Digging deeper into the ancient Maya in Belize

Alan Yuhas, Maya Ruler’s Tomb Is Unearthed in Belize, With Clues to His Ancient World, NYTimes, July 11, 2025.

The archaeologists worked in the shadow of towering Maya ruins, piercing the floor of a structure they had searched years before.

Below, they found an even more ancient chamber, still holding a body and the treasures it was buried with: a rare mosaic death mask and jadeite jewelry, shells from the Pacific and elaborate designs on pottery and bone.

It was the 1,700-year-old tomb of a Maya ruler — the first ever found at Caracol, the largest Maya site in Belize — and it held clues to a Mesoamerican world where cities contended with one another from hundreds of miles apart.

“They’ve found a very early ruler, so that’s very important, and he’s claimed to be the founder of a dynasty,” said Gary Feinman, an archaeologist at Field Museum of Chicago who was not involved in the excavation. “That’s a major find.”

The founder of a dynasty:

Through hieroglyphics, the archaeologists identified the ruler as Te K’ab Chak, who took the throne in A.D. 331. He ruled Caracol as it was growing into a larger city, the Chases said, but centuries before its peak as a regional power with an estimated 100,000 people. Like other Maya cities, it had been abandoned by about A.D. 900.

The discovery “adds a whole new dimension” to the site, said Melissa Badillo, the director of Belize’s Institute of Archaeology, a longtime working partner of the Chases. “This is the first of its kind in that it’s a ruler, a founder, somebody so old, and in so good a condition, to be honest, because the humidity doesn’t lend itself well to preservation.”

Trade and diplomacy:

The evidence, the Chases argue, suggests that the early Maya had relations with the people of central Mexico decades earlier than previously thought, despite the great geographic distances between their cities. It is likely to have taken more than 150 days to walk from Teotihuacán to Caracol in the days of Te K’ab Chak. Even today it takes nearly 24 hours by car.

The artifacts show that these cities were not just aware of one another but also interacting, perhaps with envoys at the highest levels of society, the Chases said — a sign of what they called a “globalized” ancient world of trade and diplomacy.

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