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00:00They come once in a millennium, geniuses who dream the impossible, who change the face
00:07of the world, men of vision, men with power, and they all shared a magnificent obsession.
00:16They are the Pyramid Builders.
00:33Think about how amazing the pyramids are.
00:36You see pictures of them in magazines all the time, but I want to take you beyond the
00:41images.
00:43This is one of the great intellectual adventures in history.
00:47That's the real story, and it all starts with one man.
00:55Twenty-five centuries before Christ, a genius was born on the banks of the Nile.
01:01When he grew to manhood, his king gave him many titles, high priest, chief of palace
01:06physicians, but the one that would change history was royal architect.
01:12He was Imhotep.
01:18His vision took Egypt from a nation of mud-brick buildings to stone skyscrapers, the greatest
01:25building explosion the world has ever seen.
01:29Four thousand five hundred years ago, Imhotep changed the world forever.
01:37He is the first recorded genius in history, the first to conceive of a building in stone.
01:44He was Imhotep, the first Pyramid Builder.
01:53So at Saqqara, in Egypt, he created a tomb of stone for his pharaoh, a monument so enduring
02:00that it would house King Zasir and his treasures forever.
02:05Up until then, kings had been buried under simple structures called mastabas, Arabic
02:13for bench.
02:16So Imhotep built a mastaba for his king, and then he had the big idea.
02:22He put another one on top of it and kept on going for six levels, creating the step pyramid
02:30That's the first stone building in the history of the world.
02:38This building, just outside of Cairo, is one of the great inventions in man's history,
02:43somewhere between the wheel and the computer.
02:46Remember, this is the first time anyone had built anything big in stone.
02:54But as the pyramid grew, it became unstable.
03:03The stone blocks were not perfectly square, and their weight was unevenly distributed
03:07throughout the pyramid.
03:11To stabilize the pyramid, Imhotep angled the outside blocks inward, towards the center,
03:17so the pyramid is literally holding itself up.
03:21He was making it up as he went along, solving problems as they appeared.
03:27He created shrines and chapels for his king, an entire petrified city that sprawled for
03:33acres.
03:38Imhotep conceived the inconceivable and made it reality.
03:44His pharaoh's tomb remains a thing of wonder after 4,500 years.
03:50Where is Imhotep's tomb?
04:01This is one of my favorite places.
04:04There are more mummies here than any other site in all of Egypt.
04:08Can you guess what's inside all these pots?
04:11I'll show you.
04:18Mummified birds, more than a million of them.
04:23But this is a clue to where Imhotep is buried.
04:26You see, 2,000 years after he died, he was worshipped as a god, and the bird that was
04:33sacred to him was the ibis.
04:36So pilgrims came to his tomb and left mummified birds as offerings, hoping to be healed.
04:43When Walter B. Emery, the archaeologist who found this tomb, discovered these miles of
04:48tunnels, he knew that Imhotep's tomb was near.
04:54It was a dangerous excavation.
04:56Sometimes tunnels collapsed and had to be shored up.
05:00Emery pressed on for 16 years, but in the end, Imhotep got away.
05:06This tomb is still undiscovered.
05:15Teams of excavators from around the world are still looking.
05:19But if I had to bet on one team, I'd pick the Egyptians.
05:23I'm sure they're on to something really big, and it could just be Imhotep's tomb.
05:31Within sight of the step pyramid, a team of excavators, under the supervision of Dr. Adil
05:36Hussain, has just uncovered a huge wall.
05:40It seems to be a wall surrounding a mastaba, or perhaps a pyramid.
05:45It's big enough for a king, certainly big enough to be Imhotep's tomb.
05:52On the wall are ancient graffiti from the third dynasty.
05:56It's right about Imhotep's time.
06:01We don't know who's in this huge tomb, but right next to the wall, the Egyptian team
06:06has discovered a smaller tomb that was built years after the huge one.
06:11And they do know who's in that one.
06:14He was a surgeon, and inside his tomb, they found the oldest surgical instruments in the
06:20world.
06:21But let me show you something about the man who used those tools.
06:29The owner of this tomb's name is over here, Kar.
06:33But up here are two hieroglyphs that are particularly interesting.
06:37They were pronounced in ancient Egyptian, parah.
06:40They meant the great house, and that's where we get Pharaoh from.
06:42He lived in the great house, so he was a parah.
