palenque and calakmul vied for control of the rich fertile tabasco plain that stretched north from palenque toward the gulf of mexico. when the kings of palenque sat in the palace and looked out across the tabasco plain all the way to the gulf of mexico, it was the region that they dominated. and from that region, they were able to collect cotton and cacao, two principal sources of wealth. (narrator) pakal died in 683 and was succeeded by his oldest son kan bahlam-- his name means snake jaguar-- who reigned until 702. he continued to expand the glory of palenque. there is no other place where we find, for example, the use of parallel corbels as early as we see them here. and one of the things that this does is make the buildings inherently more stable. these buildings have stood the test of time better than at almost any other site because of the kind of engineering knowledge that the maya used. arrator) kan bahlam built three major temples-- the temple of the cross, the temple of the sun, and the temple of the foliated cross-- dedicated in 692 to palenque's patron deities. e palace was exp

of palenque. keach: a king at the age of 12, pacal left a wealth of inscriptions that traces his lineage back six generations. his sons carried the lineage forward, to reveal a phenomenal record of a ruling maya dynasty. but the writing also revealed an abrupt and puzzling break in the dynastic succession. this is the palace, begun by pacal and continued by his sons, including kan xul. work began on an elaborate tablet that would commemorate kan xul's dedication of the building. the tablet contains detailed information about kan xul's life -- his birth date, his parents' names, his brother's reign as king, and finally the rise to pwer of kan xul himself. but kan xul never dedicated the building at palenque. the last fragments of the tablet name a different king. matthews: the dedication which we would have expected to have been undertaken by kan xul -- and the entire text is leading up to that event -- was in fact undertaken by someone else, so that this posed something of a problem for us in our

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