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Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
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I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated November 2026.
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As a reminder, Radio Eye is a reading service intended
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for people who are blind or have other disabilities that
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make it difficult to read printed material. Please join me
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now for the first part of the article titled, Archaeologists
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at this Ancient Maya Metropolis in the Forest of Belize
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are debunking long-held myths about the Mesoamerican civilization. Diane and
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Arlen Chase have spent a good portion of their lives
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uncovering the once-great city of Caracol. Their groundbreaking research is
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rewriting everything we thought we knew about the Maya. By
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Ellen Ruppel Schell The first visit I made to the
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Maya ruins in Caracol, Belize, involved a three-hour trip through
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a labyrinth of deeply potholed dirt roads in a vehicle
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helmed by a steel-nerved driver. I spent the ride crouched
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in the back, trying to ignore the potentially tire-busting jolts.
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So it seemed like a miracle when I returned just
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a year later, in the spring of 2026, and found
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a newly completed highway leading smoothly through the fragrant Mountain
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Pine Ridge Forest Reserve. past a smattering of logging towns,
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and into the Chiquibul Rainforest, a lush jungle landscape alive
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with butterflies and songbirds. When I arrived at the Caracol
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Field Camp, I was greeted by Arlen and Diane Chase,
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both archaeologists at the University of Houston, where Diane also
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serves as provost. Joining them was their 35-year-old son, Adrian Chase,
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who is also an archaeologist and currently a postdoctoral fellow
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at Tulane University's Middle American Research Institute. Their camp is
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a semicircle of zinc-roofed thatch-sided shacks with no running water,
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no cell phone reception, and fickle electrical service. The students, volunteers,
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and staff who eat, sleep, work, and occasionally play here
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are issued a water jug, a hammock, and a machete.
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When I asked about the latter, Adrian cheerfully explained that
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he had used his that very morning to behead a
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Ferdiland's pit viper. We don't have anti-venom, and we're miles
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from a clinic, so a bite from that snake is
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pretty much a death sentence, he told me, with a
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hint of mischief. Archaeologists once considered Caracol a minor site
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barely worth their time, but its remoteness turned out to
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be an asset. Other Maya strongholds, like Tikal in Guatemala
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and Chichen Itza in Mexico, were first encountered by European
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colonists in the 19th century. Caracol, hidden in dense tropical forest,
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had barely been excavated when the chases arrived in the 1980s.
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Over the following decades, their painstaking work exploded a number
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of misleading myths about the Maya. For centuries, most scholarly
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assumptions about this ancient civilization came from the writings of
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Friar Diego de Landa, a 16th century Spaniard who lived
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as a missionary among the Maya communities in the Yucatan.
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By his own account, de Landa burned most of the
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Maya's hieroglyphic codices. These people also used certain characters or
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letters with which they wrote in their books about the
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antiquities and their sciences de Landa wrote in Yucatan before
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and after the conquest. We found a great number of
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books in these letters, and since they contained nothing but
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superstitions and falsehoods of the devil, we burned them all,
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which they took most grievously, and which gave them great pain.
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As American scholar William Gates wrote, introducing his English translation
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of Delanda's writings, the bishop burned ninety-nine times as much
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knowledge of Maya history and sciences as he has given us.
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Delanda falsely portrayed the Maya as largely an impoverished, rural
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peasantry lorded over by a ruthless aristocracy who dwelled in
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monumental cities. The Spanish imposed their worldview on everything over here,
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Arlen said, and if you look back at Spain in
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the 1500s, what are you dealing with? You had knights
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and nobles in castles, and everyone else was scattered throughout
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the countryside. The Spaniards slapped that two-class model onto the Maya.
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By the time Arlen and Diane were in graduate school
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at the University of Pennsylvania in the 1970s, more was
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known about the ancient culture. For instance, that the Maya
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had designed one of the world's most sophisticated calendars and
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held a deep understanding of astronomy, mathematics, and architecture. But
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most scholars saw the Maya as peaceful stargazers, so absorbed
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by gauzy ceremonial pursuits that they neglected certain practical concerns.
