All language subtitles for Ancient Apocalypse (2022) - 02x05 - Chapter V.NF-EDITH+FLUX.English.HI.C.orig.Addic7ed.com

[insects chirping]

[suspenseful music playing]

Ayahuasca is one of
the scientific inventions of the Amazon.

It's a powerful visionary brew,

one that's central to Indigenous
spirituality and legal here in Peru.

I myself have had many experiences
with ayahuasca guided by a shaman.

And I believe its use dates back
further than anyone thinks,

especially in the light
of the artwork it inspires.

There are incredible visions.

Nine times out of ten,

those are introduced
with geometric patterns.

And after these first visions,

many people report encounters
with fantastical beings.

Sometimes those entities may be a mixture
of an animal and a human being,

so-called therianthrope from the Greek

therion meaning "wild beast"
and anthropos meaning "man."

These are very common entities
that are encountered.

What intrigues me
is that evidence of the use of ayahuasca

and the visions it inspires

can be found not just in the Amazon,

but at many other ancient sites
I've explored in South America.

In Cusco, the Inca used the brew
during human sacrifices

to aid the victim's passage
to the afterlife.

And their patterned, figure-filled artwork

greatly resembles
contemporary ayahuasca-inspired art.

[intriguing music playing]

At the pre-Inca site
of Tiwanaku in Bolivia,

researchers have identified the objects
held by this 1,500-year-old statue

as snuff trays for hallucinogenic powders,

while much Tiwanaku pottery
features geometric designs

and fantastical entities,
likely inspired by psychedelic visions.

You can see those same visions reflected
in traditional Amazonian art too.

What comes to mind
is the case of the Tucano,

who, by and large,
paint on non-permanent media.

[Dr. Luna] The painting, the malocas,
you know, the communal houses.

You see that there is a continuity here.

[intriguing music subsides]

Remember the origin myth of the Tucano
that speaks of their great teachers,

the daughter of the sun
and her companions?

Interestingly, the story doesn't end

with the departure
of those mystical, civilizing heroes.

[intriguing music continues]

According to lore,

after ensuring the land
could support the newcomers,

the divine beings left open
a channel of communication

for humans to use whenever there was need.

That channel is the brew
we know today as ayahuasca.

[birds chirping]

The word ayahuasca means "vine of souls"
in Quechua, the Inca language.

But I believe its use
vastly predates the Inca.

This is where the issue

of this very ancient rock art
becomes interesting.

[Graham] These rock paintings

from the part of the Amazon
where the Tucano live today

explore the same themes we see
in all ayahuasca-inspired art.

I can't help observing that
there are similar and connected patterns.

We see therianthropic beings,

beings that are part animal,
part human in form.

[Dr. Luna] Like here?

[Graham] We see geometric patterns.

We see serpents.

To me this is an extraordinary mystery

that... that the same themes keep coming up
again and again and again.

And yet these images, indisputably,
were created during the last Ice Age.

[intriguing music fades]

It suggests that ayahuasca was being used
almost 13,000 years ago.

It's a logical deduction
from looking at the art.

Exactly.

[dramatic music playing]

If true, the implications are staggering.

It means those ancient Amazonians
may have already mastered

the complex chemistry of ayahuasca

as far back as the Ice Age.

[tense music builds, fades]

[theme song playing]

[theme song ends]

- [thunder rumbling]
- [electronic warble]

[intriguing music playing]

[Graham] The geometry,
the spiraling patterns,

this is one of the most extraordinary
aspects of the psychedelic experience.

Those geometric visions may explain
another mystery that we encountered

at the very start
of our exploration of the Americas.

[intriguing music intensifies]

The immense geoglyphs
emerging from the jungle

along the southwestern rim of the Amazon.

I'm struck by the repetition
of the geometrical idea,

that we find this again and again,
whether the art is modern,

whether it's 13,000 years old,
we find it here.

And I can't help wondering
whether these geometric earthworks

may also have been influenced
by ayahuasca.

[Dr. Luna] Can be. By ayahuasca
or other visionary plants.

