Headline, July 15 2025/ ''' FOUNDER MAYA'S FOUNTAIN '''

''' FOUNDER MAYA'S

 FOUNTAIN '''

THE ARCHAEOLOGISTS WORKED IN THE shadow of towering Maya ruins, piercing the floor of a structure they had searched years before.

Below, they found an even more ancient chamber, still holding a body and the treasures it was buried with : a rare mosaic death mask and jadeite jewelry, shells from the Pacific and elaborate designs on pottery and bone.

It was the 1,700-year old tomb of a Maya ruler - the first ever found at Caracol, the largest Maya site in Belize - and it held clues to a Mesoamerican world where cities contended with one another from hundreds of miles apart.

'' They've found a very early ruler, so that's very important, and he's claimed to be the founder of a dynasty,'' said Gary Feinman, an archaeologist at Field Museum of Chicago who was not involved in the excavation. '' That's a major find.''

Arlen Chase, one of the archaeologists working at Caracol - was among the first to enter the tomb. '' As soon as we saw the chamber, we knew we had something,'' he said.

FROM the style of ceramic vessels, he knew the tomb was exceptionally old. From the red cinnabar all around, he knew it was for someone of very high status. But it was the mosaic mask, pieces of jadeite off to the side, that made him realize just how unusual the tomb was.

With each discovery, he called Diane Chase, an archaeologist with whom he had been working at Caracol for four decades.

'' I kept saying, ' Do you want me to come down? ' '' she said. And he kept saying no. And then, eventually he said yes. [ The Chases will celebrate 50 years of marriage in August.]

Diana Chase hurried from their base at the University of Houston to take stock of the discoveries.

The Maya ruler, they determined, had grown old for his time, living long enough to lose all his teeth and for the bone to grow over his jaw.

'' We've never found anyone that we could identify as ruler at Caracol before, so that in itself was amazing,'' Diane Chase said. '' And double wow,'' she said the ruler could be identified as the founder of a dynasty.

The ruler had been interred not just with the mask but three sets of jadeite ear flares, an extraordinary luxury for the Maya elite, and a variety of ceramic vessels. They showed the Maya god of traders, a hummingbird and a ruler holding a spear, with supplicants making offerings to him.

Vessels depicted a monkey, an owl, and the heads of coatimundi - mammals sometimes described as raccoons crossed with lemurs.

'' It's stuff that we've never seen before,'' Arlen Chase said of some of the designs.

Through hieroglyphics, the archaeologists identified the ruler as Te K'ab Chak, who took the throne in A.D. 331. He ruled Caracol as it was growing into a larger city, the Chases said, but centuries before its peak as a regional power. Like other Maya cities, it had been abandoned by about A.D. 900.

The discovery '' adds a whole new dimension '' to the site, said Melissa Badillo, the director of Belize's Institute of Archaeology, a longtime working partner of the Chases.

'' This is the first of its kind in that it's a ruler, a founder, somebody so old, and in so good a condition, to be honest, because the humidity doesn't lend itself well to preservation.''

The Honour and Serving of this Master Publishing on Founders, continues. The World Students Society thanks Alan Yuhas.

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