematized filling.
NARRATOR: Materials of different colors and a collection of lighter colored rocks that resemble a wall.
MARIA: This layer of stones holds back the earth of this color so that is not confused with the earth on the other side. So it's like a separation that divides people's work. On this side a group of people probably fill with one color, and on the other side other people fill with another color. They make this wall so that the colors don't mix.
NARRATOR: The builders of Aguada Fenix formed tens of thousands of cells... measuring one to two meters wide and up to a meter deep. Then they filled the center of each with earth in shades of green, blue, red and black.
DANIELA: People are clearly laying down these different colors in their own cell, and they have their own preferences. And I think what it means is that each of these cells represents a group of people. And it's their part of the construction that they're contributing to.
NARRATOR: But surprisingly, once completed, builders hid their immense checkerboard with a thick layer of white earth.
TAKESHI: So that tells us that it's not just the final product. How they made it must have had a symbolic ritual significance for those people.
NARRATOR: It's an important clue suggesting this was a ceremonial site that brought people together for its construction. And now the team has discovered why it was built. When Takeshi examined the LiDAR scans of Aguada Fenix, he spotted something astonishing. Pyramid-like structures on a platform extending from the side of the monument. What did the ancient people use them for? And is there a link to the Maya civilization?
♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
NARRATOR: The mysterious pyramid-like mounds that Takeshi discovered are covered in thick forest today.
TAKESHI: We are on top of the western pyramid or mound. From the center line of this mound to the center of the eastern mound seems to have very intentional alignment.
NARRATOR: Takeshi thinks these two mounds were assembled by the ancient builders of Aguada Fenix for a very special ritual.
♪ ♪
It's a layout known as an astronomical complex, or E-Group. The higher mound in the west allowed ancient astronomers to observe the sunrise compared to the mound directly to its east. The technique allowed these people to calculate precise dates in the year. Aguada Fenix was built as a ceremonial gathering place.
♪ ♪
TAKESHI: So, the sun rises in this direction on February 24th, then it comes back, and then rises on this direction on October 17th. Interestingly, the interval between October 17th and February 24th is 130 days. That's a very significant number. 130 is half of 260-day calendar.
NARRATOR: Takeshi has uncovered a vital clue that links this site with the great Maya civilization.
♪ ♪
The Maya used a calendar called the Sacred Round to track important activities related to the gods. It was formed of 260 days. 260 was a combination of the numbers 1 to 13 coupled with 20 different day names.
DAVID: We have 20 digits, right? We have ten fingers and ten toes. So the number 20 comes directly out of the human body. Their cosmos was a mirror image in some ways of the human body. So this is a fundamental kind of template that they use in their numerology, in their calendar, and in the structure of the cosmology in general.
FRANCISCO: So we think these ceremonies were certainly dedicated to the sun but also with the growing season for maize. So it's a whole complex, I think, that speaks to these ceremonies having to do with agriculture, with the organization of the cosmos and the time and the calendar.
NARRATOR: Throughout the history of the ancient Maya, astronomical complexes were central to ceremonial sites they built. And Aguada Fenix is the oldest such complex in the entire Maya region. The discovery suggests that Aguada Fenix was an open-air temple, an immense sanctuary and meeting place. A place of pilgrimage that hosted huge ceremonies... just as the Maya would do at the height of their civilization.
♪ ♪
Pilgrims accessed the platform via four giant ramps located at its ends. Each one is 120 meters long and 50 meters wide.
DANIELA: Here you could have probably ten people go next to each other up this ramp. And we think the northern part and the southern part, this is how people, potentially, ceremonially accessed the big platforms.
NARRATOR: The 560,000 square meters of the platform allowed a huge number of people to gather.
DANIELA: If you just look at the dimensions of it, it would accommodate thousands, if not ten thousands of people.
NARRATOR: But the team have found no evidence that these people lived at Aguada Fenix in a city.
TAKESHI: There were different kinds of people gathering here. Some people are more mobile coming from distant places. And some of them may have been ritual specialists who did mainly the solar observation, organization of ritual.
NARRATOR: Now a remarkable discovery is exposing one of these people. The tropical environment here means that organic matter doesn't preserve well, making a discovery to the northeast of the platform very exciting-- the skeletal remains of a 3,000-year-old person.
♪ ♪
TAKESHI: He was buried in a sitting position, his legs and knees like this, like this kind of position.
NARRATOR: Examining the bones reveal they're from an adult man who carried out physical labor.
TAKESHI: He had some pattern of bone which indicate that he did a very hard physical work, including carrying a heavy load, using a band put on the forehead and then carry the heavy load in the back. One possibility was he was one of the workers who built the platform.