- [Graham] Other plants.
- Because there are many plants.

Behind every, uh, culture you find
some visionary plant of some sort.

[intriguing music continues]

[Graham] Those geoglyphs seem
to be a manifestation

in three-dimensional form,
on an enormous scale,

of precisely the kind of visions
that are induced by the consumption

of a substance like ayahuasca,

where the very first things that are seen
are geometrical patterns.

[tense music playing]

I think we are seeing a manifestation
of the same impulse in different media.

And if the Amazonian geoglyphs
were inspired by visionary experiences,

then we have to ask where else
that inspiration might have been felt

for one compelling reason.

How similar these earthworks are
to geometrical earthworks

in North America, in the state of Ohio.

[dramatic music playing]

They're called
the Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks,

attributed to a civilization
known today as the Hopewell culture

that thrived in the Great Lakes region
around 2,000 years ago.

Massive ditches and embankments
in precise geometrical array.

You could really transpose
the earthworks of the Amazon

to the earthworks of Ohio or vice versa.

And yet they appear to have been created
by completely unconnected cultures.

This is where I simply cannot accept
coincidence as an explanation.

I think that when we see an idea
cropping up again and again

in widely-separated
geographical locations,

what we're looking at
is an inheritance of ideas

that was passed down and that manifests
in different periods of time.

But the idea is what is truly ancient,

not necessarily the structure
that we're looking at.

[dramatic music subsides]

Unlike their Amazonian counterparts,
where research is only just beginning...

[dramatic music intensifies]

...the earthworks in Ohio have been studied
for more than a century.

And we know they're more
than just intriguing geometrical shapes.

Many of Ohio's earthworks,
including the effigy of Serpent Mound,

feature precise alignments
to specific solstices and equinoxes.

[birds chirping]

But remarkably, in some cases,

they were built to align directly

with even more
complex lunar cycles as well.

[intriguing music playing]

It's one of the curiosities
of the ancient world

that there was a very intense interest
in what was going on in the heavens.

[intriguing music intensifies]

These astounding feats
of astronomical observation

were made by ancient Americans
some 2,000 years ago,

perhaps far earlier,

and can also be found
in other North American mound structures.

At sites like the 1,000-year-old Cahokia

and 3,000-year-old Poverty Point,

itself purposefully positioned
due north of another site,

Lower Jackson Mound,
which dates back 5,000 years.

Who knows what astronomy might lie encoded

waiting to be discovered

in those recently-revealed
Amazonian geoglyphs?

We know that human beings were in America
for tens of thousands of years.

Surely there should be openness
to the possibility that there was time

to develop a culture, to develop
sophisticated knowledge of the heavens,

and to express that in monuments.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Graham] Could this
detailed astronomical knowledge

be evidence that the lost civilization
of the Ice Age I'm seeking

left a legacy of ideas
in other parts of North America as well?

[suspenseful music builds]

[suspenseful music intensifies]

1,300 miles from Ohio...

[suspenseful music continues]

...in the northwest corner of New Mexico,

I've arrived at
a high-altitude cold desert

carved up by towering mesas and buttes.

[suspenseful music subsides]

The Badlands
of the southwestern United States

are a realm of harsh extremes
and breathtaking vistas,

intersected by ancient canyons

with near-vertical sandstone cliffs
on both sides.

[intriguing music playing]

You might think that the desolate setting
of these Badlands

would be ill-suited
to any large-scale construction project,

either now or in ancient times.

But you'd be wrong.

This canyon is home to some
of the most important archaeological sites

in North America.

[intriguing music intensifies]

Dozens of ancient man-made structures

are scattered
for miles across the valley floor,

from small freestanding chambers

to massive so-called great houses.

This is Chaco Canyon.

[intriguing music builds, fades]

[Graham] Despite more
than a century of research,

the ancient structures that we see here
in Chaco Canyon remain enigmatic.

Their origins and even their function
are still hotly debated.

[tense music playing]

At the heart of the mystery
in the center of the canyon...

is the most imposing great house
of them all.