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In the influential 1954 book, The Rise and Fall of
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Maya Civilization, British archaeologist J. Eric S. Thompson wondered how
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the Maya were able to, quote, chart the heavens, yet
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fail to grasp the principle of the wheel, to visualize
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eternity as no other semi-civilized people has ever done, yet
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ignore the short step from core belt to true arch,
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to count in millions, yet never learn to weigh a
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sack of corn. anthropologists believed that Maya cities had been
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near-empty husks with a dispersed rural population who ventured into
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town only for occasional ceremonies or to serve elites. Arlen
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and Diane challenged this conventional wisdom. In 1979, four years
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after they were married, they set off for a six-year
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stint at Santa Rita Corazal, a Maya site in Belize
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just south of the Mexican border. As they excavated residential areas,
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they found that many non-elites had owned tools made of obsidian,
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a dark glassy stone found only in distant volcanic regions.
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Scholars at the time assumed that Maya elites had total
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control over ancient economies and distributed goods directly to specific people.
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But the sheer number of non-elites in Santa Rita who
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had this imported material made it unlikely that that elites
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were bestowing obsidian directly to those households as gifts or rewards.
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A more plausible explanation was that Santa Rita was an
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important trading junction between the coastline and two rivers and
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that residents had market access to imported goods like obsidian, jade, ceramics,
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and shells. Santa Rita, though rich in history, had its limitations.
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Much of the ancient city had been bulldozed, by development,
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or lay buried under modern buildings. So the chases set
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their sights on the largely untouched site of Karakol, deep
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in the rainforest about 180 miles south. Arriving in 1987,
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Diane recalled, we found no visible temples, no architecture. We
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pretty much had the place to ourselves. Our colleagues thought
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we were crazy. But the chases and their team have
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shown that far from being a ceremonial husk Caracol had
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a peak population of more than 100,000. By comparison, Belize City,
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the largest urban area in the nation today, has a
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population around 66,000. Uncovering actual evidence of how residents of
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this vast metropolis lived, Arlen said, meant going against the
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anthropological concepts of the day, so everything you were taught
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in grad school you find out isn't right. The chases
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felt fortunate that the Spaniards never reached the ruins of Caracol,
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nor did many other people. In fact, the site had
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been all but lost to history when a lumberman stumbled
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upon it in 1937 and noticed strange swellings in the
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verdant landscape. A year later, A. H. Anderson, the archaeological
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commissioner of what was then called British Honduras, now Belize,
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braved a several-day slog on muleback to see the ruins
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for himself. He named the site Caracol, the Spanish word
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for snail, a reference both to the plentiful shell fragments
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littering the site and the nearly impassable nautilus of overgrown
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track leading to it. Anderson unearthed eleven monuments, several of
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them carved with Mayan hieroglyphics. Lacking the resources and expertise
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to continue, he spent the next decade trying to lure
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a team of better-financed investigators to join him. Linton Satterthwaite,
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a Maya specialist from the University of
Pennsylvania, arrived at
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Caracol in the 1950s and excavated 20 tons of mostly
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fragmented limestone monuments over three seasons. Among the finds were
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35 ceramic vessels and stone slabs engraved with hieroglyphics. Years later,
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on one of their first dates, Arlen and Diane saw
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a collection of these relics at the university's Museum of
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Archaeology and Anthropology, better known as the Penn Museum. The
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university's link with ancient Maya culture set their own careers
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in motion. As they went on to teach at a
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number of institutions, Caracol remained their enduring passion. As you
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walk through Caracol today, the most striking feature is Cana,
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a 141-foot-high sky palace that was abandoned around the year 900,
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at the tail end of the Maya Classic era. Cana
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is still the tallest construction in Belize, yet when the
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chases arrived in the 1980s, The massive multi-tiered complex was
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an enormous mound, mostly covered in jungle overgrowth. Satterthwaite did
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some initial mapping of the structure, but the chases meticulously
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cleared the vegetation, opening long sealed passageways and excavating the
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rooms and stairwells. The complex was built in the triadic style,
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with the main temple at the rear of the top
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terrace and two smaller temples facing each other at its flanks.
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all surrounding a central elevated plaza. I found it beyond
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belief that this magnificent temple was erected without the aid
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of the wheel, metal tools, or a single beast of burden.
