Buried Treasure in the Jungle

Archaeologists unearth an unspoiled Mayan tomb

In a clearing near the remote Rio Azul deep in the jungles of northern Guatemala, workmen were methodically chipping away at a boulder-filled shaft. As the narrow passage dropped abruptly under a rocky outcropping, Archaeologist Grant Hall suddenly spotted a streak of dark red.

"It's painted!" Hall cried. His coworkers, members of a U.S.-Guatemalan team that was hoping to unearth an undisturbed Mayan crypt, crowded to the rim of the pit. "We all wept and embraced," recalls Archaeologist George Stuart. "There was such a sense of incredible relief. It had been a gamble, and we'd been building up to that moment."

Grant's Tomb, as the euphoric scientists subsequently named the 1,500-year-old find, is the first unspoiled Mayan burial chamber to be unearthed in two decades.*The discovery contained 15 clay pots, well-preserved wall paintings and a skeleton of a male believed to be in his 30s. Researchers, who announced the find last week, expect the contents to shed fresh light on a shadowy period of the mysterious Mexican and Central American civilization that flourished in the jungle from about A.D. 200 to 900.

The trail that led to the tomb began in 1962 when an employee of the Sun Oil Co. discovered Mayan ruins near Rio Azul, five hours by land from the nearest town. The oil firm passed along the information to Professor Richard E.W. Adams, a Mayan archaeologist now at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Lacking funds, Adams could not explore the region until this year. In the meantime bands of looters had dug into the tombs of the 500-acre area, carrying off jewelry, pottery and carvings. Once at the Guatemalan site, Adams turned his attention to a spot less than a mile from a 130-ft.-high pyramid that was flanked by a cluster of temples. Workers digging an exploratory trench discovered that flakes of flint had been scattered through a layer of masonry, a funerary custom of the Maya. Digging farther, the archaeologists uncovered the remains of a stone platform and the outline of a plaster dome.

Adams decided to cut right through the platform, which eventually revealed the shaft and then the tomb. "I cried when I saw it," said Stuart, a staff archaeologist for the National Geographic Society, which helped finance the expedition. "I felt a little like a trespasser."

The murals and other writings in the crypt are expected to provide scholars with further insight into the political and social structure of a society that used mathematics, charted the heavens, invented a calendar and constructed elaborate irrigation canals. The wall decorations and inscriptions indicate that the occupant was a member of a ruling family, probably an administrator. Among the artifacts was an unusual jar with a screw-top lid, possibly the earliest twist-open container discovered in the Western Hemisphere.

Most of the relics are valuable. Several of the pots would bring $12,000 to $15,000 on the current market. Collectors, however, will get no chance to bid on them: the entire contents of the tomb have been transported to Guatemala City and will remain there, under heavy guard, in government possession. qed

*In 1964, William Coe of the University of Pennsylvania discovered a painted tomb at Tikal, a Mayan site some 50 miles from Rio Azul.