06:46But over here are Kar's titles.
06:49He was a physician, and he was the senior physician.
06:52So Dr. Kar had the same title as Imhotep, royal physician.
06:58Dr. Kar chose to be buried near the huge tomb, perhaps because it housed the physician architect
07:05Imhotep.
07:11The team also found mummies from a later period.
07:15These people, too, wanted to be buried here.
07:18Why?
07:19I've got one last discovery to show you.
07:23Just a few yards from the big tomb and Dr. Kar's tomb, the Egyptian team found a cache
07:28of 22 bronze statues.
07:31They're from Egypt's late period.
07:33So 2,000 years after the huge tomb was built, someone buried these statues in this special
07:40place, and there, among the gods, is a statue of Imhotep.
07:48The search for Imhotep could end soon.
07:51I think they just might be narrowing in on him, and if they find him, it could be as
07:57spectacular as Tutankhamen's tomb.
07:59Remember, you heard it here first.
08:05Imhotep's innovation became a national mania.
08:11The Step Pyramid was undoubtedly the pride of Egypt, ten times taller than any other
08:16structure on earth.
08:18So imagine, if you were a kid watching the Step Pyramid growing higher and higher on
08:23the horizon, it would have made some impression.
08:27That's just what happened to a prince named Sneferu, who was destined to be king of Egypt.
08:34Sneferu became obsessed with pyramids.
08:36He built at least three, probably more.
08:40His first, at Maidum, is now in ruins, and looks more like a tower than a pyramid.
08:47It started out as a Step Pyramid, like the one Imhotep built, but Sneferu had an idea.
08:54As his Step Pyramid neared completion, he enlarged it, burying the original pyramid
08:59inside it.
09:00And then he did that a half a dozen times.
09:03He was never satisfied.
09:05He was always pushing the envelope.
09:12I'm going to show you how we know.
09:19What do you think this is?
09:22This is the finished outer casing of the pyramid.
09:25These blocks are rough.
09:26They didn't have to finish them, they're inside.
09:29But look up there.
09:30It's finished inside the pyramid over there, too.
09:33And then after this finished casing, they said, nope, it's not finished.
09:37Let's make it bigger.
09:38So you've got more rough blocks, and then another finished casing.
09:41They just kept on going.
09:46But Sneferu wasn't buried here.
09:48He had a better idea.
09:50He wasn't going to be buried in a Step Pyramid.
09:53He was going to be buried in the first true pyramid ever, a pyramid with straight sides,
09:59no steps.
10:01Maybe the idea came from the heavens.
10:04When conditions are just right, the rays of the sun come down to earth in the shape of
10:09a pyramid.
10:15Even before his first pyramid was completed, Sneferu began his second.
10:23He chose a new site, Dahshur.
10:27Here Sneferu took pyramid building up a notch.
10:31From the beginning, it was designed to be a true pyramid, with smooth sides right up
10:36to the top.
10:39Step Pyramids were now obsolete.
10:43Not only was the design new, it would be twice as large as any other building on earth.
10:49But as the new pyramid reached half its intended height, something went terribly wrong.
10:57You see, the pyramid was built on a foundation of unstable desert gravel.
11:03So the corners of the pyramid shifted, transmitting incredible forces toward the burial chamber,
11:09and the walls began to crack.
11:14To reduce the weight on the inside chamber, the angle of the pyramid was changed, creating
11:19a bent pyramid.
11:23The bent pyramid was way too unstable for Sneferu's eternal resting place.
11:28But he's got to have a tomb.
11:30So he built another pyramid.
11:32This guy didn't give up.
11:35So about a mile north of the abandoned bent pyramid, he began his final attempt.
11:40The red pyramid, built on a solid foundation of bedrock, was completed as a true pyramid.
11:48And to his right is Sneferu's final resting place.
11:52After three heroic tries, he got it right.
11:56But that's not the end of our story.
11:58Wait till you see what came next.
12:13The Giza Plateau is where the art of pyramid building was perfected.
12:17They are the greatest pyramids on earth, and they were built by one family.
12:24I want to introduce you to someone who was right in the middle of this incredible family.
12:29I call her the queen of the pyramid builders.
12:32She was a queen all right, but she never built a pyramid.
12:37She probably never lifted anything heavier than a wine cup.
12:41That's her there, smelling a lotus flower.
12:45Her name is Meris Ankh.
