National Geographic Episodes on PBS

“Dawn of the Maya” tracks the Central American civilization back 1000 years into its “pre-classic” era (to c. 600 B.C). Those early Maya were anything but primitive. At El Mirador in present-day Guatemala, a city built “on an epic scale,” says narrator Gavin MacFadyen, archaeologist Richard Hansen searches for the remains of a ruler known as Great Fiery Jaguar Paw, who ruled in the second century B.C. “This was a king on the order of Rameses or Cheops,” says Hansen. And 60 miles away in San Bartolo, archaeologist William Saturno recalls discovering a remarkably sophisticated 2000-year-old mural that depicts the Maya creation story. Says iconographer Karl Taube: “This is basically a Sistine Chapel.”