Скачать или смотреть Webinar: Archaeologist Francisco Estrada-Belli explains the secrets of the lost Mayan city of Holmul

Have you ever wanted to get in a time machine and travel backwards in time? Well, in Guatemala, you can do this, with the help of a famous archaeologist, a helicopter and lots of mosquito spray!

Join archaeologist and Nat Geo Explorer, Dr. Francisco Estrada-Belli for this journey back in time, to walk in the steps of the ancient Maya in the lost Mayan city of Holmul. Here you’ll find a thriving and important city, one of the longest occupied by the Maya, from 800 BC to 900 AD. And despite its relatively modest size, Holmul played a very central role for two of greatest Mayan dynastic rivals - Tikal dynasty and the Kaanul or the Snake dynasty.
Estrada-Belli’s discoveries at Homul are rewriting what we know about the history of the ancient Maya.

Homul has gained notoriety and fame recently with the discovery of the largest intact Mayan frieze ever found in the Mundo Maya - The Holmul frieze, 8 metres long by 2 metres wide (26 x 6.5 feet)! Painted in red, with bits of blue, green, and yellow, it depicts three human figures wearing elaborate bird headdresses and jade jewels seated cross-legged over the head of a mountain spirit known as a witz. Two feathered serpents slink below. Evidence of the Snake King dynasty. Stucco friezes are very rare and extremely fragile so finding a 26ft intact one was astonishing and sent the archaeological world into a frenzy.

Francisco was also part of the recent survey of 2000 sq kilometers (800 sq miles) of Guatemala’s Peten jungle using a revolutionary mapping technology known as LiDAR, which is an aerial laser which bounces pulsed laser light off the ground to reveal contours and structures hidden by 1000 years of growth in the jungle. Guatemala’s Pacunam LiDAR initiative is the largest archaeological survey ever undertaken in the Maya lowlands. The results revealed over 60,000 structures in the Peten region, thousands more than have ever been unearthed, suggesting a sprawling pre-Columbian civilization that was far more complex and interconnected than most Maya specialists had supposed, more comparable to sophisticated cultures such as ancient Egypt, Greece or China than to the scattered and sparsely populated city states that ground-based research had long suggested.