National Geographic: Lost Kingdoms of the Maya Page #6

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Working in tunnels tends

to be very confusing.

You're working like

in three dimensions.

You're going up, down, sideways,

in between.

And oftentimes you get lost

and you can't really understand

what you're looking at.

The flat wall on the left

used to be the outer wall

of an older temple.

Only by following its walls

to their ends

can Agurcia determine

building's original dimensions.

I only traveled a short distance

and bingo, we hit another wall.

It still goes farther

on towards the south.

So we then tried going up to see

whether we had the bottom part

of a substructure

or the higher part of it

and started going up.

And you can see here the terraces

going up of

what was a very large pyramid.

It goes up, as far as we've traced it,

eight stories high and each one

curving back and going further up.

What Agurcia found next was

totally unexpected.

There was yet a third structure

inside the first two,

this one was different.

The building Agurcia calls Rosalila

was perfectly preserved.

The loose dirt was removed,

exposing a set of giant masks

still tinged with traces

of the original paint.

Most of the masks we found before

were perhaps a meter or two tall

and would extend as much as five,

six meters.

But these masks just kept going

and going and going

and to this moment

we still haven't found the end of them

Hey, partner.

How's it going, boss?

Wo-o-o.

You haven't been here in a while,

have you?

Wow! Whoa!

Can you believe it?

Red paint all over the place.

Yeah, we've got lots of good paint.

We're coming down below the molding

and we've got two birds out.

We've got one over here on the left

and he's facing north.

And I think we have another one.

You see, he's got his beak bent

over his eye.

All the feathers behind him.

All the feathers radiating out

and also it's higher up

than anything else in the Acropolis.

So this thing shone out

for miles around.

It's outrageous, it's just outrageous.

Adorned with brightly painted sculpture

Rosalila once crowned

the highest point in Copan.

Framing the central doorway,

two giant birds face the setting sun.

Above them undulating serpents extend

their bodies toward the sky.

For the archeologists,

the careful treatment given Rosalila

poses a question.

We're all just itching to know

what Rosalil is all about.

Why was it left there for 150 years

and nobody touched it other than

to maintain it?

Why was it buried intact?

They didn't touch any of it

when they buried it.

All the rest of them they smashed

to pieces

to build something bigger

and better over it.

Why was it so revered that is had

to be mummified when it was buried?

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