Naachtun: the Forgotten Mayan City | FULL DOCUMENTARY

[Music] nashun is located in the far north of Guatemala near the Mexican border hidden away in the depths of the rainforest [Music] it is so hard to reach that since its Discovery in 1922 no serious Expeditions have attempted to excavate [Music] it and this Maya city has been totally forgotten that is until two French archaeologists Philipe Nono Deo and Dominique mishle began reading the reports by the man who discovered it nashun is a Mayan word but it was invented by the first visitors to the site sylvanus Morley who is a leading specialist and who spent

a large part of his life looking for ancient remains Morley came here in the 1920s and had a real struggle to reach the place he thought it was the most out of the way Place he'd ever found and he called it nashun tun meaning Stone and Nash for far giving distant stones or totally out of the way ruins so that's what nashun means it has nothing to do with the traditional ancient name of the site when people actually lived here of course sylvanis Morley was not the first 20th century man to have penetrated the Guatemalan

Forest Back Then workers known as cheros were sent here to find a natural gum called chle which was used to make the first chewing gums these workers who were usually Mayers themselves traveled the forests discovering cities Engravings and ruins and brought the information back to their bosses the North American companies that employed them informed The Architects of the day and that's how suvis Morley ended up at nashun for the first time today the nashun camp is home to 80 people there is a team handling Logistics archaeologists and workers all of whom have spent every winter

here for the past 5 years on the first morning of the dig the archaeologist heads are spinning will they ever be able to understand this city to link its fate to that of its prestigious neighbors or imagine the lives of its inhabitants they only have 60 days this year to tell the story of this Maya City from its Dawn to its [Music] Twilight in this Forest every Mound is a buried building every change in relief hides the possibility of an unexpected Discovery the vegetation that invaded the city and erosion are threatening to destroy the most

interesting monuments [Music] here when we arrived at the site we quickly discovered almost 600 structures that represent residential areas where the majority of the city's residents lived so with all the temples pyramids main squares and palaces that tell us the history as we understand it at the present time because every year we are discovering additional monuments we have currently recorded around 70 tablets and altars in the city the first difficulty is obviously the forest for a very long time we couldn't get an overall view of what we were dealing with so where the architecture Is

Still Standing There are a certain number of buildings in nashun that still have their facades at this moment and there's no problem but when it all collapsed it becomes a pile and that becomes a hill when you're talking about the big ones so it's quite easy to confuse a natural hill with the remains of an ancient Temple there are hundreds of buildings and recording these hundreds of buildings in reality represents years of work [Music] what is Nash tun's history how did this city develop and what role did it play in the Maya lowlands there is

an impressive list of mysteries here for Architects to solve and for now at the beginning of the Dig these vestages are not revealing their secrets for the researchers The Story begins with the edit es that were constructed when the city was first established like these three temples that face each other and which we call a triatic group they formed the center of all Maya cities although we don't really know what their function was one of the first theories was that perhaps these temples represented the Three Stones upon which food was cooked and this gives the

idea of some kind of cosmogony that would put a prim Heth at the center the first he that existed at the moment of creation where something had to be cooked on those three stones and the three temples represent these three stones that was an initial Theory although since then some have suggested that perhaps these temples were related to a cult of maze combined with the elements essential to it first the rain and then the Sun that could be a possibility and we also know that there was a political Dimension to their system so it was

probably the place where political events took place and perhaps even the inauguration of chiefs what did the triadic group look like what are your coordinates 30123 for the past 5 years the archaeology work has been accompanied by by a similar amount of surveying using topographic data first a map of the city was drawn up then the buildings were compared to those in neighboring cities 3D modeling then allows us to see what the city might have looked like at different stages in its existence at the point where we're at now we'll settle with what we can

see in terms of surface area [Music] when the triatic group was constructed at the end of the 3r century nashun was just beginning its expansion the first palaces were created and the first pyramid constructed but how did this city emerge so quickly how did a little Hamlet with a few hundred inhabitants become a capital home to thousands of people for Dominic Mish the answer to these questions may come from a neighboring Maya City El [Music] Mador almador was one of the first great Maya cities it emerged well before nashun in around 600 BC at its

height it was home to more than 880,000 inhabitants the North American archaeologist Richard Hansen started digging here when he was a [Music] student when you're flying at this height you can clearly see the sides because the pyramids really stand out and of course the biggest is this one in the 2 Century ad when nashun emerged it seems that El Mirador was not fairing too well is the rise of nashun perhaps linked to the decline of El Mirador from here we can see the C of the world in its day when it was at its height

