one of its mysteries that estrada—belli has been trying to solve — its empty tomb.oned it. the date of the building matches with a guy who was supposed to be from here being sacrificed at tikal in the year 748. 0k. after that, pretty much all monumental construction stopped here. so tell me what that would have meant. so tikal was defeating its arch enemy, the snake kingdom. they had already defeated the snake kings and now they were going after its former allies or vassals. this is historical archaeology. we do notjust talk about processes any more and theories. now we talk about specific events and specific people. because we can read the inscriptions. and yet, this tomb was almost destroyed before estrada—belli or any other archaeologists were able to discover it. here is the tomb chamber. wow. looters came and dug a hole right behind this doorway. and they mssed the structure with the frieze by 20 centimetres. i will show you. that is the frieze right there. that's the corner image of one of the dead kings. you can imagine what they would have done. they would h

estrada belli was lucky to find this frieze.doesn't make for especially easy archaeology. 100 years ago, an archaeologist from harvard first came to holmul and discovered these temples, but he missed the oldest carving which dates all the way back to 350 bc. the notes were rather incomplete because the archaeologist died shortly after working here, by a mysterious disease that he contracted here. he returned from here with a massive sore on his nose which never healed. that's what happens with this bug. eventually he died, he never finished his reports. it was actually published by one of his friends at harvard, posthumously. they forgot to mention this tunnel, and he had found the window of an earlier pyramid and stopped. so, we kept digging and there's this massive carving that explained what the temple is all about. so are these beetles still around? yes. 0h, great! it's called the assassin bug. good, i'm glad we're going in now. welcome to the underworld. it even made a sound. turn the light on. watch your step. we're going