NARRATOR: Takeshi's team found evidence of this man's diet by analyzing his teeth.
TAKESHI: This person ate a relatively good amount of maize. So, some people may have been adopting a more sedentary way of life with more maize consumption. So, we are seeing that change in their lifestyle. Before 1100 B.C., many people are probably mobile because they didn't build substantial residential structures. They were moving by season, and probably they were in a transitional stage.
NARRATOR: The discovery suggests that the people who built Aguada Fenix were beginning to settle and become more sedentary agriculturists. Could they have planted the seeds for the Maya civilization? The team need to find more evidence.
NARRATOR: At the heart of the astronomical E-Group complex, the team dig on the center line between the pyramid mounds. This is where archaeologists have found buried artifacts at other ancient sites. And they're about to strike lucky. Claudia Alvarado is in charge of the excavation, and her team has unearthed an unusual green stone.
CLAUDIA ALVARADO, TRANSLATED: This is where they found it.
MARIA, TRANSLATED: Just below! And who's the lucky one?
Oi!
NARRATOR: It's a jade stone, the most precious and sacred in the Maya region. And it must have been placed here intentionally.
CLAUDIA: It doesn't come from here. In any case, it's not its natural place.
NARRATOR: The team record the exact location and orientation of the stone before removing the precious clue.
CLAUDIA: We will dig the ground, to see if we find more of these stones.
NARRATOR: The discovery of jade at Aguada Fenix is more evidence of a link to the Maya. Green jade stone was highly prized by the civilization. They used it in funerary masks and other ritual objects.
FRANCISCO: There are sources of jade in the Mexican side of the Maya region. But a lot of the finer jade came from the other side of the Maya lowlands. Jade was used mostly for ritual purposes.
HEATHER: It was a rare material. So it was something that was hard to get. It was also physically hard. It was very hard to carve. It was so durable, it was so lasting.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: At Aguada Fenix, the team want to find out what the builders used jade for.
(speaking Spanish)
CLAUDIA, TRANSLATED: The piece is clean, Takeshi.
TAKESHI, TRANSLATED: Very good, let's take a look.
CLAUDIA: It looks more polished on one side.
TAKESHI: Yes, it's polished on this side.
NARRATOR: Takeshi's team has found other polished jade stones, too, including axe heads.
TAKESHI: If we see those stones, they are not standardized, many different shapes and then different color. So that means that that they obtained those individual pieces through different connections. And then for the big ceremony, they put them together and then deposited them.
NARRATOR: One piece of Jade has been carved into a tool of some sort.
TAKESHI: This part is broken, but originally it must have had a pointed end. Probably used for bloodletting rituals. In case of male, they pierced the male organ. In case of females, they pierced the tongue.
NARRATOR: The practice of bloodletting, a kind of self-sacrifice, was an important ritual in the Maya world. It was sometimes performed by rulers in public as a way of demonstrating their connection with the sacred world. Bloodletting and jade objects alongside the sophisticated mystical calendar and tracking of the sun offer further evidence of a link between Aguada Fenix and the Maya. But these cultural ideas were also common amongst other ancient societies who existed in this part of the Americas. Now, a new find will offer a more direct link. Near the jade stone cache, the team find a series of ceramic bowls and pots.
DANIELA, TRANSLATED: This is the first big discovery we've made!
NARRATOR: Daniela has the task of piecing them back together.
DANIELA: It's like a 3D puzzle. Difficult puzzle. These are mostly jars and relatively rare, and we think at Aguada Fenix they may actually have been used for feasting.
NARRATOR: Ceramics are a crucial part of any archaeologist's investigation because styles, techniques and materials can be traced to individual regions or people. And Daniela sees a link to an ancient Maya city called Ceibal, the oldest currently known.
DANIELA: At that time, if you look at the whole Maya area, we have very localized traditions in ceramics. But the Aguada Fenix ceramics look like Ceibal ceramics, I think these people are very closely related.
NARRATOR: Could Aguada Fenix and Ceibal have been built by the same people? Ceibal is located 180 kilometers away from Aguada Fenix in Guatemala.
♪ ♪
Both sites are connected by the mighty Usumacinta River and its tributaries. Archaeologist Melissa Burham studies the origin of the Maya civilization. The ancient city of Ceibal mostly lies in ruins amongst the jungle. It's an important site for understanding the birth of the Maya, because it's one of the earliest and longest lasting Maya cities.
MELISSA BURHAM: We don't know how many people lived here. Maybe 10,000 to 60,000 people. It is a really large city. So here in the very center, you know, thousands, but then in the greater area, tens of thousands of people, too.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: Excavations carried out over more than ten years have revealed structures remarkably similar to those found at Aguada Fenix.