and down there in the shadows we can see the Great Pyramid of L it's not the biggest in terms of volume but it's one of the highest and imagine with no horses no wagons no ox and no mules all that was built with human blood and pain good for this construction we can calculate the volume by taking Abram's estimates yes we calculated as 15 million days work 15 million days very recently Richard Hansen discovered a building in the middle of the forest of elor whose angles are covered with Sumptuous stucco reliefs this was just one

of dozens of buildings on the site we've covered 38 Square km of monumental architecture but not only did they have big buildings and palaces and platforms and causeways but they had extraordinary Garden systems they was the green cities they every available square meter of the city was productive and they were raising squash beans corn and um cotton so they were raising all these products here and that gave them again the economic power to do to build this amazing City and and not only that not only that but the causeways that they formed allowed them to

link all these other cities together too which created then what we consider to be the first state Level Society in the Western Hemisphere at its height elor was more important than any of the neighboring cities however the discovery of a defensive system shows that the most important Maya city of the time was the source of much Envy [Music] well Dominique welcome to the alador control center from here you can go straight to the ladant pyramid which is quite impressive the wall was there and we think it may originally have been 20 M High 20 M

High did that wall run the whole Eastern length of the site yes over 4 km it enclos the city by the south and north yes it did it's an interesting clue because in terms of what happened in elor at the end there were probably also political difficulties with various threats in the region around this site which was remember probably even bigger at the time so they built this wall with a certain number of gates which were extremely well guarded actually over time there were fewer and fewer of them which is another clue to the growing

threat and then one day it allend did and it all ended [Music] badly between the years 150 and 200 ad the city was abandoned the inhabitants of alador mysteriously disappeared the population dispersed but where did they go probably into the surrounding areas and given that nashun was 20 km away from there one might imagine even if we're still lacking any proof that a certain number of people did settle in nashun around 150 ad who came from El Mirador [Music] this is the 10th day of the dig in nashun the archaeologists are getting down to work

under the intrigued gaze of the people who live in the forest the first walls are appearing the first reliefs emerging and soon they discover a grave for hamu Gabi this is a chance to meet one of the inhabitants of nashun and to understand the funeral rights of this people the way the Maya people bury their dead is a bit of a mystery because we' found very few bodies considering the size of the SES here for example we're breaking up the floor that is made of Stucco which is a sort of plaster and dig down in

the rubble they put it in a certain position according to a certain orientation and sometimes with certain items which depends on the status of the person of course the most important people were buried in funeral temples while ordinary people made do at the place where they lived I find it very very difficult to describe what you feel when you reveal something like that it's a whole series of things there's distress before you get it out there's relief when you get it out in one piece there's satisfaction in seeing the complete form and then there's the

simple pleasure of holding it it's both simple and complicated very often dishes or plates are placed over the heads of the dead and most of them have a hole through the middle this practice has long been a source of mystery for archaeologists this means two things firstly there were ritual killings the dish by making a hole in it means there's no further utility to it and secondly According to some it enabled the soul of the dead person to go to heaven or to the Beyond in the Maya civilization not everything is living but everything is

animated everything is symbolically magically animated and then when you stop using an object or a space you have to Dean animate the object so making a hole in the dish is a way of Dean animating the object and setting it up for its new Destiny which is to accompany the dead in their lives in the [Music] afterworld day 20 every day the city of nashun grows bigger more widespread and more enigmatic but the story of its inhabitants Century after Century remains difficult to decipher are they bones or Ceramics I'm not sure there might be traces

of something else to find out more about it the archaeologists have undertaken parallel digs a long and painstaking job based on some seemingly anod Clues [Music] these ceramic fragments are a mine of information by comparing them to known Ceramics their shape and decoration allow us to date the buildings in which they were found but that's not all alesandro patinho the project ceramic expert has made an interesting discovery this ceramic found at nashun is decorated with a famous dancer the dancer of tial this is a clue to the relationship between nashun and this Royal City and

at the same time shed some light on the next part of the story between 200 550 ad the allegiances of the Maya world were shared by two superpowers kakm 40 km to the north of nashun which vied for Supremacy with Tikal 60 km to the south in the 4th century tial was the dominant City often at War the city developed quickly and gained the upper hand over neighboring towns but perhaps it became too influential because a third player who had nothing to do with the Maya civilization was unhappy about this Regional Powerhouse that was emerging

teu aan in Mexico was more than 1,000 km away it was a huge City that enjoyed political economic and religious influence across the whole of Central America to tell to aan tial was a potential enemy and had to be [Music] dominated but how could te toan conquered tial and did nashun play a role in this Conquest until now archaeologists have found it hard to believe that an army of Warriors from from ta to aan could have marched more than 1,000 km to defeat tal there was no real evidence of a conflict however this proof did

