archaeologists believe the king of each maya city probably controlled a large piece of the best farm land -- land that could produce a surplus beyond the needs of his royal household. but no maya king controlled a large food producing system like the aztec chinampas. consequently, the real power of maya kings was limited. so it was natural that they sought to control their subjects in other ways. one of those ways is being explored by honduran archaeologist ricardo agurcia. agurcia is tunneling in the ruins of a huge pyramid built by the last king of copan. he believes the pyramid may contain a more complete building of an earlier king. he first drove one tunnel northward from the main shaft and discovered the remains of a wall. these are the remains of earlier building on the acropolis. behind one of the walls, agurcia found another, and followed it farther inward and upward toward the heart of the pyramid. agurcia: the next thing we knew, we hit this incredible building. keach: what agurcia found astounded him -- the roof of a buried building, decorated with elaborate plaster sculpt

(narrator) courtly life at palenque and other maya city-states brought with it responsibility. maya rulers literally paid for their status with their own blood. this sne relief depicts the rituals required of maya kings and queens. lady xok kneels before her husband, the lord of yahilan. she draws a rope studded with thorns through her tongue. her blood, dripping down the rope onto bark paper, will be burned as an offering to the gods to insure that the cycle of life would endure. the story continues in a second relief. lady xok, perhaps in a pain-induced trance, has a vision. from the mouth of a giant serpent her ancestor emerges as an armed warrior. in a third relief she appears again, arming her husband with a shield and jaguar-helmet in preparation for war. in the absence of a central authority, the various petty kingdoms inevitably battled for control of resources. palenque waged war against tonina, a warlike city-state lodged in the rugged mountains to the south. their grim rivalry persisted for generations. themes of war, sacrifice and captivity became common in maya art,

in the pyramids and monuments of the ancient maya, workers search for clues to the emergence of a vanished civilization. these are the ruins of the ancient city of copan, honduras. dozens of stone monuments, called stelae, proclaim the power of mighty beings. until experts could read these carved hieroglyphs, most scholars thought these larger-than-life figures represented maya gods. but we now know they are portraits of copan's rulers, with names like butz chan... smoke shell... and the most powerful of all, 18 rabbit. the maya called them "c'ul ahau," or divine lord. the title was inherited. we call them kings since they passed their power to brothers or sons. a dynasty of 16 kings ruled copan for 400 years. how did they first acquire their power ? and how were the maya governed before the kings ? to answer such questions, archaeologists discuss their ideas of political change. which says, here's the resolution, but you've got no enforcement. who's the arbitrator ? the arbitrator is the chief. keach: everyone in this group is guided by the same basic model of political evolution. it says that as a society evolves, fewer and fewer people con