Craig Argyle made a fascinating discovery during the 2008 field season. At the end of the 2007 field season he had found what seemed to be a stucco modeled character on the side of a stairway in a building in the Great Acropolis at El Mirador, adjacent to the hydraulic system that supplied water to an important part of the city in ancient times. There was no time to explore the finding to the level of detail necessary so he patiently waited for one year until his return to the Mirador Basin.

At the beginning of the excavation, during the 2008 field season, the excitement kept rising in the camp when, as his work progressed on "the hydraulic system" (as everyone was calling it) - several artistic elements of the finest quality were unveiled that perhaps no one had seen since the year 200 BC. In two huge panels modelled in stucco some characters began to emerge. The friezes formed the sides of a canal that carried rainwater to a complex system of stepped pools, where water was stored for human consumption and for agriculture. The archaeologists noted that, in the 8 meter long by 6 meter high panels (26 feet long by 20 feet high) images of aquatic monsters, ancient Gods and one or two characters, which looked as though they were swimming, could be observed.

During the 2010 field season Argyle may have done more than just decide what the best place would be to put a protecting roof - similar to the one over Strucutre 34- to protect the frieze on the hydraulic system. We have already seen all of Ixbalanque's body and it is complete and in a wonderful state of preservation below the wall built by the Maya that was covering half of his body. The beautiful stucco modelled frieze dates from the year 200 BC and it might even be 100 years older than that!

Drawing on a Uaxactun plate depicting the rebirth of Hun Hunahpu, to become the Lord of Maize, as the hero twins observe the event.. Art appeared in article by Karl Taube.

The body of one of the characters was covered by a staircase later added by the Maya to the building, but the art on the frieze dates from 300 or 200 BC. The big surprise for the whole team turned out to be that the bottom panel happened to display the oldest known representation of the Maya creation myth and that the swimming characters featured in the frieze were no others than the hero twins of the Popol Vuh, Hunahpu and Ixbalanque! The mood at El Mirador was set on "great discovery mode". In fact the finding was later declared as one of the most important archaeological finds of 2009 worldwide.

The Popol Vuh or Book of the Council is a compilation of the ancient Quiché people’s beliefs. These were transmitted for centuries by oral tradition and organized into a text in Spanish during the XVI century by the parish priest of Chichicastenango, (El Quiché, Guatemala) Father Francisco Jiménez. With the help of an informant, who shared the stories of his people with him, Jimenez collected the oral traditions of the Quiche in a chronology accessible to the Western mind. Richard Hansen says that the characters depicted on the panels represent a scene from the Popol Vuh, in which the Hero Twins leave the Underworld after winning a battle decided at the ball court against the Lords of Xibalba. The frieze shows the Hero Twins swimming away and one of them is carrying his father’s head, Hun Hunahpu.

Those who have read the Popol Vuh should recall the exact passage in which the hero twins dismember themselves to quickly reconstitute their bodies and the Lords of the Underworld ask Hunahpu and Ixbalanque to do the same thing to them. The mythical twins cut the Lords of the Underworld up, but never returned them to their original form and took advantage of their helplessness to retrieve their father’s head and that of their uncle, who had been the prize obtained by the Lords of Xibalba, who had defeated them and sacrificed them at the ballgame in which the Lords of Xibalba had emerged victorious. The scene on the frieze is inspiring as it illustrates the precise moment in which Hunahpu and Ixbalanque are successfully leaving Xibalba (the Underworld) and reclaimed their ancestors’ remains (their father’s Hun Hunahpu and their uncle’s Vucub Hunahpu) on their passage to heaven to turn themselves into the Sun and the Moon.

Surely this is not the last that will be said about what the Maya of El Mirador wanted to convey with this scene. What we may add is that there are no words to describe the beauty this building must have had with its frieze when a part of it was submerged under water, which flowed into the pools below, and where the flow of water allowed passers by to capture the movement of one of the hero twins as he swam upstream.

Hansen explained this finding to a CNN film crew in the following terms, “This [frieze portraying a scene from the Popol Vuh]… is the Creation Story and it goes back to at least 300 to 200 BC.” Re living the moment when he realized the magnitude of what they had unveiled, Hansen adds, “Immediately [as] I saw the head… with the number one and the scroll, I thought, ‘Can this be the Popol Vuh?' I was stunned!,” he exclaimed. “They had a series of pools with two waterfalls, dual waterfalls that went into another pool and then the sides of their pools were richly decorated with extraordinary art on two levels. It shows the wealth of their society…These [the Pre Classic Maya elite] were the major players. This was essentially the capital of the world in the western hemisphere [back then]”, he affirmed.