exist but the archaeologist in nashun had gone past it several times without noticing the story was right there on the face of the stones all they had to do was to decode it last year Philip ndeo Deo decided to work together with a renowned epigraphist Alfonso lacadena Alfonso examined all the stones in nashun and this medium-sized one in particular it is not the most imposing Stone on this site but it is without doubt the most enlightening it revealed the strategy deployed by seak the teak Emissary this is what it [Music] said it's absolutely amazing to

be able to read what they're telling us the text describes the king of nashon as cak's military leader this is very important because it confirms that the arrival of toot wakos in peten Maya was not an action undertaken by them alone but that Maya groups joined in with them and the king of nashon participated actively in this military [Music] conflict nashun allied with teot wakan against tikar thanks to their troop numbers and the provisioning potential that Nash tun could offer the Army under seak would have been able to take on to K I'd be embarrassed

to tell you what I did when I discovered the stone I was extremely emotional it's rare in a professional career to come across a monument as important as this one it was a gift an undram of piece of professional luck [Music] on 16 January 378 the taakan Emissary arrived at the gates of tial with troops from nashun the king of the city was captured and no doubt sacrificed and replaced by the son of the teuan leader tial then becomes the most powerful City in the Maya [Music] lowlands 95 2395 is that the original wall in

the chaos of stones ruined walls and collapsed temples the archaeologists are trying to understand how nashun changed after this episode here we are on the pyramid you have to imagine that there is a Monumental staircase that goes from this side and behind us there is a square with this huge area below it with a Central Square and buildings all around it as soon as you see it you know it's a pyramid big foundations with a square in the middle the first topographical studies of this construction revealed the shapes still somewhat vague of the temples constructed

one after the other for Philip this was the city's funeral Acropolis constructed just like the necropolis in tial it is home to the tombs of the first great Kings of nashun for [Music] what is amazing and what really struck us when we came here for the first time in 2010 is these finger Marks here they used a mud coating here that was applied by hand so you can see the marks they fingers left where the mud was smoothed over the stones fairly clearly here on the wall that gives you a direct connection with the king's

workers who constructed this chamber the walls are covered with a kind of stuckle that was painted red it's hematite so they used a fairly precious material that is quite difficult to get a hold of which shows the status of the king and his capacity to get his hands on sought after raw materials and prestigious Goods hundreds of years later these riches attracted looters more than 300 illegally dug tunnels have been discovered in the site of nashun and the Acropolis was one of the first victims to all the information taken away by looters is information we

will never recover so for example if there was a name painted sculpted or etched on a royal container that's information we will never get back so here we have a lovely chamber very well built for an important person but one that will never be able to link to a Dynasty that we might have been able to establish from the epigraphy so yes there is a great deal of [Music] frustration at the start of the fifth century the huge Acropolis would have looked down over the west of the site further to the east another square a

palace and an imposing pyramid would have transformed this little town into a regional Capital that could now rival TOA the city was home to thousands of people Craftsmen and Farmers for the most part they would have cultivated in little fields and exploited the resources the forest had to offer [Music] the forests of piten are home to thousands of animal and plant species the Mayas used the trees for construction firewood and fruit they hunted animals there to feed themselves [Music] but for these people this natural environment was much more than a source of food the various

species in the forest represent Natural Forces here every creature has a master spirit and divinities are constantly revealing [Music] themselves night is falling in tun the Dig has been going for 40 days now in the camp everyone has developed their own habits when nightfalls the temperature is cooler and little groups form to hang out [Music] together away from his colleagues Dominique is back on his travels examining the seventh and eth centuries of Maya history what happened to nashun during this period and where might he be able to find some Clues during this period large and

small kingdoms fought one another in merciless Wars alliances and betrayals happened in a heartbeat rulers were overthrown and new powers emerged kakm the seed of the snake Kingdom had previously kept itself to itself but now started to extend its influence and power nashun allied with Tia for centuries was concerned by the rise in power of this city state with a population of some 40,000 inhabitants what role would it play in this emerging rivalry the kingdom of the snake in the history of classical my worlds was a major Kingdom and much discussed in many sites it

was a kingdom that was imposing itself spreading its influence in all directions it was a conquering expansionist Kingdom and its king who believe they were descendants of the snake wanted to extend their power in all directions at the time taka was seen by kakm as an enemy to fight to gain the upper hand over its great rival kakm gradually encircled and controlled it suffocating the towns that remained loyal to tial those years when kakul was at the height of its powers were a critical period in the history of nashun that was the only time in

