Rise and Fall of the Mayas

In June 2020, a scientific and archaeological discovery calls into question the certainties we had about the origins of the great Maya civilization. Thanks to LIDAR technology, which consists in sending light pulses to the ground, and thus revealing the reliefs buried under the densest vegetation, the oldest and largest Maya site is discovered: Aguada Fenix, a monumental structure 3000 years old, in the heart of ancient Maya territory. In this episode, we follow in exclusive access a team of archaeologists, scientists, and biologists, working on this site. The discovery of this structure immerses them in the traces of the origins of the first Mayas. Because the architecture of Aguada Fenix is as immense as it is unexpected: one and a half kilometers long and four hundred meters wide, it is fifteen meters high. It is finally dated to more than a thousand years before the first golden age of this civilization. A temporal inconsistency

The Mayas are among the first peoples of America. For nearly two millennia, this people radiated over a large part of Central America and present-day Mexico, leaving us precious archaeological treasures, dozens of pyramids, temples and world-famous cities that bear witness to the greatness and the complexity of their society. But how did they become peerless mathematicians, genius builders, astronomers, and artists? When and how did they become a powerful and structured, hierarchical society, capable of erecting and organizing monumental constructions? Maya society was built gradually over the centuries, before reaching its peak between 250 and around 1500 AD. Researchers are just beginning to uncover clues to the origins and ancestry of the Maya people. Today, with Lidar technology, researchers can reveal the remains buried for millennia

The apogee of the Maya civilization takes place between 250 and 900 A.D. They built gigantic cities in the heart of a hostile nature: Tikal or Calakmul are figures of superpowers. The Maya population numbers around eight million people, spread over some forty cities. But around 900 a strange phenomenon occurs: the abandonment of the Mayan cities. Invasions, climatic disasters, turf wars... The question is still unanswered. This decline is known as the collapse. But how to explain this? Why, at the height of their civilization, the Mayas abandoned their most sumptuous cities, temples, pyramids and palaces. But thanks to today's ever more efficient technologies, and to new discoveries, we go back in time through the city states of the Mayas of Guatemala and Mexico to try to answer these questions. We exclusively follow a team of experts, archaeologists and researchers

The Mayas are one of the most fascinating civilizations in history. For nearly two millennia, they radiated over a vast territory encompassing a large part of Central America and founded monumental cities: Tikal or Palenque are the best known. But around 900, a series of dramatic events forced them to abandon their cities. 100 years later, the Mayas have succeeded in reinventing themselves and erecting new grandiose cities like Chichen Itza or Mayapan. It is a new golden age which begins around the year one thousand. But new challenges will present themselves to the Mayas: climatic challenges, bloody internal wars, betrayals, the young cities will also decline between 1200 and 1500. Thanks to the latest archaeological excavations that we have been able to follow in an unprecedented way, especially in the cenotes, the sacred underwater caves of the Mayas, scientists will perhaps solve the last mysteries on the disappearance of these mythical cities.