Back                                                                                                                            The Lost Maya City of Los Olivos

                                                                                                                                                       by Greg Vandiver 

Note: This article has been chosen to be in the January 2012 edition of 'The Codex'; a publication of The Museum of Archaeology & Anthropology at The University of Pennsylvania. 

After more than a century of intensive exploration of Maya ruins in the steamy jungles of Guatemala’s northern region, one would think there would be little to nothing left undocumented. As I continue in my quest to visit as many ancient sites as possible, however, I am amazed at the quantity of unreported Maya sites I have encountered. During the past several years, I have made numerous trips to Maya sites in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Belize. To my good fortune, I have established a network of fellow Mayanists and Guatemalan friends, with whom I have now explored many Maya ruin sites. Some of these sites are not even known to archaeologists. This brief report describes a visit to one such undocumented Maya site.

Even though I was not planning another trip to Guatemala until much later in the year, I changed my mind after receiving an email from my good friend, Dieter Richter, in which he told me that he had recently learned of the existence of a Maya site that had never been visited by anyone from the Guatemalan government archaeological agency, IDAEH, much less tourists. The site was near the small town of Dolores in the southern region of the Peten and according to Dieter, some people from the Guatemalan government had previously attempted to go there for surveying, and were chased out of the Kekchi Maya village of Los Olivos by the people there and were told to never return.

I was salivating at the idea of exploring a truly unknown Maya site, but Dieter cautioned me that many such ruins are located on private land and permission for access is not always granted by landowners. He also warned me that the Kekchi Maya people could be difficult to deal with at times, and that their looting of ruin sites and land use practices have done severe damage to the environments of the Peten. Dieter Richter is a German architect, who has lived in Flores for many years. He previously specialized in the restoration and architectural rescue of deteriorating Maya buildings at Maya ruin sites located in the “Triangulo Cultural – Yaxha, Nakum, Naranjo” project area of the Northeastern Peten. His experience and familiarity with the back-woods ruins is exceptional in a region that already has its fair share of eager archaeologists working at the many sites.  

Dieter, however, is more than an archaeological architect; he owns and operates Café Arqueologico Yaxha, a unique restaurant, featuring walls covered with photos and maps of remote Peten ruin sites. He also operates a small tour company, called The Mayan Adventure that specializes in taking enthusiastic explorers to some of the little-known archaeological sites in the Peten region. Accompanying Dieter and I on the trip to visit the Maya ruin site was a young German man named Marc Eubel, who came to Flores for the sole purpose of taking Spanish lessons for a few weeks at Dos Mundos Spanish School.

After traveling to the town of Dolores with a man named Mito, we had a typical Guatemalan breakfast (huevos revueltos, frijoles and tortillas with coffee) at the house of Mito’s sister and brother-in-law; the Zitz Alvarado family. Mito’s brothers-in-law, Jorge Zitz Alvarado and Eber Neftali Quixchan joined our group, since Jorge had previously worked there and the Kekchi people knew him quite well. We departed for Los Olivos in a 4-wheel drive truck and drove 1 1/2 hours down a dirt road to reach the village, which is located extremely close to the Guatemalan border with Belize.

Once we arrived, we were directed to talk with Marcos Choc, the owner of the village store as well as, the second chief of the village. The actual chief was not there, and Marcos was the man who made all of the community decisions in his absence. At first, Marcos told us the ruins were on private land and he could not give us permission to visit the site, as it was not his land and the owner was far away and it would be impossible to contact him. I was sure to let Dieter do all of the talking, since he speaks fluent Spanish and is known by a lot of people in the area. My level of speaking Spanish is rather limited, but I understand a lot.

We thought all along that they were currently looting the structures there and simply did not want us to go anywhere near the site, but could not be positive unless we actually caught them in the act. After nearly two hours of attempting to convince Marcos that we were simply Maya enthusiasts who only wanted to tour the site, Dieter decided out of desperation to boldly tell Marcos that we were going to see the site even without his permission, as we did not come all that way to simply go back to Flores.

Dieter then wrote a letter to the landowner, requesting of him to not be angry with us for entering his land without permission and included a payment of 100 Quetzales with the letter. This was Dieter’s way of testing whether Marcos would act aggressively toward us and chase us out of the village or allow us to visit the site as requested. Finally, Marcos told us he would go look for his brother, Jorge Choc, who turned out to be the landowner in question. Marcos had been lying in order to discourage us from visiting the site, hoping we would simply leave the village.  

We were then escorted up a long and muddy horse trail to the top of the hill where we could see part of the ruin site from a distance. While there, one of our escorts, a young villager named Mario Caxan, told us that for every ceramic vase or vessel found at gravesites in perfect condition, they would receive as much as 10,000 Quetzales (about $1,200 USD) by selling it to a local buyer. Of course the local buyer would then sell it for much more to one of the countless private collectors around the world. We also learned that the landowners had not taken a shipment of looted artifacts to the local buyer in nearly two years, so one could only imagine how many artifacts were being kept in a storage building nearby.

While we were viewing the site as much as we could from outside a barbed-wire fence, Jorge Choc, Marcos and another man came from one of the platform structures to talk with us. The man was very dirty, from digging into a gravesite, so our assumptions were correct. We also learned that they were heavily armed in case someone tried to interfere with their looting of the artifacts. Dieter talked to them for a few minutes about things such as his restaurant in Flores and how his favorite soccer team, Germany, had blown the chance of winning another FIFA World Cup Tournament recently. Then Jorge Choc agreed to allow us to walk to the very top of the hill on his land where we could see additional structures. 

Being quite certain that the people of the village had never seen any type of GPS instrument before and would probably think that I was simply using some sort of stop watch, I was sure to take out my Bushnell Backtrack for marking the site so I could find it in the future. By doing so, I could navigate back to the site from up to 999 miles away, and find out how far the site was from various locations in the area. The entire site was much larger than I had expected it to be and consisted of a specially located ball court, four very large platform structures located across a valley on top of high mountains, and an acropolis (the only part we were allowed to visit) that consisted of three plazas with palaces.

We were allowed to walk through the three plazas and found looter's tunnels that penetrated every structure on each side. Most of the structures in the plazas were nothing more than piles of rock, but there were some structural walls still intact. After touring the plazas, we were taken to another section of the acropolis, which was overgrown with small trees and bushes. It was in this particular area that the most preserved structure was located. Since I am tall, it was difficult to climb down and enter the doorway, but once inside, we could see it was still very much intact. The temperature was cooler inside than it was outside, and there was so much humidity in the air that we could see moisture dripping from the corbel-vaulted roof from condensation.   

Once we were finished touring as much of the site as we were allowed to see, we were escorted back to the village store and bought numerous soft drinks from Marcos, considering we were quite thirsty and hot. I took off my shirt, which was drenched in sweat, and by doing so, inadvertently attracted the attention of the villagers who congregated around to see all 5 of my Maya tattoos. One of the villagers asked Dieter if I was in a gang or if I was a bad person and thankfully, he told them otherwise. 

Dieter, Marc and I were certain that we were the first “gringos” to be allowed to visit the site. As we talked with Marcos while resting and enjoying our sodas in front of his store, we learned that the only white person who had previously visited the village there had been an Italian man, six or seven years earlier. I was amazed to know that some of the children in the village had never seen a white person, until we arrived that day. I never thought I would be fortunate enough to be able to experience such a thing myself, in this day and time anyway. I have visited a lot of different Maya ruins before Los Olivos, but that particular site will always be a special memory for me.