“This is a massive pool, a water collection facility inside a major architecture,” said Hansen as he explained the discovery of the hydraulic system enthusiastically to CNN reporters. “This is going to be something you haven't seen before, but it is going to give us an opportunity to show you some of the most amazing features of Pre Classic iconography and Pre Classic ideology in full manifestation,” he exclaimed.

Some historians believe that the Popol Vuh was a document contaminated with Catholic idiosyncrasies arising from the interpretations made by the Father Jiménez. Skeptics went as far as saying that the Popol Vuh contained no real narrative of Mayan mythology, and that it was plagued with XVIth century Spanish "influences". The discovery of the panels in El Mirador provides undisputed proof of not only key parts of this story but also that the Maya myth of creation is indeed an authentic and unaltered Maya legacy.

Moreover, it is also much older than previously thought as it goes back to at least 1000 years earlier. The only criticism that could possible be made - perhaps- is that Jimenez put the Popol Vuh stories in a rigid chronological order inteligible to the Westerners' mind and only because the stories of the ancient indigenous peoples do not occur in Western chronological order, but are extremely sui generis in their concepts of space and time.

The 2008 field season continued as usual in El Mirador, with much work as large as the site itself which surpassed the hard working team in both challenges and workload. So when I was asked to make some pictures of the frieze and the artistic details needed by the conservation team, so that they could draw a plan for the stucco’s restoration, it was with great pleasure, humbleness and honor that I agreed to help.

It was a restricted area for visitors about which we were all committed not to mention any details until after the publication of the discovery and after it had been duly reported in the field season’s document that would be turned in to the Institute of Anthropology and History. Of course we all keep our word... but we were surprised to see the frieze published in several newspapers earlier than expected, after a presidential visit. President Alvaro Colom, who is very close to Maya religious traditions, had no words to express what he felt when he saw the frieze and understood its deeply mythic and spiritual meaning.

A few days before the end of the 2008 field season Argyle had to go home and I walked him to the helipad and waited with him while his transport arrived. It was interesting that the discovery and his participation in the excavation, documentation and restoration of this magnificent ancient Maya masterpiece served as a new starting point in this scientist’s life. From now on he said he would focus on investigating the origins of religion in ancient Mesoamerica. I suggested he contact other scholars, mainly Oswaldo Chinchilla and Michael Coe, who are already advancing their first ideas about the origin of ancient religion in Mesoamerica.

The hero twins are also, apparently, a myth that transcends the present and the ancient boundaries of the Maya World. The Maya of El Mirador and their contemporaries at Izapa may have founded a pan Mesoamerican or even North American myth, as Red Horn’s sons are part of the legend and traditions of the Siouan-speaking peoples. The similarities and analogies with the mythical cycle of the Maya Hero Twins and the legend of Red Horn’s sons have been established by some scholars. The heroes in the Navajo creation myth are also hero twins, named "Monster Slayer" and "Child Born for Water".

The restoration and conservation team continued making enormous efforts to preserve the details on the frieze during the July 2010 field season.

The long snout of a rain and water deity is adorned by fancy scrolls emerging from this mythical creature's mouth, portraying exquisite details on early Maya art at El Mirador. El Mirador, Jul. 2008

Conservation and stabilization of the stucco was a priority to preserve the frieze in the hydraulic structure at El Mirador... El Mirador, Jul. 2008

Although much remains to be discovered about the mythology and religion of the ancient North and Central American peoples and the relationships between them, it is interesting to note that the similarities between the myths of the Siouan and Maya are so precise, for the first lived in the Mississippi Valley and the Ohio River, so far away from El Mirador.

Siouan is a family of languages, including ancient languages spoken by the indigenous Lakota, Dakota and The Great Sioux Nation who live in South Dakota to this day. Although in the case of the Navajo religion it is said that its origin may be traced to ancient Mexico, scholars like Oswaldo Chinchilla and Michael Coe seem to point to a common origin in the Maya culture that flourished earlier than the high civilizations of ancient Mexico and that, while we may speak of a Mesoamerican origin, why not dare and say it, as the chances to make a mistake are rather minimal. We may easily relate the origin of all religion in the Pre Columbian Americas to the Creation mythology of the early Pre Classic Maya who lived in sites such as El Mirador, possibly populating all of the Mirador Basin, Izapa and the lands of the Olmecs in Veracruz, Mexico...

Hunahpu may be seen in full splendor here. before his knee was completely restored, as he swims leaving the Underworld behind, carrying his father's head on his back before he turns into the Maize God. El Mirador, Jul. 2008