[tense music intensifies]

The name of this place is Pueblo Bonito,
meaning "beautiful town."

Rising to a height of several stories,

it's a labyrinth of rooms, corridors,

and vast, circular,
semi-subterranean enclosures.

Even today, centuries after
all work here ceased,

it strikes the eye forcefully.

[tense music continues]

Pueblo Bonito is
a huge construction project.

Hundreds of rooms have been mapped,

many mysteriously built
with no obvious way in or out.

Archaeologists have worked here
for decades

and made many significant discoveries.

Yet it still confounds interpretation.

[tense music fades]

But one thing we can be fairly certain of

is how Pueblo Bonito
would have looked in its prime.

[intriguing music playing]

The compound was a huge semicircle

with straight walls
facing the canyon floor.

Rectangular buildings were stacked
around the curve, four stories tall,

creating as many as 800 rooms,

all surrounding a plaza
divided by a central wall

with multiple circular,
semi-subterranean structures on each side.

[music fades]

So who were its builders?

And why did they go
to such immense lengths

to create this extraordinary edifice?

- [suspenseful music playing]
- [eagle screeching]

[Graham] Nathan Hatfield,

officially designated as
Chaco Canyon's Chief of Interpretation,

has spent nearly a decade
studying the structures here.

Tell us about the place
that we're standing in.

This structure was the largest building
in North America

up until the mid-19th century.

[Graham] Archaeologists couldn't
carbon date the stone itself.

But using the highly accurate
tree-ring method of dating

on its wooden beams,

they were able to determine
various phases of construction.

[suspenseful music continues]

This was not built in a single moment.

This was built over a period
of a couple of centuries.

So if we look at that oldest part
of Pueblo Bonito,

what sort of numbers are we talking about?

It was built starting around 850.

- That's 850 AD?
- [Nathan] 850 AD.

[Graham] Yeah.

[Nathan] And construction was ongoing for

at least 200 years,
maybe a little bit longer.

[Graham] This was before
the area was settled

by the modern-day Pueblo peoples...

like the Hopi, the Zuni, and the Acoma.

[intriguing music playing]

[Nathan] Pueblo Bonito was built by

what we call the ancestral Pueblo people.

- For reasons unknown to us...
- [Graham] Yeah.

[Nathan]...they selected Chaco Canyon
to be the center of their culture.

And Pueblo Bonito would become
the largest building

in this cultural center.

[dramatic music plays]

[Graham] A cultural center that,
as well as Pueblo Bonito,

featured more
than a dozen other great houses.

Why did they build all these structures
here in Chaco Canyon?

[Graham] Was there a permanent
established residential population here?

[Nathan] No. Archaeologists did not see

the evidence to support a huge population.

[intriguing music continues]

[Graham] So if these great houses
weren't actually built to house people,

what was their purpose?

[intriguing music builds]

Within the ruins, archaeologists found
more than a hundred ritual burials...

along with pottery
featuring spectacular geometric patterns

and artifacts known to come from hundreds,
if not thousands, of miles away.

We find that enormous efforts
were gone to...

to create it
as a kind of center of the world.

[intriguing music continues]

As the evidence has come in,
it's become clear that

it seems to have been
a center of pilgrimage,

where people would come
from all directions,

drawn to the magic of the place.

It clearly is a sacred place of some sort.

[somber music playing]

In that light,
the circular structures we find

within nearly all of Chaco's buildings
make more sense.

The Hopi,
descendants of the ancestral Puebloans,

call such structures kivas.

[Graham] Tell me about the kivas.

What is your understanding
of what they were and are?

It's generally agreed upon
that a kiva was a ceremonial space.

There are features that are pretty common.

There's the bench.

Within the larger great kivas,
you see floor vaults.

Most of them have
some kind of wood-burning fireplace.

[Graham] For the Hopi
and Pueblo peoples today,

the kiva is a spiritual
and political space

in which they gather
to perform sacred rituals.

[Graham] So it's
an ongoing cultural tradition?