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Climbing to the top, I was rewarded with a sweeping
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view of the surrounding Chikibul Forest Reserve with undulating, tree-covered
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hills stretching toward the Maya Mountains. Exotic bird sightings here
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might include king vultures, woodcreepers, toucans, parrots, and, for the
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very lucky, the resplendent scarlet macaw. The roars of howler
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monkeys seem to come straight from the Jurassic Park soundtrack,
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and spider monkeys swing through the treetops like arboreal acrobats.
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Karakol's buildings were clearly meant to be admired from outside.
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Some of the pyramid temples even doubled as astronomical observatories.
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where elites tracked the movements of Venus and other heavenly bodies.
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But the interior space at Cana was also carefully designed.
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Rooms with C-shaped stone benches were most likely formal meeting spaces,
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while L-shaped benches were most likely used for sleeping. The
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walls were bedecked in white stucco and red paint. I
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found Cana's broad limestone stairway steep to the edge of treacherous,
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and I shuddered, to imagine young Maya children making the climb.
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I was told they were carried by servants, but that, too,
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seemed perilous. Kana is the most iconic relic at Karakol,
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but it may not be the most important. In the
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late winter of 1986, Arlen was slashing through the brush
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of an overgrown Maya ball court when his machete struck
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something solid. The object turned out to be a large
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limestone disk incised with concentric rings of Mayan hieroglyphics. The
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disk was eroded, but half of the glyphs were still legible.
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Epigraphers found a reference to Karakol Lord Khan II and
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his A.D. 631 war against the city-state of Naranjo. Scholars
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call such conflicts Star Wars because the Maya noted them
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with a glyph of an ascendant star. These bloody battles
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not only diminished the losing state's prestige and power, but
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also threatened its economy by slaughtering its rulers and conscripting
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its soldiers into slavery. The glyphs highlighted Khan II's father,
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Yeha-Ti-Kanich II, and his defeat of the kingdom of Tikal
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roughly 50 miles to the northwest. The very notion that
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a presumed pipsqueak like Karakol had defeated mighty Tikal, struck
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many scholars as a far-fetched David and Goliath story. No
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one believed us, Diane said. Some people thought we carved
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the glyphs ourselves. But newer evidence pointed to a period
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spanning from 557 to 682, a tumultuous time when Tikal's
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monuments were neglected, suggesting a decline in
population and prestige.
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And as Tikal declined, Caracol rose dramatically in population and power,
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as evidenced by a boom in new construction and infrastructure
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throughout the city. The chases noted that these shifts in
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fortune coincided with the Star War described in the glyphs.
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When a state wins a war, it grows in population
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and prosperity, Diane told me. When it loses a war,
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it declines, which suggested that Caracol, not Tikal, had won.
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The chase's theory of Caracol's victory over Tikal was bolstered
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by further excavations, surveys, epigraphy, and isotope analyses of bones
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and other organic material. Caracol dominated Tikal and Naranjo for
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roughly 140 years, Arlen said. During that period, it replaced
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Tikal as the major regional power. While this version of
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history was once hard for traditionalists to accept, the chase's
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further discoveries made it all but undeniable. I was eager
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to see some of them. During my visit to the
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field camp, Diane guided me to a large ramshackle structure
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known as the laboratory, a jumble of books, odd pieces
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of equipment, and overflowing suitcases flanked by a well-stocked meat
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freezer powered by a recently installed solar array. A diaphanous
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curtain shielded what passed for a bedroom from a pair
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of plywood worktables littered with water bottles, coffee mugs, and
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hundreds of clay shards. I watched as Arlen reassembled the
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shards into vessels, holding the bits and pieces in place
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with wooden clothespins as the glue dried. Nearby, Diane examined, identified...
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and tagged bone fragments as Adrian demonstrated a handheld scanner
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used to locate and map the ruins. For nearly 25 years,
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Arlen mapped Caracol by foot, crashing through the jungle with
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surveying equipment slung over his shoulder. His team uncovered vaulted passageways,
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secret corridors, sacred altars, and caches of pottery and elaborate jewelry.