♪ ♪
MELISSA: The most surprising thing about Ceibal itself is that this area that we are on right here is actually on this very large platform. So, before, we thought it was just a natural rise, we didn't realize that it was actually very square like you can see right here. This was definitely modified by people to look like a square, which is similar, in a sense, to Aguada Fenix.
NARRATOR: The prominent stone monuments of Ceibal were built centuries after Aguada Fenix, including a grand pyramid of which only a few stones remain. The pyramid once stood 28 meters tall, but it's what archaeologists discover below that surprises them. A few meters below ground they find a two-meter-tall pyramid-like structure on a wide platform. It appears to be an astronomical complex laid out just like the E-Group at Aguada Fenix. And it dates to 950 B.C. It's the oldest structure at Ceibal, built little more than 100 years after the giant platform at Aguada Fenix was started.
MELISSA: We have axe caches all the way along the central line here, very, very similar to what we see at Aguada Fenix.
NARRATOR: The similarities between Aguada Fenix and this earliest occupation of Ceibal are clear. And a grisly discovery suggests how they are connected.
NARRATOR: Melissa and her team unearthed an ancient necropolis in this clearing within one of the earliest Maya cities, Ceibal.
MELISSA: So here is where we excavated in this area right here. It was about four by four meters. And we kept expanding because we kept finding the burials. And it's only about a meter, a meter and a half down under our feet where we're at, and they are just everywhere.
NARRATOR: They eventually exhume 13 skeletons of men, women and children.
♪ ♪
MELISSA: It is like this place was used specifically as a cemetery, as a burial ground, which is a totally unique, different practice that we didn't know about. And this is also the earliest dedicated burial ground that we know of in Central America.
NARRATOR: Could these bones prove a link between Ceibal and Aguada Fenix?
♪ ♪
The team send the ancestral remains to Guatemala City for further investigation. Juan-Manuel Palomo specializes in the study of bones. The hard enamel of teeth captures tiny isotopic markers that can be used to decipher where a person lived and even if they migrated to a new location.
(speaking Spanish)
JUAN-MANUEL PALOMO, TRANSLATED: This individual was born in the Ceibal region. And when we look at the data from his third molar, it falls perfectly in the local area of Ceibal. So this individual spent his early adult years, and obviously died, in the Ceibal region.
NARRATOR: But three skeletons have markers that show they grew up away from Ceibal.
JUAN-MANUEL: For these individuals, the strontium isotopes suggest that they were migrants.
MELISSA: Our hypothesis is basically that when the E-Group was made, like 950 B.C., a group of people might have introduced these ideas from the Aguada Fenix area about ritual, about cosmology.
NARRATOR: The link between Aguada Fenix and Ceibal is a vital clue. Archaeological work at Ceibal shows occupation of the site from 950 B.C. until after the end of the Maya golden age, 2,000 years later.
♪ ♪
For Daniela, back at Aguada Fenix, Ceibal helps tackle the question of whether the builders of the giant platform are ancestors of the Maya.
DANIELA: The whole research is about basically when Maya people become what we would recognize as Maya people. And when is this happening and how is this happening? And Ceibal, where we have an E-Group at 950 and nobody would have a problem calling these people ancestors of Maya. We just happened to be 180 kilometers to the west of it. But if I look at the materiality of what's going on, I have no problem in putting these people into the same kind of cultural sphere.
NARRATOR: The evidence suggests that we may not be able to call the builders of Aguada Fenix Maya, but that they probably laid the groundwork for the great civilization. Now archaeologists are uncovering clues about a link between Aguada Fenix and another ancient civilization.
♪ ♪
The evidence lies 380 kilometers west in the Mexican state of Veracruz at an ancient site called San Lorenzo. It was in these fertile plains that a powerful civilization called the Olmec developed and thrived. The Olmec first appear around 1500 B.C., 400 years before Aguada Fenix was started. They are the oldest civilization in this part of the Americas.
HEATHER: Olmec culture is one of the early kind of moments where we definitively say, okay, this is a pattern of shared beliefs and practices where there's recognizably a cultural phenomenon.
DAVID: This is where I think we see some of the earliest architecture and sculpture that is reflecting a mindset and an idea of culture that later civilizations grow out of.
♪ ♪
NARRATOR: The remains of the Olmec city known as San Lorenzo are buried beneath a wide plateau.
♪ ♪
Archaeologist Virginia Arieta Baizabal studies this long lost culture.
VIRGINIA ARIETA BAIZABAL, TRANSLATED: So this was the first capital of the Olmecs, one of the first capitals of the world. There were many people, many houses, many buildings. It's a bit like going to the capital today, to Mexico City.