12:47That means she loves life, and this is her tomb.
12:56Listen to what her family did.
12:58Sneferu, her grandfather, built the Maidum Pyramid, the Bent Pyramid, and the Red Pyramid.
13:04Her father-in-law, Khufu, built the Great Pyramid.
13:08But that's not all.
13:10Her husband, Khaifrei, built the second greatest pyramid and included the Sphinx in his design.
13:16In her tomb, she surrounded herself with her family.
13:22But out of this entire family of overachievers, the one I really want to concentrate on is
13:26cousin Hemienu.
13:28He was the architect of the Great Pyramid.
13:31Think how important he was, overseeing the construction of the greatest building project
13:35in history.
13:37His statue shows him as rather heavy.
13:39In those days, a little fat was a sign of status, and it looks like he was very successful.
13:46So some 4,500 years ago, a chubby young Hemienu scrambled up a cliff overlooking the Giza
13:52Plateau.
13:58This is why Hemienu came here.
14:00Look at that view.
14:03From this spot, he would plan the rest of his life's work.
14:07You see, the site had to be on the west bank of the Nile.
14:14That's where the sun dies every day.
14:17That's the realm of the dead.
14:20But it also had to be near the river that once a year flooded practically to where the
14:24Sphinx is today.
14:26So large blocks of stone could be ferried to the pyramid site.
14:35Hemienu had found the perfect building site.
14:38Now all he had to do was build a pyramid.
14:46And didn't he create something incredible?
14:50The Great Pyramid is huge.
14:52The base covers 13 acres.
14:55There's more than a million blocks of stone in that baby.
14:59But for me, the amazing thing about the Great Pyramid is not its size.
15:04It's the precision.
15:06The casing blocks fit so perfectly that you still can't fit a piece of paper between them.
15:14How do you build something like that?
15:16Well, the first thing is not to build your pyramid on sand.
15:20That shifts.
15:22Remember the Bent Pyramid disaster?
15:24Hemienu wasn't going to make that mistake again.
15:27So the sand is cleared down to bedrock, and then paving stones are put down.
15:33Okay, we have our foundation.
15:36But now we'd like to orient the pyramid to the four points of the compass.
15:41So the deceased pharaoh is associated with that magical point in the sky around which
15:46all other stars seem to rotate.
15:50Today it's the North Star.
15:52But in Hemienu's day, it wasn't.
15:54It was actually a point between Kakeb, a star in the Big Dipper, and Mizar, one in the Little
16:00Dipper.
16:02Once a night, when Kakeb was directly above Mizar, they indicated true north.
16:08That's how Hemienu did it, and he got it dead on.
16:12No building in the history of the world has been so perfectly oriented to the points of
16:17the compass.
16:18But it didn't take rocket science.
16:21You simply looked at the stars.
16:25Now we have the foundation level and oriented to the points of the compass.
16:29But where do we get more than a million blocks of stone?
16:32Well, Hemienu was smart.
16:35He quarried the blocks as close to the building site as possible to save on shipping.
16:41One quarry is right on the Giza Plateau, but tourists never notice it.
16:47From above, you can see the stubs of the blocks the workmen removed.
16:54This quarry was once full of hundreds of guys doing nothing but that.
16:59You can see the space is perfect for one man to work on two blocks at the same time.
17:05But the men who built the pyramid never had anything half as good as this.
17:10All they had were copper tools, and copper's soft.
17:15So they had gangs of thousands of men doing nothing but sharpening tools.
17:21We're well on our way to building our pyramid.
17:24The foundation is solid, it's oriented to the points of the compass, and we're quarrying
17:29our blocks.
17:30Now we have to move the blocks to the pyramid.
17:35Pyramid builders didn't use wheels.
17:37They wouldn't have been much help in moving heavy blocks.
17:39They would just sink into the sand.
17:42So the blocks were moved to the building site on sleds or rollers.
17:49Now, how do we make sure our blocks are level?
17:55This is a carpenter's bubble.
17:57If you want to see if the pyramid's level, put it on a block, and if the bubble floats
18:03between the lines, it's level.
18:06After 4,500 years, this block is perfectly level.
18:11And so is this one, and this one, and this one.
18:19It keeps on going.
18:21But Hemianu didn't have a carpenter's bubble.
18:24What he did have was this, a set square.
18:29When the string lines up with this line, it's level, and there it is.
18:35It's dead on.
