archaeologist elliot abrams and two stone masons climb to an ancient maya quarry site. abrams is trying to calculate just how much labor the king had under his command. how many workers were required to build the palace of 18 rabbit ? abrams: it would be wonderful to observe mayan indians building the structures that they built at copan. of course, that's impossible, so we have to set up experiments which replicate the behaviors as best as possible. keach: abrams times each of the construction phases as the maya might have performed them. knowing the maya used only stone tools, abrams estimates that two people could quarry over 3,000 pounds of rock in a day. he times the other processes, like transportation, knowing that the maya had no wheels or draft animals. abrams also times the manufacture of the blocks and construction of part of a wall. five cubic feet takes 80 minutes. by measuring all the walls in a building, abrams estimates the time needed to complete the masonry. he then adds this figure to the times for other processes like back-filling dirt behind the wall