Remains of Maya king unearthed in Belize

By Susan Milius

WASHINGTON (UPI): Archaeologists have found the remains of a Maya king with jade and obsidian jewelry buried in an unusual, unmarked tomb in Belize -- a time capsule from a world torn apart by an ancient superpower struggle.

The tomb in La Milpa, possibly of a king known as Bird-Jaguar, is about the size of VW bug sunk 10 feet (3 m) below ground. It dates from around 450 A.D. and has remained undisturbed until the discovery announced by a team of archaeologists from Boston University.

Monuments, sometimes multi-story pyramids, mark the tombs of most of the other Maya kings found. However, nothing more than open city plaza lies over the new discovery.

Lead excavator Norman Hammond speculated the absence of a monument shows the desperation of the last years of La Milpa. The town lay 70 miles (113 km) northeast of the great city of Tikal, a Maya superpower, and Hammond suspects the little town got caught in the bigger city's struggles with its rivals.

The big cities clashed through encounters between small allies like La Milpa or through alliances pushing into each other's zones of influence. It was "a bit like the United States trying to surround the Soviet Union with alliances," Hammond said.

Caught in what Hammond calls "the fallout zone of this warfare," the people of La Milpa vanished not long after burying the king without building a monument.

"They probably intended to and never got round to it," Hammond said.

The tomb's burial objects also suggest hard times. One of the pots was missing a lid, and one lid fit no companion pot. Some of the jewelry was "superb" but some was just "second-rank," he said.

After turning into a ghost town, La Milpa eventually bounced back. During its new bloom of growth, it held 50,000 people between 750 and 850 AD.

Hammond's team got the first hint of an unmarked tomb at the end of the excavation season in 1993 when "we were digging a trench for a completely different reason." The trench nicked a patch of limestone lumps and flint flakes, typical of material used to fill in important tombs.

Hammond remembers thinking, "Okay, we've got a tomb, but we've also got a week left." The archaeologists filled in the trench and left.

"I spent three years wondering what it was we were going to uncover," Hammond said.

With support from Boston University, the National Geographic Society and New York philanthropists Raymond and Beverly Sackler, the researchers finally got back to the tomb.

They dug their way down through alternating layers of limestone and flint, which the Maya had arranged like layers in a fancy dessert to fill the shaft leading to the tomb.

The shaft led to a chamber hollowed out in the rock and, when the archaeologists pried open the roof, "We saw just a layer of dirt." Soil had sifted in during the last 15 centuries.

Clearing the soil and probing for jewelry and bones took painstaking effort, much of it with dental picks. "We did this to the accompaniment of tropical storms that flooded the chamber three times," Hammond said.

In spite of the failing fortunes of La Milpa, "two items were very much first class," Hammond said.

A necklace of large jade beads "a bit like a granny Smith apple" in color and "beautifully matched" lay across the king's chest. From it dangled a carved jade vulture's head, a reference to the Maya symbol for lord or ruler.

At the king's feet lay carved obsidian jewelry called ear spools. "They look like napkin rings," Hammond said.