18:38The set square was kind of like the Swiss army knife of ancient Egypt.
18:42You could do all kinds of things with it.
18:45If you wanted to see if your blocks were really right angles, take the set square, put it
18:49on its side, and it's dead on again.
18:55If you know where to look, you can still see Hemianu's leveling lines deep inside the pyramid.
19:03Think about how precise Hemianu had to be.
19:07If you're off by an inch at the bottom, your four sides won't meet at the top.
19:13That means no pyramid, disaster.
19:18But Hemianu wasn't off by an inch.
19:20He got it just right.
19:23This is one of the most precise buildings ever constructed.
19:28But don't think Hemianu was perfect.
19:30He was only human.
19:32He made mistakes.
19:35Let me take you inside the pyramid to show you what went wrong.
19:45We're inside the Great Pyramid.
19:49Hemianu's original plan called for this passage descending all the way into bedrock to the
19:54burial chamber.
19:56Sometimes it's not so good to be tall.
19:59But remember, this passage was never intended for people.
20:03It had just one purpose.
20:05The king's mummy was going to be placed in a sarcophagus and slid down this passageway
20:12to his burial chamber.
20:33This was plan A. This is where the pharaoh was originally going to be buried.
20:43But you can see, it's unfinished.
20:46You can even see the chisel marks.
20:49At some point, Hemianu said, boys, put your tools down.
20:54It's time for plan B. For some reason, it was decided the king would be buried not beneath
21:03the pyramid, but in it.
21:08Plan B seems to be a room traditionally called the queen's chamber.
21:13It's unique.
21:14You see, Egyptian pyramids may look pretty much the same from the outside, but inside,
21:20they're all different.
21:23Each architect had his own plan, so we're not absolutely sure what the queen's chamber
21:29was meant to be.
21:31It was never intended for the burial of a queen, but there's a real mystery here.
21:39Hemianu designed what have been called air shafts, small tunnels that angle upward toward
21:46the outside of the pyramid.
21:49No one knows their purpose.
21:50They wouldn't have been adequate for air circulation.
21:54A few years ago, a small robotic camera was sent up one of the shafts, but it came to
22:00what looked like a tiny door.
22:03What's it doing there?
22:05What does it conceal?
22:06My bet is nothing.
22:07You see, the queen's chamber was never completed.
22:12The floor's still unfinished.
22:14So the air shafts were never completed either.
22:17They were just blocked by the rest of the pyramid as it grew taller and taller.
22:22So Hemianu had two major revisions to his pyramid.
22:26The underground burial and the queen's chamber were left unfinished, but he still hasn't
22:31built the king's burial chamber.
22:34So it's time for plan C. Now he starts building a passage going still higher into the pyramid
22:41to the final burial chamber, but this is not your ordinary passageway.
22:46The grand gallery soars upward 26 feet.
22:50This was the largest internal space in the ancient world.
23:02Welcome to plan C. This is the end of the line.
23:10This is where Hemianu finally got it right.
23:16King Hufu was laid to rest in this sarcophagus.
23:21But have you noticed something strange about the pyramid, about the queen's chamber, the
23:26grand gallery, even this room?
23:34There is not a single hieroglyph, no writing, no paintings, nothing, just bare walls.
23:43Nowhere is there anything to tell you whose pyramid this is, except in one hidden place.
23:58It's not easy to get there, but it's the final testament to Hemianu's genius as an architect.
24:04You see, the granite roof slabs of the burial chamber couldn't possibly support the thousands
24:09of tons of stone above them.
24:12So Hemianu created five small chambers right above the burial chamber to take the pressure
24:17off the roof.
24:20There's plenty of graffiti here, but a lot of it's not very old.
24:34I want to show you just about the only place in the pyramid where the king's name appears,
24:39over here, Hufu.
24:42It's ancient workman's graffiti.
24:43Isn't it incredible?
24:46The greatest building on the planet, and the only place they put the owner's name, is where
24:51they thought no one would ever see it.
24:55Why?
24:58The answer is style.
25:05When the Great Pyramid was built, the idea was to impress with sheer, unadorned size.
25:12The pyramids were silent testaments to an overachieving family.
25:19The Great Pyramid of Giza is the only one of the seven wonders of the world that's still
25:23standing.
25:25But Hemianu didn't do it all by himself.
25:27He had the backing of the king.
