mesoamerica had no wheels that were usable in any meaningful sense.they had no draft animals to pull a wheeled vehicle if they had had a wheeled vehicle. so all goods were taken in one of two ways -- by canoe or raft where there was water -- and except for the coastal areas, bodies of water that were navigable for any length of time were quite rare in mesoamerica. the other means of transport is human por typically, these porters were carrying approximately 50 pounds. now, you can, of course, carry more or you can carry less. but the more you carry the shorter the distance you can usually go. so 50 pounds was about average for long-distance, day-after-day carriage. keach: so for copan's metateros, the market potential was limited by technology. because they had to carry the stones to market on their backs the market had to be close by. filomeno's problem is similar. although he can use a bus to get his metates to market the cost of transportation must be added to the sale price. if filomeno transports his metates much beyond the neighboring market tow

martin is a kekchi maya, one of dozens of maya groups still farming the lands of mesoamerica. rash, with her daughter-in-law isabelle prepares the evening meal. they cook over a wood fire beneath a thatched roof, much the same way that the three-stoned hearth was used at ceren 14 centuries ago. the rash family is mainly self-sufficient. they teach their children and grow their food, all within a short distance of the home. as in ancient times, daily life revolves around the household. [ baby crying ] anthropologist richard wilk. there's a lot of good reasons for people here to want to live in a multiple-family household like this. there's a lot of jobs that have to be done every day both by men and women -- washing, hauling corn in from the field, cutting firewood. these kinds of things take time every day. and if you're off working in the fields, you can't do them. by having multiple-family households like this they can divide up the labor. [ speaking native language ] interpreter: what can i say ? it's a lot easier working together. without a helper life is much harder. sinc

covered with 1,300 glyphs, these steps form the longest single inscription in mesoamerica. archaeologist bill fash. fash: the hieroglyphic stairway represents an encyclopedia of copan history. what it's saying is that copan is a powerful kingdom. it has been from its inception and all of the copan kings were great warriors. the interesting thing is when you look at the archaeological context of the stairway, you realize that all was not well in river city. keach: workers enter a tunnel behind the staircase. twelve centuries earlier other workers had built the hieroglyphic stairs on top of an existing building. the space between was filled with rubble which was usually densely packed. this fill is very loose. why such shoddy construction ? was it evidence that the king who commissioned the stairway had little support among his workers ? what had gone wrong ? once again, a maya king had been killed by a rival kingdom. at copan that king was 18 rabbit. the hieroglyphic staircase was built by his successors in a symbolic attempt to assert the status of copan's ruling dynasty. s