its history when nashun was really dominated by the Khan Dynasty and by kak did nashun abandon Tia for kalak Moon was it dominated by the snake Kings until now no archaeological evidence has enabled this to be clearly established and yet proof did exist at the foot of one particular building in the form of a [Music] princess we know she is a princess by her long skirt a we which goes down to her ankles and which is decorated with a lattice pattern and on each cross you might imagine that there was a shellfish there this lattice

pattern is fairly characteristic of the princesses of kakul so finding this long skirt here on a princess in nashun tells us that she is a kak princess who came here to nashun to marry the local King [Music] but why was this princess decapitated and why was she found underneath a staircase for the archaeologists this was deliberate the Stell was buried so that it could be walked over by the inhabitants of nashun she commemorates the Victory and emancipation of the city [Music] this new autonomy can be seen in the expansion of the city several new and

closely packed residential areas emerged [Music] this was an important development that contrasts with the experiences of most Maya cities in the lowlands the conflicts between major cities seemed endless the Maya kingdoms Were In Perpetual competition that meant a permanent state of war in teal a new king led the city back to prominence with Newfound riches and renewed Pride he led the fight against kakm and this time was Victorious but a few years later takal collapsed once again and the entire Maya civilization which had flourished until then now went into decline between 760 and 950 ad

the majority of the great Maya cities were emptied of their populations [Music] at the same time as nashun was observing the downfall of its Rivals it was experiencing the peak of its powers what was its secret to find out the archaeologist looked at a series of prestigious homes in 750 the city was undergoing radical change certain neighborhoods were abandoned and the living quarters were concentrated here in two large Courtyard spaces that were built to house a certain number of families Ames these spaces were constructed with the new Central Square which would become the new political

Heart of the City it was as if the city was reorganized in around 750 this reorganization coincides with the last traces and last remaining signs of royalty in the history of nashun this building looks over at the pyramid the occupier would have come out and seen the pyramid in front of him so it would have been someone important we also know that they were important people because of the objects we have found there are some lovely things so these really were houses belonging to society's Elite [Music] while the cities around gradually crumbled nashun was going

through its second Golden [Music] Age we have a paradox towards the end of the city's period of occupation because there is this Prosperity which was fairly sudden and very intense which lasted for a century or a century and a half and which at the same time would result in the inexurable abandonment of the City Guatemala City some archaeologists have already left the Dig and started upon a task that will also help shed light on the inhabitants of nashun some Ceramics have been restored revealing their original form for the first time in [Music] centuries milen B

is the digs archo zoologist and has made a surprising discovery she has found an example of the emblematic animal of the Maya people among her samples [Music] until now I'd found animals that were eaten such as deer and peckies and I set this bag to one side because it was from a tomb when I started to go through it I found a foot bone and I realized it was a carnivore a young one and after a while I realized it was a big cat and that all the pieces were there which was great the Jaguar

was the emblematic animal of the Maya it was a symbol of power and courage and often associated with Warriors as well as priests and royalty the Jaguar is often associated with the elite and can represent the animal spirit associated with individual such as a prince so we might imagine that when the prince died they decided to sacrifice the animal associated with him but there is also the fact that the jaguar and the great carnivores in general accompanied the dead into the Beyond especially because for both the Myers and the Miso America in general the Jaguar

wasn't just a not interal animal but an animal from the infra world [Music] over the course of this project almost 30 burial sites have been excavated each skeleton has been removed for an almost pathological examination the aim is to gather information about how the inhabitants of nashun lived today the team's Anthropologist Isaac bentos is getting to know a woman aged around 25 in the beginning I wanted to discover how ancient populations live how they adapted to different ecosystems what were the indicators affecting their health for example for instance on their teeth we can see the

events that occurred while they were growing tooth enamel allows us to identify alterations when there is a developmental imbalance while we are growing up it leaves Al line here you can see at least two lines that suggest two major perturbations during the development of this individual how did this young woman die did she suffer from Mal nutrition was her life so hard that it killed her across all Maya sites the examination of dozens of skeletons has revealed signs of deprivation or stress from the end of the 8 Century onwards at the same time that most

of these Monumental cities were being emptied of their [Music] inhabitants how can we explain the mysterious collapse of classical Maya civilization our archeologists have been pondering this question for many years and have put forward a range of different theories endemic Wars between the different cities may have weakened Maya royalty natural catastrophes like hurricanes could have frightened their inhabitants away or epidemics could have decimated Maya populations over elor Richard Hansen has another idea to understand a collapse you have to understand the reasons why it became a superpower you cannot have a collapse without destroying the facts