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As in Santa Rita, they found that non-elites in Caracol
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had wide access to obsidian. Both Diane and Arlen kept
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meticulous records of everything they found, with Diane especially focusing
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on skeletal material and Arlen on ceramics. The process was
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arduous and achingly slow, and they managed to cover only
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a fraction of the city. But in 2009, their team
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became the first in Mesoamerica to make full use of
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light detection and ranging, or LIDAR, a highly sensitive instrument
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that deploys thousands of laser beams to look beneath the
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jungle canopy. Before the LIDAR study, we had no idea
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how big Maya cities were, Arlen explained. Everything was still
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conceptualized as small cities, with central architecture and rural settlement
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around the larger architecture. The imaging shifted the picture, We
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could see all of the terraces. We could see all
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the residential groups, all the road systems. We could see
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looters' trenches and looted tombs. The chases have estimated that
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Caracol had around 36,000 structures as well as causeways covering
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an astonishing 77 square miles. The densely populated megacity had
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its own civic infrastructure, including a road system, terraced farms,
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and about 1,600 reservoirs. The temples, ball courts, acropolises, and
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plazas were all linked by broad limestone paved avenues. Residential
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units were grouped in tight-knit neighborhoods of roughly 250 to
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300 people. A major revelation was that almost all the
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city's residents lived within a 20-minute walk of a marketplace.
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Caracol was what real estate agents today would call a
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walkable city. with residential neighborhoods close to markets that the
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Chases describe as strip malls. The Chases' LIDAR work ushered
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in a paradigm shift in Maya studies, said Brett Hoke,
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an archaeologist at Texas Tech University. It really changed everything
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from our appreciation of the scale of Maya landscape interventions
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and settlement to our research questions and field priorities. It
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was quite remarkable. but a true neighborhood is more than
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a group of
people who happen to live near each other,
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and Arlen wanted to see whether each area had its
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own unique character. The residents, of course, were long dead,
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but their tombs provided important clues. The Chases and their
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colleagues determined that the people buried in these tombs accounted
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for only about 20% of the residents in each neighborhood.
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They estimated the sizes of households by looking at common
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archaeological measures, like the number of sleeping platforms. The criteria
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for burial remain unclear, but the calendar seems to have
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played a role. Burials occurred every 40 years, based on
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the dates of ceramics found in the tombs. The burial
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sites held caches of polychrome pottery, obsidian and jade ear flares,
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all of which offered evidence that non-elites as well as
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elites had access to treasures. In some, but not all, neighborhoods,
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the chases found teeth inlaid with jade. They also found
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caches of ritual offerings that the Maya buried underground or
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inserted in vessels. Both the styles of the ceramic vessels
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and their contents tended to be similar within a given neighborhood.
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People throughout Karakol basically share in the same kind of rituals,
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but they get different goods because there's a market system,
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Arlen explained. One neighborhood might have more jade, while another
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had more obsidian or shells. The chases have yet to
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figure out whether such trends were driven by wealth, aesthetic tastes,
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or hyper-local traditions. Caracol was a sprawling urban center, but
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unlike its modern counterparts, residents there grew their own food.
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This crucial distinction took a long time to uncover because
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of the lush overgrowth in the Maya regions. Elsewhere, the
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Andes Mountains displayed obvious remnants of terraced farming, while ancient
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irrigation systems were still visible in the arid Middle East.
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But early colonists didn't immediately spot similar infrastructure in Maya lands,
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so they assumed the ancients had been primitive farmers, clearing
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out forests with slash-and-burn methods. That picture started to shift
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around 1980, when archaeologist Paul Healy from Canada's Trent University
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made the trek to Caracol and argued that its terraced
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hillsides had been shaped by human hands, not natural elements.
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The chases confirmed this theory finding elaborate reservoirs and channels
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that captured, stored, and delivered water to neighborhoods all over
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the city where crops were grown. These findings blur the
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lines between the modern categories of cities and countryside. In
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a 2016 paper called Urbanism and Anthropogenic Landscapes, the chases
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noted parallels between Karakol and Angkor, Cambodia, an ancient metropolis
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where vast rice fields intertwined with dense residential areas. Just
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as there is no single city type, the Chases concluded,
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there is no one single urban experience. In February 2025,
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the Chases and their team returned to a tomb they
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had first opened in 1993, on a hunch that there
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was something important beneath it. Below the floor of the
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burial chamber was they found a deeper and even older
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chamber holding the skeletal remains of a toothless old man
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and his luxuries, three pairs of large jadeite ear flares,
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spiny oyster shells from the Pacific, more than 200 miles away,
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finely carved bone handles and jadeite beads, and elaborate polychrome
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vessels depicting a monkey, an owl, and a coatimundi, a
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long-snouted relation of the raccoon. The floor and southern edge
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of the grave were coated in a bright red pigment
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called cinnabar, a toxic mercury ore the Maya sometimes sprinkled
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on the remains of elites. What especially caught Arlen's eye
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were small blocks of obsidian. Caracol has no nearby volcanoes.
