Features

Unique as Handprint is, the four-kilometer-long Tunichil Muknal (stone sepulchre) is the project jewel. Dr. Awe was the first archaeologist to investigate the river cave, and his preliminary research was featured in the 1993 National Geographic Explorer documentary, "Journey Through the Underworld." Dr. Awe and his student assistants returned in 1995, and for the last three field seasons, they have combed over the site, turning up a series of important finds, including hundreds of pottery vessels, obsidian blades, stone tools, a carved slate tablet and two slate monuments or stelae.

Our Tunichil exploration begins after dinner. The first step is the most daunting. We must plunge off a midstream, flat-topped rock and swim upriver toward the gaping gourd-shaped entrance. There are eight of us tonight. I'm feeling a bit sluggish after a day's worth of exploring, but I snap to the moment I hit the cold water. Just to make sure I kick extra hard. There's something a little desperate feeling about swimming in long pants, hiking boots and a headlamp. "Everybody watch their heads," says Dr. Awe. "If you feel dizzy, like you might black out, tell someone."

The students from three sites relax by the campfire after a long day's work.

It's high 50s inside the cavern, a welcome relief to the thick, 90-something steaminess above ground. Like a good action flick the suspense builds. First we are wiggling through the "breakdown," a tight maze of boulders, then we're sloshing through armpit-high water. We're up on sandbars, then descending into the stream again, careful not to bash knees against coral-sharp, partially submerged rocks. Stringing along single file, our eyes are half on the obstacles and half on the springy Dr. Awe. He detours from the main channel onto a massive flat-topped boulder with good handholds. The boulder bridges to a broad ledge with two upright slate stelae, one of which resembles a stingray spine. "My guess is that there was a blood-letting ceremony here," says Dr. Awe. "They'd prick the finger, the lip, the penis, and drip the blood on paper or to anoint the idols."

As per Dr. Awe's instructions we now have our shoes off. Bones and shattered pottery lie everywhere at our feet. He has recorded all of this, but removed nothing. "I'm not just an archaeologist," he says, "that's not why I come here. I come because it's special. Period. I want others to find it as I did." Over three hours he shows us it all. Having spent the better part of three seasons investigating Muknal, he knows it like the proverbial back of his hand. Most scientists don't get a kick out of showing others what they've already seen, but not Dr. Awe. He doesn't skimp a bit.

TIn stocking feet, we traverse wispy ledges and great cathedral-like halls where bulbous, Tolkienesque patches of stalactites grow out of ceilings and floors. We scale medium-grade rock pitches to glimpse a sacrificial victim (her bones eerily veneered in glittery calcium carbonate); we tiptoe across pearly flowstone, sculpted with deep, water-hollowed runnels. And lastly, and with Dr. Awe's encouragement, we wriggle into an opening no bigger than a basketball. It requires a new level of dirt-wallowing commitment. The tunnel doglegs after 20 feet. At its most pinched end, illuminated by virtue of its exquisite isolation, is a simple inverted pot. It's queerly powerful to see such a thing. At once I'm struck by amazement for the Mayans' resolve. And, of course, Dr. Awe's.

The tour is over. We can put our shoes on. We retrace our watery steps and swim confusedly from the darkness of the cave to the darkness of the outside. It's nearly 10 o'clock. Amid the glow of the camp's generator lights, Dr. Awe inspects my soggy, mud-smeared, happy-as-a-clam state. "Welcome to the project," he says. "You're now a troglodyte."

WE WALK OUT IN THE MORNING. There's talk of squeezing in a visit to the largely unexplored Tarantula cave, but it doesn't happen. There are only a few days left in the June session. Projects need to be wrapped up, laundry done. Everybody hopes to make it to the cayes, the nearby islands, for some much-deserved r&r.

Beyond Tarantula there are hundreds more leads to follow. Each week the project is alerted to some new Mayan cave discovered by a farmer or kid. Not all the tips pan out, of course, but as Dr. Awe says, no research team has the combination of gear, expertise, and enthusiasm to respond as quickly and thoroughly as they can.

Yet as seductive as it is to run off and "recon" every new cave, the project keeps a reasonably firm grip on the task at hand. Dr. Awe says they're right on schedule to complete research on Tunichil, Handprint, Yaxteel, Baking Pot, and Che Chem Ha. Equally important, the field school seems a success. The jungle dangers notwithstanding, everybody goes home in one piece. Many students say they want to return next season. Others aren't so sure, but say a month in Dr. Awe's company has made them see the world much differently than when they came.

"Our archaeological goals are important," he says, "but at least as important to me are that students leave here having a new appreciation for the way others live. Not just ancient Mayans either. I also mean the people of Belize and San Ignacio."

When we say goodbye Dr. Awe asks me for an evaluation. I tell him I'm impressed: by him, the students, the ingenuity of all, and of course by the enduring and palpable presence of the ancient Mayans. Dr. Awe smiles. Come on back next year, he offers. "Once a troglodyte," he says, "always a troglodyte."

Page: 1 2 3 4 Previous

 Easy to print version