December 14, 2005
San Bartolo Mural Video

In 2004, I spent five weeks with the archaeological team in San Bartolo, Guatemala, documenting on video every step of the discovery of today's announcement. Now that National Geographic has released the information, I'll be putting my photos and video on the web. Stay tuned, and come back to this post for updates.

Earliest Known Maya Painting Found - New York Times

UPDATE: Here's the video.

An opening shot, a standup, a tunnel walk, and you're into the San Bartolo experience. 5 weeks condensed into 4 minutes, my tribute to everyone on the team, a glimpse of the discovery and the astonishment of three visiting archaeologists and epigraphers, stars in their own right: David Stuart, Karl Taube, and Ian Graham.

Temporada - Digging San Bartolo - iPod Video 20mb

And yes, that is a figure of HunahPu (a king in costume?) performing a bloody penis perforation with a six-foot spear. Did they mention that in the Times? I don't think so. Did Bill mention it on the Today show? I don't know, didn't see it.

UPDATE 2: Here's more on San Bartolo from this site: Search Results

UPDATE 3: Contact me - dave dot pentecost at gmail dot com - for Maya travel and tour info for this spring. We're planning another Usumacinta study trip (Maya cities of Palenque, Yaxchilan, Piedras Negras) and are raising funds now.

UPDATE 4: For Maya related podcasts, check out the Junglecasts that Nicco Mele and I did last spring. Enjoy!

UPDATE 5: For a Google Earth preview of the Usumacinta River trip, see this.

UPDATE 6: If you don't have a video iPod, don't worry (I don't either, but it's a compact file). Download the latest free Quicktime player, for OS X, or Windows.

UPDATE 7: For folks coming by way of Doc Searls' weblog, here's a photo of the stunned satellite dish installers who arrived at night from Guatemala City. This is the moment the team went online. (click for a larger photo)

Once before, I was part of a satellite uplink from the top of a pyramid, but this was the most remote network I've seen.

Posted by Dave at December 14, 2005 02:50 PM