[DAVID YETMAN] The Mexican state of Chiapas shares a border with Guatemala.

Until the 21st century, most of its people were Mayas or descendants of Mayas.

Today, one very traditional people continue their lives close to the earth in the Lacandon jungle.

Their information is proving critical to understanding the archeology of that region.

[ARCHAEOLOGIST] They were creating the landscape and they're creating the water scape.

{UPBEAT GUITAR CONCLUDES} [ANNOUNCER] Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Robert and Carol Dorsey.

The Guilford Fund.

Arch and Laura Brown.

And Hugh and Joyce Bell.

{THEME PLAYS} [DAVID YETMAN] Chiapas is Mexico's southernmost state, bordering on Guatemala.

Our trip begins in Palenque, an important archeological site, now a major city on the northern edge of the state.

The Maya people have been building monumental architectural sites for about 3000 years, or even more.

{UPBEAT LATIN GUITAR} For my money, Palenque is the one that has the most magnificent exposure of the great accomplishments of the Mayas.

The monuments that we see today are really the result of the accomplishments of the ancient Maya engineers, but also huge amounts of labor and money invested to restore them.

A minimum of ten years of constant labor.

{GUITAR CONCLUDES} Palenque is situated in the great tropical forest of southern Mexico.

That forest is one of the most diverse in the world.

As magnificent as this site is and extensive, only 10% of the original site has been restored.

The rest remains covered by intractable jungle.

I'm actually walking on the ancient Maya trail, probably 1500 years old, maybe more.

The hundreds of centuries have obscured it, but every once in a while it's revealed.

This is as close to virgin rainforest as you can find in most places.

The forest here usually abounds with different sounds.

The sound people like to hear most of all, or at least I do, is that of the howler monkeys who sound like a railroad engine coming down the line.

{HOWLER MONKEY IN DISTANCE} The abundance of plants and trees and huge trees suggests that the soil here is very fertile and deep, but it's not.

That canopy is often unbroken, so sunlight has a hard time getting down to the ground.

One of the things we find out about the ancient Mayas is that they were expert water engineers.

This is an aqueduct, an underwater conductor.

And here is the original tunnel they constructed to move water to places they needed.

And then from here, this pool continues in a tunnel of only a certain size.

Downstream, and emerges on this side of the road.

And again, in a very controlled fashion.

Here we have the the tunnel coming out with the corbled arch that the Mayas invented.

{UPBEAT GUITAR BEGINS} {DAVID ANNOUNCES} From Palenque, we travel southeast to a popular waterfall formed by a river; one of the many rivers that drain from the southern hills.

[DAVE OVER WATERFALL] What we see here is a result of water passing through tiny little cracks, crevices or even streams, and dissolving limestone.

And it will continue to grow and grow and grow.

And the waterfall, which is on one side now, will very slowly move over to the other side.

The dissolved limestone also gives the water it's blue green color and it is called the land of blue green water.

{DAVID ANNOUNCES} Farther to the southeast, not far from Guatemala, we arrive at the town of Metzabok, a settlement of Lacandon Mayans.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} It sits on the edge of a lake of the same name.

[ENRIQUE VALENZUELA] {SPEAKING SPANISH} [VOICEOVER] The name “Metzabok” means God of thunder and lightning.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} These are stories from my late grandparents.

They would tell a story that the lightning has power.

And that's why you see a big flash when it comes out.

Like it's burning.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} That's called “Zabak” in Mayan.

So they named the god after the Metzabok lagoon nearby.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} [DAVID] So this is local corn from the “Milpa” here.

So these baskets that the Lacandones make actually are made from a vine.

[COMMUNITY MEMBER] {SPEAKING SPANISH} [DAVID] In his case, his mother used one of these baskets to clean the corn and then put the corn in here after it soaked and they will swish it around, the water would run off the bottom.

Then they would be left with just a corn ready to be ground.

{UPBEAT ELECTRONIC MUSIC} {TORTILLAS CRACKLE} {DAVID ANNOUNCES} At Metzabok, we join a group of archeologists, including my friend Joel Palka.

{JOEL SPEAKING} They have conducted research here for 25 years.

[JOEL PALKA] And we'll see the size of the city and the platforms and the mounds.

And they got that sediment and that Earth from modifying in here, the, around the lakes, using that then sediment to construct the city.

But instead of having 1 or 2 main lakes then, they created several lakes and they brought mangroves in to shore up the sides of the fish ponds.

