A major breakthrough in Maya archaeology had been made down in Belize, as the royal tomb of a major city’s first-known ruler is discovered by a husband-wife archaeology team.

Buried with elaborate jade, ceramics, and symbolic artifacts, the tomb offers unprecedented insight into early Maya royalty and connections with the non-Mayan Mexican city-state of Teotihuacan.

Caracol was a metropolis of its time in the lower Yucatan Peninsula, and one of the first great Mayan cities of the Classical period.

Its connection with Teotihuacan is key to the story of this discovery and the story of the life of Te K’ab Chaak, a warrior-king whose remains were found by excavations led by Arlen and Diane Chase, archeologists from the University of Houston who have been working at Caracol, among other sites, for 40 years.

They began excavation season by returning to a site that was first dug in 1993—the northeast acropolis, where burial chambers had been found previously. Striking through the floor of the first burial chamber revealed that it was also the ceiling of deeper, older set of tombs, one of which was filled with grave goods.

11 richly-decorated ceramic vessels along with jade earflares, a mosaic jadeite funerary mask, carved bone items, and loads of red pigment left no shadow of a doubt that Diane and Arlen had turned up a “one-percenter.”

“This guy is a one-percenter and that’s why he has so many vessels and three sets of jade earflares in that chamber,” Arlen, a professor of comparative cultural studies, said in a statement on the discovery released by his university.

“The Early Classic period is the time when the rulers assert the fact that they oversee everything, completely distant from the rest of the population. That changes at the end of the Early Classic period, especially in Caracol, when, after the successful warfare against Tikal, they start to share the wealth with the general population. But not this person.”

The northeast acropolis was still covered in trees and earth and completely invisible in aerial surveys, but standing next to it, the manmade nature of the structure becomes clear.

Diane said in a video interview that across their careers, one set of jade earflares is rare, much less three. When you add in a jadeite death mask, something she and her husband have found only on one other occasion, you suddenly get the sense of the power and influence of this person. Additionally, much of the tomb floor and walls were covered in cinnabar.

“You’re dealing with some of the highest royalty when the things get covered in cinnabar, which is red,” said Arlen. “So everything is colored red like the rising sun in the east.”

Ascending to the throne in 331 CE, Te K’eb Chaak ruled over a city larger than the metropolitan footprint of the modern-day Belize capital, if such a thing can be believed. He lived a long time, as his skull was void of all teeth. Caracol was a center of trade, and Arlen’s assertion that he commanded and controlled that trade is backed up by iconography found on one of the ceramic vessels.

Atop the lid of one is a depiction of Ek Chuah, the Maya god of traders, surrounded by offerings. Ek Chuah is not seen almost at all in Early Classic Mayan iconography. Yet there he was, Arlen said in the same video, at 350 CE.

A different kind of Mexico

“Maya carved stone monuments, hieroglyphic dates, iconography, and archaeological data all suggest that widespread pan-Mesoamerican connections occurred after an event in 378 CE referred to as ‘entrada,’” said Diane Chase in the statement.

This is the crux of the discovery from the point of view of the archaeologist, who wants to uncover as much information as possible about life in the past. While the public breaks for the jade death mask and colored ceramic vessels, Te K’ab Chaak offers a rare opportunity to explore life in the Mayan political world before this ‘entrada.’

30 years before Te K’ab Chaak took the throne in Caracol, Teotihuacan, some 640 miles northward, was already a massive trading hub that dealt in many products across Mesoamerica.

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In Caracol, two other tombs were found with Te K’ab Chaak in the northeast acropolis, including one which contained cremated remains of several people radiocarbon dated to 350 CE.

Fifteen pristine blades of green obsidian from Pachuca, Mexico, (north of Teotihuacan) several pottery vessels also likely came from central Mexico, and a carved atlatl projectile tip—atypical for the Maya but typical for a Teotihuacan warrior—were included in the cremation.

The cremation itself and its placement in the center of a residential plaza are also more typical practices for a high-status Teotihuacano and do not accord with standard Maya burial practices.

Based on other ceramics in this cremation, the main individual was likely a Caracol royal family member that had adopted central Mexican ritual practices. This individual may even have served as a royal Maya envoy who had lived at Teotihuacan and returned to Caracol.

In other words, relations between these two great population centers, separated by roughly 153 days of travel on foot through the jungle, were already firmly ensconced by the reign of Te K’ab Chaak—a whole generation before such relations and connections are generally thought to have been established.

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The royal dynasty founded by Te K’ab Chaak continued at Caracol for over 460 years, and the connections between the two regions were undertaken by the highest levels of society during that time.

It presents the picture of a bustling and interconnected Mexico long before the modern world arrived with its roads, airports, and skyscrapers.

“We need to sort of rethink how we view the past when we get finds like this,” Arlen concludes.

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