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The stone had most likely been imported from the Teotihuacan
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region of central Mexico. which suggested that the two areas
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had been in contact decades earlier than previously imagined. Looking closely,
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Arlen also found 97 shards of jade and 26 shards
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of shell that he recognized as pieces of a mosaic
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death mask. We'd found a mask years before in Santa Rita,
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but this was the first one we'd found in 40
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years of excavation at Caracol, said Arlen. The little eyepieces
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were what really told me what we had. For my wife,
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it was the huge, bulbous nose. Diane took pictures of
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each individual piece, and Arlen carefully reassembled the mask from
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the fragments. It was a mark that we had found
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a ruler, he said. And not just any ruler, he thought.
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Arlen dated the remains to A.D. 350, or nineteen years
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after the presumed founder of Caracol's dynasty, Tekabchak ascended to
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the throne. We are 99% sure we found Tekabchak, Arlen
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told me. Unearthing Tekabchak's burying place catapulted the chases into
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international headlines. Archaeology magazine cited their triumph as a top
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10 discovery of 2025, and media from around the world
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rushed in to record it. Participants in Belize's 2026 Archaeology
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Symposium could explore a replica of the tomb and the
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objects discovered within it. From my standpoint, the major finding
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in the tomb was that kingship was purely Maya, Arlen said.
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It was not imposed from outside. Later Maya tombs have
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shown signs that rulers were strongly influenced by Teotihuacan, near
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what is now Mexico City. In Tikal, for example, archaeologists
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discovered a 5th century altar that with references to the
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Teotihuacan storm god as well as headdresses and painting techniques
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from the Teotihuacan region. The lack of such foreign influences
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into Kabchak's tomb will help archaeologists pinpoint exactly when outside
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cultures made their presence felt in the Maya world. In
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Maya society, kings were seen as divine rulers who communicated
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with gods and ancestors, maintaining the cosmic order. During de
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Kabchak's time, Karakol was strictly hierarchical, but the distance between
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royalty and commoners narrowed in the 6th and 7th centuries,
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after the successful battle with Tikal. Kings maintained their divinely
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appointed status but began to share their wealth in the
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form of luxury goods. The chases used the term symbolic
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egalitarianism to describe this system. Symbolic egalitarianism is a business
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and management strategy. It's where the upper corporate level doesn't
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want to call attention to its own wealth, said Arlen.
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The Chases believe Karakol's rulers employed a similar strategy, securing
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their position by placating the people. These guys were brilliant,
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Arlen said. His team could tell which tombs were royal
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because of their locations in the city and information found
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in the carved hieroglyphics at the sites. but they aren't
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that different from the tombs you'd find in a residential group,
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he added. There may be a little more jade, but
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that's about it. If you look at the structure of
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the city instead of a single market, which is controlled
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by the central elite, Karakol has markets all over the city.
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Based on the deliberate way in which these markets were
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built into the city's causeways and irrigation systems, the chases
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have inferred that the placement of these markets was under
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elite control. But the goods they found in dwellings and
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burial sites indicate that residents were free to trade among themselves.
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Scientists are still analyzing the remains and relics from Tekabchak's tomb,
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but preliminary findings indicate that the king ate animals that
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fed on corn. This suggests that the elite of Karakol
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fed corn to deer, turkey, and perhaps other creatures. Harlan
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hopes to unearth the burial site of the ruler who
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succeeded to Cobb Chalk. Written records suggest that Caracol developed
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new trade partners and alliances around the time of his rule.
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I want to see what the tombs look like, he said.
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This concludes readings from the Smithsonian Magazine for today. Your
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reader has been Rebecca Shore. Thank you for listening and
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have a great day.