that the things that made you great in the first place we find for example in the case here there were environmental problems there were uh there was a we have evidence of a drought episode but even more importantly we find the evidence of human abuse of their environmental system for example just to cover the final lay layer of tigy pyramid required the complete removal of over 600 hectares of forest of every single living tree just to make the last layer of line for that building it's not they didn't want to come back CU they couldn't

come back they couldn't renovate those fields the thing that gave them life was destroyed the thing that generated the economic power was destroyed I look at the world debts of societies today and I see the same mentality for Richard Hansen the massive overexploitation of the forest led to The Disappearance of elor in nashun lady doou wanted to test this apothesis lady is an archaeobotanists between Maya society and its natural environment her research involves taking samples of the trees the Mayans mainly used this is the famous Chico sapot ladyy wants to know how much charcoal can

be obtained from this particular species of tree she then compares the results with the quantity of charcoal found in the tombs and houses she's trying to establish whether some tree varieties have disappeared over time one Tree in particular the chico sapote gives her a strong indication of an answer until the end of the occupation this tree was very commonly found but it's a tree that is common in tall ancient forests so that would suggest that until the end of the site's occupation there were still areas of very Ancient Forest close by the site to me

it's a clear clue that cast doubt on the hypothesis of massive deforestation during the terminal classic period between 800 to 1,000 ad Wars between cities epidemics natural catastrophes or overexploitation of the land and the forest at nashun the scientists have not dismissed the theory of massive deforestation but they are now closely examining the possible effects of climate change and the marshlands which were an indirect witness to the life of the city could provide the answer they have been seeking since they began their excavations siriel castan is a geographer who is interested in a very particular

aspect to the ruins far from the Jade and multicolored Ceramics these sediments deposited at the bottom of the water hundreds of years ago May reveal a great many surprises here we have two different layers a darker layer and a lighter one this dark layer is mainly made from clay and organic deposits debris from branches and Moss Etc and then this light layer which is very different to the other is mainly made of gray clay when look a little closer you see a great many remains of shells little snails so here we have a recording a

memory of a past environment and a record of environmental changes that occurred in the past for SEL reading this section allows him to imagine how the landscape and climate of nashun changed I think that here we really have evidence of the presence of a permanent Lake a body of water that was here year round and of a change with a transition towards an environment that was more Continental boggy and earthy as it is now it shows that The Disappearance of this Lake and the local decline of Maya societies around nashun happened around the same time

did the Lake's disappearance bring about the end of nashun was it triggered by climate change our researchers are looking for the slightest clue where are the mollusks uh right here you can see it's about 3 mm and your transition here between the black and the gray that's around 900 to 1,000 900 to a th000 ad in other words the time when it was abandoned transformations of civilizations often occur when there are major cyclical climatic upheavals but for a long time no one has paid any attention to the Curious effects of short crisis climatologists tell us

that indeed the entire Maya civilization suffered at certain moments from 800 onwards we were in a phase of growing Global drought but what is perhaps more interesting is that Within These generalized phases of progressive drought The Years Around 810 860 and around 910 were particularly tough when there's no Harvest for 3 years what do you do you can't go and get a job as a labor in Cancun because there was no Cancun back then so people died of hunger or they left because there was nothing left to eat around 1,000 ad the inhabitants of nashun

who had been affected by a series of terrible years began the rituals that marked their departure from the [Music] city in many places around the site archaeologists have discovered traces of Acts to Decon consecrate places of power as well as people's homes at the foot of a building that was only half constructed a last treasure awaits for them a miniature Earth and wear jar filled with 400 beads from a rare shellfish the spilus which are normally left in Royal tombs this was a fortune for the Maya and it's incomprehensible as to why it was simply

abandoned on the ground [Music] it was an offering for the Masters of the Universe the masters of the crisis that they were going through and at the same time it's like a message in a bottle tossed into the sea it's very beautiful but the masters of this universe did not hear the petitions of the Maya nor did they retrieve this bottle from the ocean one by one the inhabitants of nashun left this ancient Royal City and like all its great neighbors the city could not Escape its terrible [Music] fate in Paris 8 months later the

team members have returned to their labs and are starting their [Music] analysis thanks to the measurements taken during their last trip the city is now taking shape Philipe and Dominique now know the color of the temples and the location of the gardens and [Music] Forest never has aaya City been reconstructed in such [Music] detail nashun the Forgotten settlement has now entered the world of the great Maya cities by showing us how a civilization was constructed how it declined and how it collapsed in a deteriorating environment it is sending us its final message [Music]