25:30But there's a legend that King Hufu wasn't such a good guy.
25:35The story is that Hufu sold his own daughter into prostitution to raise money for the construction
25:41of his pyramid.
25:44Next to the Great Pyramid are three smaller pyramids, and the middle one was built by
25:48Hufu's unfortunate daughter.
25:52The story goes that in addition to the fee that went to her father, she made each customer
25:58give her a block of stone for her pyramid.
26:01In case you're wondering, her pyramid contains more than 5,000 blocks of stone.
26:08It's just a story, but there might be some truth to it.
26:13We have spectacular life-size statues of Hufu's family, but all we have of Hufu, the king
26:20who built the biggest pyramid, is a tiny ivory statue.
26:26Perhaps all his statues were smashed after he died by those he wronged.
26:33But that's only one side of the story.
26:35Hufu has his fans, too.
26:38The man who knows more about Hufu than anyone else is Dr. Zahi Hawass, director of the Giza
26:45Plateau.
26:45What do you think about Hufu? Good guy, bad guy?
26:50I believe that this man was a unique man, because building the pyramids made the Egyptians
26:55to have an architect, to have an artist, sculptor, science, technology, astronomy.
27:01That's why this pyramid made this civilization.
27:06I really give the credit to this man, Hufu.
27:10Hufu may not have been such a bad guy after all, but if you want to see the undisputed
27:15jack-the-ripper of pyramid builders, we have to go far from Egypt, to a country that never
27:21comes to mind when you think pyramids.
27:27Bet you didn't know the Chinese built pyramids.
27:29See the green square?
27:31It was built by China's first emperor, Qin the Merciless, one ruthless meanie.
27:36He buried scholars alive who disagreed with him, and millions suffered and died building
27:41his monuments.
27:45For years, his pyramid, just outside China's ancient capital of Xi'an, attracted little
27:50attention.
27:51Then, in a nearby field, a farmer uncovered one of the 20th century's most astonishing
27:58finds, an army of life-size terracotta soldiers guarding the tomb of the emperor Qin, who
28:052,000 years ago unified China and gave it his name.
28:14As archaeologists uncovered thousands of the terracotta warriors, they realized this was
28:19just the annex to the emperor Qin's actual tomb.
28:24No one has been inside the pyramid for 2,000 years, but if ancient texts are right, it's
28:31absolutely fabulous.
28:33They say its long passageways descended 100 feet into a vast subterranean cavern.
28:42The men who made the tomb, and who knew its secrets, were buried alive.
28:47The entrance to the tomb was booby-trapped with hair-trigger crossbows.
28:52The emperor's body, dressed in jade and gold, was laid to rest in a bronze sarcophagus resting
29:00on an enormous three-dimensional map of China, the land he unified.
29:08Its seas and rivers were made of mercury that was circulated by machines.
29:14The ceiling of his tomb was covered with constellations of the night sky, made of pearls.
29:21We can only guess what treasures are hidden inside Qin's pyramid.
29:25But right next to it, archaeologists have just made an incredible discovery.
29:34I want to show you the most amazing find yet.
29:37It's an excavation in progress, so it's a little bit rough, but it's incredible.
29:41Come over here.
29:43Now, look closely.
29:46Can you see what it is?
29:49It's armor for the emperor's spirit army.
29:52And each of these little plaques, they're stone.
29:55Every one is carved and drilled so it can be attached.
29:57Over here, that's the copper laces that held it together.
30:02You know, nobody ever wore stone armor.
30:04All this work was for a ghost army.
30:07And this pit, it's just a small part of the excavation.
30:11It stretches for 10 football fields.
30:19Restoring the suits of armor will take a lifetime.
30:22Each plaque must be cleaned, restored, and then pieced together, like a jigsaw puzzle.
30:29And there are 10,000 suits of armor.
30:35It takes a tough man to build a pyramid.
30:38At the same time that Chin was building his tomb, halfway around the world, some pretty
30:44tough guys were building whole cities of pyramids, and in the most unlikely places.
31:00The jungle of Central America is so dense that it can completely engulf a house in a
31:05month.
31:07In a couple of years, an entire city can disappear, which is exactly what happened here.
31:14An entire civilization vanished, swallowed by the jungle.
31:20And that's just what American lawyer John Stevens and British artist Frederick Catherwood
31:26were looking for 160 years ago as they hacked their way through the jungles of Central America.