So there's a 2500 year old city here.

And then the pilgrims were coming here to the lake to to give offerings from all over the place.

And because this is an origin place, or, and also a place of plenty.

[SANTIAGO JUAREZ] They didn't do anything small.

Everything's done big here.

So large structures just everywhere.

Entire mountain facades have been modified so you could see there's a rectangular platform and a small pyramid structure on top of that.

{AMBIENT GUITAR} [ENRIQUE] {SPEAKING SPANISH} [VOICEOVER] How many species of trees do I have?

Well, I have cedar, mahogany, “Guanacastre,” or Devil's Ear tree, lychee, pecan, papaya, “Nance,” or yellow cherry, avocado and lime.

I have various types of fruit trees.

I also sell mangoes and pineapples.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} I plant in the middle of the fruit tree beds and cultivate corn too, along with beans and squash.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} We've already taken them out and left them on the top of the ground so that the soil doesn't become malnourished.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} The corn becomes organic fertilizer and returns to the soil.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} [DAVID] This particular squash they don't raise for food they may raise it for the gourd itself, but the traditional “Milpa,” corn field, is based on corn, beans and squash.

The three sisters.

[SANTIAGO] So right across the street when we had that road, there's an entire group of mounds even larger than that one.

All clustered together here.

[DAVID] And that's now covered by forest.

[SANTIAGO] Yes, yes.

Right now we're at the dead center of the, central plaza area.

So we see this kind of long stretch of forest here.

Almost looks like elevated.

That's not a hill.

That's one of the original, long structures.

There's a big group of 12 large mounds over here, and it connects straight to the mound that we saw in Enriques “milpa.” “Sacle” translates to White Road, an elevated space that was seen as a way of connecting two important spaces.

So you can almost see the big temple over here to the left.

And there is, yeah, Enriques “milpa” right there.

The ancient people who built this city around 800 BC essentially just flattened out this entire landscape to extend it out into different directions.

But what they were doing was more religiously focused.

So the realigning the hills to astronomical movements, to solar movements.

And because of that kind of terraforming, they created these artificially flat spaces that the Lacandon are using for agriculture.

And if we think about how the city is organized, think of it as a collective of large families forming together for the first time to create the first cities.

{MYSTERIOIUS GUITAR} We're looking at something that's about a thousand years older than Palenque.

{MYSTERIOUS GUITAR} So originally when we first got here in 2010, we were mapping with a lazy theodolite to see if we could get a 3D model.

Now, that process got sped up by the lidar.

A three dimensional laser scan of a space.

When you have that in a computer, you could digitally remove all the trees and vegetation to just see a highly accurate ground model.

There was a recognition that these were very powerful spaces.

What we understand about the populations ancient past, we're just scratching the surface of it.

So the pre-classic it seems to get more and more interesting.

[DAVID] Archeologists speak of periods which helps them identify and classify how old certain archeological sites are.

Pre-classic, classic, and post-classic and pre-classic are more difficult to excavate.

But they also tell where these people come from and what were they doing 2000 years ago.

{MYSTERIOUS AMBIENT DRUMS} {SANTIAGO] If I zoom in, as I said, the road that we rode in on and you can see it right here.

[DAVID] That was the Maya Highway Department that built that.

[SANTIAGO] Exactly.

[DAVID] 2000 years ago?

[SANTIAGO] Yeah.

And all by hand, one basket load at a time.

They're moving literally tons of soil by hand to make these spaces.

{MYSTERIOUS GUITAR} [JOEL] The mountain has been split.

According to Lacandon and other Maya people, has been split with an axe where the lightning bolt split it and sheared off one side.

And you can see there's a big crack in the middle top of the mountain.

The God or God split this.

So then the water would come out and the corn seeds and human souls, animal souls, the souls of plants, souls of fish would then be released, and then people have access to them.

{GUITAR CONCLUDES} So what's important about this is, is that everybody in Maya archeology looks at how people were building up platforms, leveling off areas to build, temples and houses.

But here, in this case, it's where they've excavated down, where they've estimated and modified, not the landscape, but the water scape.

Now, there's probably a construction there in the middle, you see, there's like a levee or a fish weir right in the middle where they would control the populations of the fish, or that would be useful for capturing them.

You see that?

It looks like a bridge, almost like a walkway.

That's construction.

They were creating the landscape and they're creating the water scape.

So they'd be able to use the areas around the water and the water itself and places that they were building up on with all the sediment to live in their city.

