Pendergast’s team uncovered many valuable finds, such as unusual green obsidian blades, pearls, and more than 300 jade pieces—beads, earrings, and rings. Seven funeral chambers were discovered, including the Temple of the Green Tomb, rich with human remains and traditional funerary treasures. Maya scholars believe the first man buried was someone of great importance. He was draped with jade beads, pearls, and shells. And it was next to his right hand that the most exciting find was located—a solid jade head now referred to as Kinich Ahau (“The Sun God”). Kinich Ahau is, to date, the largest jade carving found in any Maya country. The head weighs nine pounds and measures nearly six inches from base to crown. It is reportedly now housed far away, in a museum in Canada.

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ALTUN HA EXPEDITIONS

Altun Ha , a Maya trading center as well as a religious ceremonial center, is believed to have accommodated about 10,000 people. Archaeologists, working in the midst of a community of Maya families that have been living here for several centuries, have dated construction to about 1,500–2,000 years ago. It wasn’t until the archaeologists came in 1964 that the old name “Rockstone Pond” was translated into the Maya words “Altun Ha.” The site covers an area of about 25 square miles, most of which is covered by trees, vines, and jungle.

A team led by Dr. David Pendergast from the Royal Ontario Museum began work in 1965 on the central part of the ancient city, where upwards of 250 structures have been found in an area of about 1,000 square yards. So far, this is the most extensively excavated of all the Maya sites in Belize. For a trading center, Altun Ha was strategically located—a few miles from Little Rocky Point on the Caribbean and a few miles from Moho Caye at the mouth of the Belize River, both believed to have been major centers for the large trading canoes that worked up and down the coasts of Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, Mexico’s Yucatán, and all the way to Panama.