Grand ruins: Copan's pyramids

| Intro | Grand ruins: Copan's pyramids |
| Seeds of doom: Mystery of a deserted city | If you go . . . |

The next day we walked to the ruins with Inmar Diaz, a handsome young Honduran guide with a broad smile and a Midwestern accent. Diaz learned English, we discovered, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where he graduated with a degree in business.

"Sixty thousand people visit here every year," he said proudly, as we counted out enough Lempira, the national currency, for two entrance tickets (US$10 per person). "Copan is one of the world's great places, like the Grand Canyon. It's not the largest Mayan city, but it's known for the finest sculpture and carving. Archaeologists from the United States and Honduras discover new things almost every month."

Copan's central group of pyramids, on two square miles (5.2 square kilometers), said Diaz, was built over 400 years, from 426 to 800 A.D., during the Mayan Classic Period. But by 900 A.D., people were deserting the city. Then, for the next millennium the immense pyramids and rectangular platforms lay silent, swallowed up by jungle.

In 1975, restoration began in earnest, and five years later UNESCO placed Copan on the list of World Heritage Sites. In 1982, the Honduran government established a national monument that protects the entire Copan River Valley and its tributaries.

As we approached the pyramids, the cries and whispers of long-dead spirits seemed to float through the towering ceiba trees, sacred to the Maya who believed they connected the center of the earth with the heavens.

Insistent murmurs, rising like ghosts from a graveyard, coiled like lazy smoke around the silent pyramids and drifted over the carved stone stelae on the Great Plaza, whose ancient hieroglyphs, chipped and worn, recorded the story of the royal dynasty that ruled this city state so long ago.

"My name is 18 Rabbit, King of Kings, the 13th ruler," the carvings seemed to say. "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair."

Nothing living remained, except for a handful of tourists. Silenced by the monumental size of the plaza, seven acres (2.8 hectares) once paved with stone and now planted in grass, they stared at the face of 18 Rabbit (Uaxaclahun Ubak K'awil), 13th ruler of Copan. His towering headdress twitched with tiny figures, his scepter writhed with the jaws of a two-headed serpent and a belt of dangling shells covered his squat thighs.

Then, for an instant, the city seemed alive: Women in red and yellow huipils grinding corn, girls drawing water from the river, naked children playing tag, priests in feathers crossing the plaza. Beyond, workmen laid rows of blocks on a huge pyramid rising over a smaller, older temple. "Rosalila," the archaeologists would name it when they uncovered it, perfectly preserved, in 1989.

"When they dug a tunnel under Temple 16 they found Rosalila underneath, and an even older one under that, called Margarita," said Diaz. "Next year they're hoping to open the tunnel to the public so visitors can walk inside to see the burial chambers and hieroglyphs."

Seeds of doom: Mystery of a deserted city