31:33They were searching for lost cities of pyramids, covered with inscriptions that no one could
31:40read.
31:41They were the perfect pair for the job.
31:43While Stevens cleared and explored, Catherwood sketched.
31:48Catherwood was an artistic genius who produced some of the finest archaeological drawings
31:53ever.
31:54They found their lost cities all right, complete with pyramids, temples, and enigmatic carvings.
32:01This was real Indiana Jones country, a lost world that slipped out of history.
32:09The lost cities they found were so vast that the two explorers quickly realized they could
32:15never record everything in their lifetimes.
32:19They knew big discoveries would be made by future generations.
32:23How right they were.
32:34Well into the 20th century, archaeologists working at Palenque in Mexico had no idea
32:40what was waiting for them inside the pyramids.
32:44You see, they knew the pyramids were temples.
32:47That's why they're flat on top, for rituals.
32:50But that's all they thought they were.
32:54Then, in 1952, the Mexican archaeologist Alberto Ruz noticed that the floor on top of the pyramid
33:05of inscriptions had holes filled with stone plugs.
33:09When he removed the plugs and pulled up the floor, he found a stairway descending into
33:15the pyramid.
33:29It took four years for Ruz to clear the stairway, but then he found a triangular door, revealing
33:42a stone slab decorated with Maya hieroglyphs.
33:52The slab protected a large stone sarcophagus.
33:58On the floor, Ruz found a sculpture of the head of the Maya king, Hanan Pakal, the great
34:04pyramid builder.
34:08No tomb of a Maya king had ever been found inside a pyramid.
34:13Were Pakal and his treasures inside the sarcophagus?
34:19Ruz raised the huge slab and lifted the plug sealing the sarcophagus.
34:25There was Pakal himself, complete with jade mask.
34:31This was Mexico's equivalent of Tutankhamen's tomb, their first intact royal burial.
34:39Now that they knew one pyramid contained a king, the search for more was on.
34:49The site that intrigued Catherwood and Stevens more than any other was Copan, some 250 miles
34:55southeast of Palenque.
34:58Somehow, of all the sites they discovered, they knew that this site was the most important.
35:06For 13 glorious days, Stevens and Catherwood explored every bit of Copan they could.
35:13Stevens was so captivated by Copan that he bought it, the entire site, for $50.
35:19I figure that's less than a dollar a building.
35:22Not bad, huh?
35:24Stevens had an uncanny sense for archeology.
35:27Somehow, he was always right.
35:31Of all the incredible things he found at Copan, pyramids, temples, statues, what do you think
35:37he picked out as the most important?
35:42This block of stone is it.
35:44It doesn't look like much, but 100 years after Stevens' death, this would be the key to unlocking
35:50the mystery of his lost city.
35:53Look over here.
35:55You've got figures all around the block.
35:58There are 16 of them.
35:59And somehow, Stevens figured out that these were the rulers of Copan.
36:03This is where Stevens made his big discovery.
36:06He noticed that these two figures are facing each other.
36:10And he came to the conclusion that some kind of negotiation or ritual is going on.
36:16And he was right.
36:19In fact, he was so far ahead of his time that it would take scholars 150 years to catch
36:25up with him.
36:29When scholars finally cracked the Maya code and read the hieroglyphs, they went back to
36:33Catherwood's drawings of the block of stone now called Altar Q and realized just how important
36:40it was.
36:42The inscription on the altar revealed that a king named Yashcukmo founded Copan.
36:49And see the small square shield on his right arm?
36:53He was a warrior who defended with his right hand.
36:57Remember that.
36:58It's going to be important later.
37:01Altar Q is right in front of a huge pyramid.
37:05Could the man himself be buried in the pyramid?
37:11That's just what Honduran archaeologist Ricardo Agurcia was wondering when he began tunneling
37:16into the pyramid.
37:18As he excavated, he uncovered finished walls within the pyramid.
37:23The Maya had encapsulated an old pyramid inside a new one.
37:28This is neat.
37:29How long did it take you?
37:30It was quite a bit of time, a couple of years, actually, as we cut through.
37:36Progress is very slow in the tunnels.
37:37We do about a meter a day.
37:41And so every step we take is one day's worth of work.
37:45Then came the surprise.
37:48A giant stucco face attached to a wall emerged from the rubble.
37:53Incredible.
37:54And there it is.
