Artifacts in Guatemala point to an advanced civilization in place 2,500 years ago, earlier than had been believed.

By Thomas H. Maugh II
Times Staff Writer

Archeologists excavating a 2,500-year-old Maya city in Guatemala have unearthed buildings and massive carvings indicating the presence of a royal metropolis of more than 10,000 people at a time when, scientists had previously believed, the Maya were only simple farmers.

New studies at the Cival site in the Peten jungle have unearthed the oldest known carved portrait of a Maya king and two massive stone masks of the Maya maize deity, discoveries indicating that the Maya developed a complex and sophisticated civilization hundreds of years earlier than previously believed.

The city of towering pyramids and sweeping plazas is yielding other surprising artifacts, including jade and ceramic offerings to the gods that may mark the beginnings of the Maya dynasties, Vanderbilt University archeologist Francisco Estrada-Belli said Tuesday during a National Geographic Society telephone news conference from Washington.

Estrada-Belli "is pushing back the time for the evidence of Maya state institutions by several centuries," said archeologist Elsa Redmond of the American Museum of Natural History in New York.

"We had hints of these kinds of buildings from El Mirador," another Maya city of the so-called Preclassic Period, which dates from roughly 2000 BC to AD 250, Redmond said.

The Maya civilization came into full bloom at cities such as Palenque in Mexico and Tikal in Guatemala during the Classic Period, beginning about AD 300. But other Preclassic sites have been built over, often repeatedly, rendering interpretation of the findings problematic.

Cival, for reasons that are not clear, was abandoned about AD 100, "never to be occupied again," Estrada-Belli said, and has lain relatively untouched since. "It is very unusual to have a completely preserved Preclassic city that was not buried by subsequent building," he added.

It may have been a forgotten city, he said, or it may have been a sacred site whose memory was preserved and where building was forbidden.

And because it was preserved, it is now clear that " 'Preclassic' is a misnomer," he said. The new evidence shows that "Preclassic Maya societies already had many features that have been attributed to the Classic Period — kings, complex iconography, elaborate palaces and burials…. The origin of the Maya civilization has to be found in the first part of the Preclassic period, rather than the last part."

Cival, which is about 25 miles east of the much better known city of Tikal, was discovered in 1984 by Ian Graham of Harvard University. Most of the site was overgrown by jungle, however, and Graham's team thought it was a minor outpost.

Estrada-Belli has been studying the nearby Classic Period city of Holmul and was using satellite imaging and global positioning systems to explore the surrounding area when he rediscovered Cival four years ago. The new technology showed that its ceremonial center spanned half a mile, more than twice Graham's initial estimate.

Estrada-Belli and his colleagues have been digging there with support from the National Geographic Society.

Their findings and those of others studying the Preclassic period are the subject of a National Geographic documentary, "Dawn of the Maya," which will air May 12 on PBS.

The most spectacular find at Cival occurred by accident. Estrada-Belli reached into a fissure in the wall while examining a dank looter's tunnel in the city's main pyramid and came into contact with a piece of carved stucco that felt like a snake or a mustache.

Digging into the site from the other side of the pyramid, he discovered a 15-by-9-foot stucco mask. The one visible eye was L-shaped and the mouth was squared, with snake's fangs in its center.

"The mask's preservation is astounding," he said. "It's almost as if someone made this yesterday." The looters, he added, "just missed it."

More recently, the team discovered a second, apparently identical, mask on the other side of a set of stairs. The eyes appear to be adorned with corn husks, suggesting the Maya maize deity.

Estrada-Belli believes that the masks flanked a pyramid stairway that led to the temple room, providing a backdrop for elaborate rituals in which the king — viewed by people in the plaza — impersonated the gods of creation.

The team also found a stela, or carved stone pillar, dating to 300 BC, showing the accession of a king whose name has not yet been determined. Such stelae were quite common in Classic Period cities, but none this old have previously been found. "We didn't know there were kings then," Estrada-Belli said.

The large plaza in front of the pyramid was the scene of offerings to the Maya gods. In a recess in the plaza, the team found a red bowl, two spondylus shells, a jade tube and a hematite fragment.

Behind the recess was a cross-shaped depression containing five smashed jars, one on each arm of the cross and one in the center. The jars signify water and date to 500 BC, he said.

Under the center jar were 120 pieces of jade — an unusual concentration of wealth for the period — most of them round, polished pebbles. Nearby were five jade axes, placed with their blades pointing upward. The pebbles probably symbolize maize and the axes sprouting maize plants, Estrada-Belli said.

Kings in the Classic Period were thought to embody the maize god on Earth, and it seems that this tradition started much earlier than was originally thought, he said.

The team also found a major clue to what probably was the ultimate fate of Cival — a hurriedly constructed defensive wall built about AD 100.

The 6-foot-high wall "was a desperate attempt to close off the inner core of the site," he said. The find surprised him, he said, because "there was no previous evidence of warfare in the Preclassic Period."

Ultimately, he said, Cival "probably met the same end as many cities in the Classic Period": conquest by a more powerful neighbor.