Mayan mural ‘breathtaking’

CHICAGO – Archaeologists said Tuesday they had uncovered the final intact wall of the earliest known Mayan mural ever found, declaring that the find – which dates to 100 B.C. – overturns what was previously known about the origins of Mayan art, writing, and royalty.

“It’s really breathtaking how beautiful this is,” said the mural’s discoverer, William Saturno, an archaeologist with the University of New Hampshire and the Harvard Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. “I was awestruck by its state of preservation. Its brilliant colors and fluid lines looked as though they could have been painted yesterday.”

Scholars are calling the discovery the “Sistine Chapel” of the Pre-classic Maya world – found at the ruins of the ancient Maya city of San Bartolo in the lowlands of northeastern Guatemala – one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in decades.

“Our original dating of the murals to approximately A.D. 100 was a conservative estimate based largely upon stylistic comparisons,” Saturno said. “We now know from the radiocarbon dating of the murals and of the construction and ancient debris that buried them that they more accurately date to 100 B.C.”