So the fish tank is actually two miles long, you dont realize it's artificial.

The garden is ten miles long, and you don't realize because it's so large.

This lake is a sacred lake, and there's cliffs coming out of the lake everywhere.

And over here we're going to this cliff, which is important because there's a large cave behind it.

And so Maya selected this cliff to first paint, to paint some, probably people performing a ritual.

There's two people walking kind of in single file.

That cave and that painting from 2000 years ago attracted Maya from 500 years ago to carve a feathered serpent.

This sacred place attracted, Aztec traders.

And I know that because of that feathered serpent, one, two, half the obsidian that we're finding in the excavations is from the Aztec capital in central Mexico.

{UPBEAT GUITAR BEGINS} So it's an Earth, water and war god.

And it's all of those because Tláloc and Metzabok are the the lord of the inside the earth, and water and underworld where dead souls go.

But at the same time, since they are rain gods or rain deities, they control lightning.

And in conflict, if you need help, then you would summon Tláloc to throw lightning bolts at your enemies.

It's swimming on top of the water, which I've only seen once.

That's fantastic.

2000 years ago, Maya coming in to visit the sacred mountain behind us, came over here and flattened this entire area, filled it in, and then built at least six tall pyramids on top of that flattened area.

In between those pyramids, they put flat plaza places so they could perform their rituals, dances.

{HOWLER MONKEY IN DISTANCE} And a lot of the local people will say that the howler monkeys calling for the rain gods calling the clouds to come and dump rain.

{MONKEYS} {WATER SPLASHES} So the neat thing is: a lot of the temples are aligned to point towards the Mirador mountain and to point towards the sun setting behind it.

Origins of the Tulija River are right where the sun is setting as well.

So not only were they shaping the land and shaping the water scape for food, but also there's this religious connection between the movement of the sun.

{CONTEMPLATIVE PIANO} [FABIOLA SANCHEZ] So this is a very collaborative project.

So we work with the community.

So they are always involved in this process.

{CONTEMPLATIVE PIANO} [RAFAEL TARANO] {SPEAKING SPANISH} [VOICEOVER] Were already losing our traditions from before.

Like me, I've worn this tunic since I was born, as I grew up.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} {SPEAKING SPANISH} As the elderly have passed away, young people have lost their traditions.

But they still speak Spanish and Mayan.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} {SPEAKING SPANISH} [DAVID] Somewhat unusual for any young people now to have their hair long and among the Lacandones and to wear the tunic.

The problem is they're much more widely traveled now.

And if they wear those and they have their hair long, when they go into the larger towns or cities, people make fun of them.

And so they've they've given up that custom.

It's quite refreshing to see this fellow here wearing the tunic.

He's a little bit embarrassed by it, but he obviously likes it though.

Because for centuries this is their traditional costume.

The long hair and the white tunic identified Lacandones.

And that is now fast disappearing as they become more cosmopolitan.

{ACOUSTIC GUITAR CONTINUES} [JOEL] The project started out as coming here to investigate Spanish conquest-era Maya cultures.

But then we got here and we started doing surveys when we went up to Mirador Mountain and realized it is a monumental pilgrimage shrine.

We had to expand the project to examine pilgrimage.

So the project is looking at culture change of the Maya from the contact period to the present.

The Spanish conquerors arrived here about 1525.

They basically were staying around the coast.

They didn't come inland here to these inland lakes.

So the contact here is more like a few Spaniards coming out from the coast and arriving here to see who's living here, and then going back.

The Lacandon of Mensabak believe that this is the an origin point of water because it's one of the centers of the universe.

and is the same as its been for thousands of years.

The canoe is now fiberglass, but it mimics the shape of, of a dugout, canoe or one made out of a tree trunk.

So now we are, rowing across the lake here at Mensabak and we're going to go to a, an archeological site that has some platforms from 2000 years ago.

And then we're going to also see the small temple that has a boulder coming right out of the middle of it.

{FOOTSTEPS ON LEAVES} This area is important because it we know it was a dance platform for community rituals.

Because my student Josue identified copper bells that were smashed.

The artifacts are this right under the leaf litter.

If I had a trowel and an excavation shovel, I would just dig down, only about four inches and come across the the stone flooring here, and then the ceramic or pottery sherds, stone cutting tools, animal bone.

And that right close to the surface.

So we come to this palace area here that has a stairway.

This leader was living right at the base of a natural hill.

You can see this huge boulder that is just seemingly coming up, growing up out of the ground, it probably fell from way up there, and then eventually settled right here.