NARRATOR: This landscape once looked very different. The Olmec built San Lorenzo on naturally high ground, which they artificially leveled and shaped using an estimated 8 million cubic meters of fill. The platform towers 70 meters above the plains, protecting their capital city from floods during the rainy season.
(speaking Spanish)
VIRGINIA: We calculated that it took 14 to 18 million working hours. Construction only took place during three or four months a year, during the dry season. So it was periodic work that required a lot of organization, a lot of people and a lot of effort.
NARRATOR: The Olmec appear to have had similar ideas to Aguada Fenix's builders. Aguada Fenix was built long after San Lorenzo. And Takeshi has found a link between the two. This breakthrough came from examining LiDAR scans.
TAKESHI: San Lorenzo also had a very enormous artificial plateau. In this image you see this very straight line. On the other side, it's very, very subtle, but you see another straight line. So there was this rectangular space here.
NARRATOR: The layout is remarkably similar to Aguada Fenix.
TAKESHI: So, this image shows Aguada Fenix on this side, San Lorenzo on this side. Both of them have 20 edge platforms. And then both of them have this rectangular plaza space, and then on top of it, Aguada Fenix has two causeways from the south. San Lorenzo also probably had two access ways from the south. So I think that Aguada Fenix followed the format developed originally at San Lorenzo.
NARRATOR: The builders of Aguada Fenix seem to have shared ideas with the city of their neighbors. But how much of the Olmec culture did the builders share?
NARRATOR: In the mid 1900s archaeologists excavating at the ancient Olmec city of San Lorenzo make a startling discovery-- a series of huge statues sculpted from basalt boulders that weigh many tons.
(speaking Spanish)
VIRGINIA: They are thought to represent leaders. Why? First of all, because of the cost of transporting this basalt from over 60 kilometers away. This implies that a leader financed this transport. The function of these heads was to legitimize power. We are in front of a leader.
NARRATOR: The colossal heads show that Olmec society was highly structured.
VIRGINIA: It was a highly hierarchical society, a centralized government that had political, economic, religious and cosmological control and power, capable of governing an entire city of more than 12,000 inhabitants.
NARRATOR: So will evidence of the same strong social hierarchy and powerful leaders be found at Aguada Fenix? So far the team have found no evidence of elite people. To the west of the platform, they do unearth a single statue, however. But this is no king. The statue probably represents a pig-like animal called a white-lipped peccary.
TAKESHI: That's a pretty nice sculpture.
DANIELA: Until today, this is the earliest fully sculpted stone piece in what becomes the Maya area.
NARRATOR: It was carved about 3,000 years ago from limestone.
TAKESHI: So it's a relatively naturalistic representation of animal, which is actually very different from Olmec sculpture. So the Olmec people emphasize the representation of powerful people. So, in this sense it seems to represent very different concept. So that's one of the reasons that we think that the social organization of Aguada Fenix was different from San Lorenzo.
DANIELA: Yeah.
NARRATOR: The findings suggest something surprising-- that the immense platform of Aguada Fenix was built in the absence of a central ruler or elites who could control labor and force people to work. A dramatically different organization to the Olmec.
TAKESHI: We are seeing enormous construction happening in a very early stage without very developed hierarchical organization.
NARRATOR: The groups of semi-nomadic people who decided to build the giant platform at Aguada Fenix weren't settled and unified enough to be called a distinct civilization. But the discoveries here suggest that building this monument lay the groundwork for Maya society.
TAKESHI: Often people think that the society develop, then that makes construction. That's partly true. But another important aspect is this kind of building project makes the society. And that's what happened here. Through the process of construction project, they had to develop new form of social organization, new form of division of labor. That possibly led to later Maya society.
DANIELA: Certainly, when we look at the timing, I do think that Aguada Fenix could have been the start or the foundation of what we call later Maya civilization.
NARRATOR: This site has transformed archaeologists' understanding of the Maya.
FRANCISCO: It pushes back the date of the beginning. We might say that the Maya civilization even begins around 1100 B.C. I think we need more evidence to say that. But it certainly looks promising.
HEATHER: It's a great expression of how discoveries can be made right where you've been for a long time. And sometimes things are so big or so subtle, you, you just don't see them. The work at Aguada Fenix also really just changes our scope of what is monumental.
DAVID: Aguada Fenix turns out to be the Maya at their most monumental. So, it flips everything that we assumed. It flips this idea that civilization is this gradual growth from nothing.
NARRATOR: From the astronomical E-Group complex for observing the sun and marking the passing of time... to the jade treasures, ceramics, and skeletons, all the evidence points towards a time when there was a huge amount of movement amongst people in the Maya area and links with neighboring cultures like the Olmec... a massive flow of ideas and coming together of people that would be the foundation of Maya civilization.
Captioned by Side Door Media Services