37:55This is where the name of the founder is.
37:57This is the sun, the sun god's fate, K'inich, and then the Ketzl-Makah, Yashcukmo, right
38:02there.
38:03So we've got a temple inside the pyramid.
38:05That's right.
38:07He had discovered a Maya temple.
38:10The only complete one ever found.
38:13The temple was built by Kopan's 10th ruler, Moon Jaguar, but sometime later, it was plastered
38:20to protect it.
38:24The exact replica of it in Kopan's museum is as close to a functioning Maya temple as
38:30we will probably ever get.
38:33The temple was dedicated to Kopan's revered founder, Yashcukmo, the warrior on the altar
38:39Perhaps, deeper within the pyramid, was the man himself.
38:47As Agassiz's colleagues excavated deeper, they found another temple.
38:52Whoa.
38:53I see.
38:55Incredible.
38:56Yeah, it's like temples and temples and temples inside of more temples.
39:07What's the humidity in this tomb?
39:08It's about 100 percent, it feels.
39:09It's warm down here.
39:10Wow.
39:11And it's tricky, too.
39:12Watch your step there, Bob.
39:13Then, beneath the temple, their search ended.
39:14It gets pretty tight from here on in, Bob.
39:15You better go in on your own.
39:16Okay, let me get up and you give me the lamp, right?
39:17Okay.
39:18Hang on.
39:19There we go.
39:20I'm good.
39:21Light, please.
39:22There you go.
39:24Lying on a huge stone slab was a skeleton.
39:25It was a very important person, but was it our founder, Yash Kukmo?
39:49The bones are still kept inside the tunnel in the pyramid because the humidity is almost
39:54100 percent, and if they were taken out and dried quickly, they would be damaged.
39:59A colleague of mine, Dr. Jane Bykstra, is one of the world's leading physical anthropologists.
40:05She's a master at making bones come alive.
40:08Play Miss Marple for me.
40:10How would you figure out if this could be Yash Kukmo?
40:12Well, I think it could be, and one of the key indicators, or the first one I'd look
40:16at would be determining what sex this individual was.
40:20And we can look at the skull, and we can look at areas of muscle attachment.
40:24There's some here in the back that are pretty well developed.
40:27These processes here, for example.
40:29So that's one indication.
40:31The chin is well developed.
40:34The angle here between the body of the mandible and the part that meets the skull is much
40:39of a right angle.
40:41In females, it would be much less of a right angle, but really the most definitive features
40:46occur in the bony pelvis.
40:48And here are two very narrow notches that we call sciatic notches.
40:54If this were a female, we'd expect the notch to be much broader.
40:58Again, a narrow male notch, a much wider female notch.
41:01So you're pretty sure this is a male?
41:03I'm very, very sure that this is a male.
41:06And the age?
41:07Well, there are many things we can look at, but the most definitive features right here
41:11are those of the face of what we call the pubic symphysis, where these two bones come
41:16together in the midline.
41:18This is flat, and it flattens with age, and I'd suggest he was well past 50, and probably
41:23between 70 and 80 is a possibility.
41:25So he could be our man?
41:26He could be, indeed.
41:27In the hieroglyphs, Yash Kukmo is shown as a warrior with a shield on his right hand
41:32where he would have blocked blows, for example.
41:34Anything in the bones suggest that that might be really the case?
41:36Well, there's good evidence here that that could have been the case.
41:40These are the bones of his right forearm, and there's been a fracture here, and it's
41:45a typical fracture you get from blocking a blow.
41:48But he survived, and I just have a tremendous respect for him doing that in those times.
41:53Yash Kukmo was a tough cookie.
41:55He was, indeed.
41:57It looks as if our warrior, Yash Kukmo, founder of Copan, is no longer missing in action.
42:03He's safe inside his pyramid.
42:06Stick around, and next, I'll show you the most beautiful pyramids ever built.
42:17Maya pyramids stretch from Mexico to Guatemala to Honduras.
42:22This was a civilization obsessed with pyramid building, and no place illustrates that better
42:27than Tikal in Guatemala.
42:29It's pyramid heaven.
42:33There are big ones, little ones, pairs of pyramids, ruined pyramids, and reconstructed
42:38pyramids.
42:41This is where the Maya really took pyramid building up a notch.
42:52But they didn't just build big.
42:54They built beautiful.
42:57The corners are designed to cast elegant shadows.