And then Maya came here and said, “Oh, here is some kind of frozen ancestor or, house of a god.” This is the object of veneration because it's in the middle of this plaza.

All the walls lead up to it.

And then this edge of this prismatic boulder, the center of this edge here points right at a big stone altar right behind you.

{ACOUSTIC GUITAR} [SANTIAGO] The, giant boulder is located right here.

And, you could see that you have this multi-level platform where you have this entryway here, and you're gradually moving your way upwards to this area where people probably are doing their dances so very much a pilgrimage site.

{MYSTERIOUS LATIN MUSIC CONCLUDES} [DAVID] I keep learning about the pharmacopeia of the Maya people here.

And Mincho was saying that his ancestors burned this plant.

So it looks like it's a relative of a palm.

And the ashes contain enough salt that they can put it on their food and get the benefit of salt.

There's a very tall tree here.

Very tall.

Must be close to 200ft.

The, bark, if you take and scrape it off and put a little ‘tamal, you put the tortilla dough on it, it will take care of cockroaches.

[JOEL] Here on the, on the dance platform, they actually have evidence of some of the behaviors that you would have in carnival, today in Chiapas.

one is communal dance.

You have a place for the musicians to stand and play, people waiting to join the dance and that are on benches.

So the interesting thing is we have archeological evidence for the origins of dances for carnival and other communal dances, like you see at Chiapa de Corzo.

The list includes music with flutes and drums.

Some will have black masks or paint their faces and their hands, black.

When we are digging on this plaza, it's full of paint for painting bodies black.

They wear bells, wild animal skins, monkey skins, or fox and hunt wild animals to eat during those festivals.

[SANTIAGO] So there's a big platform where they've done these kind of dancing ceremonies that required, the rattle and the copper bells that would have done.

And right here and right below that would have been the cave art, right here, anywhere where you see an elevated space above the water, there's going to be archeological sites.

[MINCHO VALENZUELA] {SPEAKING SPANISH} [VOICEOVER] Like when my uncles and dad passed away, people come here to burn copal and ask for whatever they need, like illness, harvest, anything.

People come here to pray for rain and come to the cave to perform ceremonies.

{SPEAKING SPANISH} [JOEL] So this very neat site is called “Zaktat,” which means the white apple snail.

This is a, burial shrine where, people about 500 years ago would bring their dead relatives and deposit it here in this house.

{MYSTERIOUS GUITAR} Some of the bones have, broken skulls on the back where they were hit in the back of the head with a club.

There's also evidence of scalping here, where hair has been removed with a metal knife.

Not an obsidian one or one made of stone.

Broken bones.

That here as well, in the shrine that have been healed with European style casts and casting and mobilization.

There's men and women buried here, and even some younger people.

This is all five hundred, four hundred years as a contact era, where the conquistadores were coming in.

There are these open air, human bone shrines all around the lakes there.

They're everywhere.

There's hundreds of these.

It's part of their history.

That's why they're burning incense here.

So their identity is connected to these landscapes.

So in order to communicate that you and I, from out the outside is to bring us to here and talk to us about these sacred places.

[MINCHO] {SPEAKING SPANISH} {MYSTERIOUS GUITAR} [DAVID] I am standing at the mouth of a weir, and I am approximately, I would say, a quarter of a mile from the edge of Lake Metzabok.

Finding fish weirs, ancient fish weirs, was another indication of how creative native peoples were in addressing their dietary needs.

These go back hundreds and hundreds of years and show how people manipulated their environment for their own advantage.

[JOEL] They fatten up here.

People can harvest them whenever they want because this is like a storage area.

Think of it as almost like a refrigerator.

So it's a nursery, it's a farm and it's a storage area all in one.

[DAVID] The Lacandon Mayas are teaching archeologists, that manipulating the ground and what grows and lies below is as vital to civilization as what is built above.

Their lessons are now emerging and can teach all of us.

{MUSIC CONCLUDES} {DAVID ANNOUNCES} Join us next time In the Americas with me, David Yetman.

The corporate farms in central Brazil are the largest in the world, and they have crowded out most small producers.

Now, a government agency, Embrapa, has a specific task of assisting small, traditional farmers and protecting their ancient varieties of crops and the way of life that goes with them.

Funding for In the Americas with David Yetman was provided by Robert and Carol Dorsey, The Guilford Fund, Arch and Laura Brown, And Hugh and Joyce Bell.