San Bartolo's Buried Treasures - William Saturno

Wouldn't it be great if some new Mayan ruins could be found in the twenty-first century? What if a Mayan scholar went to Guatemala and took off on a little adventure instead of studying his usual hieroglyphs? What if he traipsed through the jungle for two days because he heard that looters had been lurking in a very uninhabited place? And was exhausted and sorry he came and frustrated that he had found nothing? And then out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of the edge of a beautiful mural? And it turned out to be the most important Mayan find in decades? And the artwork on the mural was as beautiful as this:

Well, that did happen in 2001 to William Saturno of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology. He led a team to San Bartolo in Guatemala. They discovered ruins that included wonderful painted murals depicting the creation myth and stories of Mayan kings. The murals are older than other known ancient Mayan paintings - they come from around the time of Jesus' birth (give or take a century). And the great thing about modern methods of uncovering treasures like this: they take their time and do it methodically. It took two years to uncover the room-sized artwork.





Time and trees have a way of covering civilizations. That's spooky in and of itself.
The two mural photos were from Don Coyote. His blog is www.hawkdog.net/wordpress
The other is a National Geographic artwork from a story by Alvin Powell in the Harvard University Gazette.