By Belize Live News Staff: Someone stood in a room at Xunantunich around 1,300 years ago and taught a boy how to draw a monkey.
We know this because the wall still shows the results.
Archaeologists have found two rooms inside El Castillo, the central pyramid at Xunantunich, covered in roughly 400 drawings. Monkeys, human figures, hieroglyphs, calendar dates, a sage in a headdress, a ballplayer.
What makes it remarkable is the range of skill. One monkey is beautifully done. Others are rough attempts by hands still learning.
“It’s almost as if somebody was saying, OK, this is how you draw a monkey. Now you try, you try, you try,” said archaeologist Kathryn Brown.
Nearby, researchers uncovered what appears to be student housing, complete with a sweat bath, gaming boards and rooms with benches.
In a shrine just east of the school, a skeleton believed to belong to a shaman was buried with two carved shell disks depicting a deer headed figure holding its own eyeball, communicating with the Vision Serpent.
Xunantunich sits above the Mopan River, reachable by hand cranked ferry from San José Succotz.
Have you climbed El Castillo?