43:01They weren't just piling one stone on top of another.
43:16This is the culmination of 1,000 years of pyramid building in Central America.
43:22Doesn't get much better than this, folks.
43:35Archaeologists at Tikal are rebuilding Pyramid 5 using traditional materials, a core of dirt
43:41and rubble faced with cut stone.
43:44What held it all together was a good mortar made by burning limestone and mixing it with
43:49mud.
43:55See the workman preparing that stone?
43:57Can you figure out the one thing that's different from how the ancient Maya did it?
44:03He's using a metal tool.
44:05The Maya didn't have any metal, no copper, no bronze, no iron.
44:12They pounded all these stones into shape by using other stones.
44:17It's hard to believe, but the hundreds and hundreds of pyramids throughout Central America
44:22were constructed with Stone Age technology.
44:28But then the pyramid building stopped.
44:32Soon, city after city was abandoned, the statues of Copan swallowed by the jungle, the temples
44:42of Palenque lost to history.
44:45And then, even the soaring pyramids of Tikal were abandoned, and we're not sure why.
44:58But I'll give you the best guess, mortar, good Maya mortar.
45:05You see, to make mortar and plaster, you have to burn limestone.
45:10For every bucket of mortar, you need four buckets of wood to burn the limestone, and
45:16a pyramid is about one sixteenth mortar.
45:19That's a lot of wood to burn.
45:22As the mania for pyramid building increased, more and more trees were cut down to fuel
45:28the fires for burning limestone.
45:31If you were standing right here, on top of one of the pyramids in Tikal a thousand years
45:36ago, you might not have seen a single tree.
45:41In the end, burning all the trees led to soil erosion and crop failure.
45:47With the famine that followed, the strong central government collapsed.
45:52An entire civilization abandoned its pyramids, walked away, and disappeared from history.
46:01So for centuries, the pyramids remained hidden in the jungles, sleeping, waiting for Stephens
46:08and Catherwood, waiting for archaeologists who would reveal their secrets.
46:13The biggest one is still hidden, and it's about to rewrite the record books.
46:21I'm sharing a helicopter with archaeologist Richard Hansen.
46:25Wait till you see what his day at the office looks like.
46:28To get to his site, El Tigre, in Guatemala, it's a three-day mule trip.
46:33This ride is pure luxury.
46:36Even with the helicopter, it's quite a trek to our pyramid that's been swallowed by the
46:40jungle.
46:42But this is no ordinary pyramid.
46:44You'll see.
46:45Oh, baby.
46:46It's nice of you to put in the steps.
46:52Yeah, it makes a difference.
46:53It does.
46:54It does.
46:55You don't have to go down on your neck.
46:57How much height are we gaining on just this level?
46:59It looks like 100 feet?
47:01About 35 meters here.
47:03At first, it seems like an ordinary hill.
47:07But Richard explains that this is the pyramid.
47:12Remember when you were a kid, those cartoons where the hero is walking on the back of a
47:15sleeping dragon and doesn't know it?
47:18That's what I'm doing.
47:20Only I'm climbing a pyramid, but it sure doesn't seem like it.
47:25The pyramid's base is half a mile on each side.
47:30That's six times the size of Egypt's Great Pyramid.
47:33This baby is huge.
47:36Finally, something clearly man-made.
47:39This is a pyramid.
47:44What's great about the blocks is they have the enormous blocks with the small face of
47:48the stone exposed.
47:49So it goes in deep.
47:50And the long axis goes into the building, which means that you have more.
47:55It takes more blocks to save the square area.
47:58Instead of turning it around, they've got it going deep.
48:02They're running the stone in.
48:03So there's a tremendous investment of labor in this building.
48:08We've climbed 200 feet, and we're still not at the top.
48:12I'm with you.
48:15And you'll be literally on the top of the world.
48:19You claim this is worth it?
48:21It's worth it.
48:24Whoa.
48:25Fabulous.
48:26That is great, man, thanks.
48:35We are standing on the largest pyramid ever constructed by ancient man, and the world
48:40doesn't even know about it.
48:43And you know what?
48:45This pyramid hasn't been robbed.
48:47The man who built it is probably still inside.
48:52Pyramid builders, Imhotep, Chin, Paka, get ready for a new member of your very exclusive
48:59club.
49:03But I don't think they'll mind a bit.
49:05After all, they are the pyramid builders.