- And they're used for ceremony?
- Yes. Yes.

[Graham] Ceremonies that, then and now,

feature the consumption
of a special form of tobacco.

North of Chaco in Utah,

archaeologists studying
an ancient man-made hearth

found seeds
from the hallucinogenic species

coyote tobacco.

The seeds were carbon-dated
to 12,300 years ago,

suggesting humans were using tobacco here

as far back as the Ice Age.

It's likely that
such hallucinogenic plants

were still in use thousands of years later
in ceremonies here at Chaco...

just as shamans
of the Amazon use ayahuasca.

[fire crackling]

[tense music playing]

Is it possible
that these shamanistic traditions,

thousands of miles apart,

are the legacy of a single,
more ancient belief system

that left traces of itself
across the Americas?

To explore the mysteries
of these kivas further,

I'm headed to the canyon rim,
about half a mile south of Pueblo Bonito,

to the grandest kiva of them all...

[tense music builds]

...Casa Rinconada.

[uptempo tense music playing]

Unlike the vast majority of Chaco's kivas,

Casa Rinconada stands apart
from any other extensive building.

Inside the sunken enclosure,

T-shaped doorways
are positioned in the walls,

openings that face
almost perfectly north and south.

As time-lapse photos show,
directly above the doorway,

the night sky revolves around
the north star Polaris.

[uptempo tense music builds]

There's something strangely familiar
about Casa Rinconada.

It reminds me of the Ice Age
megalithic site of Göbekli Tepe

in far-off Turkey.

There, similarly sunken,
circular, kiva-like chambers

feature T-shaped pillars,

which too are aligned
to specific points in the heavens.

But how could these ancient structures,

so widely separated by geography and time,

have any connection?

It's tempting to speculate.

And the origin myth of the Hopi
offers a possible clue.

The Hopi believe
that we're living in the fourth world,

that there have been
three previous emergences

from some sort of underground realm.

[suspenseful music playing]

According to Hopi legend,
after creating the first living creatures,

the sun spirit ordered his messenger,
Spider Grandmother,

to guide these ever-evolving life forms
through the first two worlds.

[creatures howling]

In the third world,

she showed early humans
how to weave and make pottery

and taught them good from evil.

[indistinct chatter]

[Graham] Still, some turned
to wicked ways.

[arguing indistinctly]

[Graham] Displeased,
the sun spirit ordered

those of good heart to move on.

They ascended a great reed
to an opening in the sky.

There, Spider Grandmother
helped them emerge into their new home,

the fourth world,
where their descendants still live today.

The Hopi hold sacred
an unusual geological feature

in the Grand Canyon,

believing it to be
the literal emergence point of myth.

They call it Sipapu.

No one is allowed near it,

but symbolically, it's replicated
throughout the Hopi world.

[suspenseful music fades]

In Puebloan culture, a hole in the floor
of the kiva is also known as a sipapu,

and this is seen as the place from which
the ancients emerged from a previous world

that had been destroyed
into the world that we live in today.

And this is where
I want to make a comparison

that might seem very extreme.

I'm just wondering
whether it all goes back to a time

when it was necessary
for people to take shelter underground.

And we know that there was such a time
around 12,800 years ago

at the beginning of the Younger Dryas.

Although still debated,

many scientists believe
that the Earth-shaking cataclysms

and floods of that time were caused
by cosmic impacts and airbursts

as the Earth passed through
the debris trail

of a disintegrating comet.

[intriguing music playing]

If the enemy was danger from the sky,

if we're looking at impacts
from a fragmenting giant comet,

uh, then underground structures
make a great deal of sense.

That deep ancient connection
is not a direct connection.

It's a stored memory in oral tradition

that there was a time
when our ancestors had to emerge

from beneath the ground
to come out into a new world

that had been swept clean in a cataclysm
and to repopulate that new world.

[intriguing music fades]

Let me be clear.

I don't doubt that this spectacular kiva
dates from around 1,000 years ago,

but I suspect
that its builders incorporated within it

a legacy of knowledge and ideas
that are far, far older.

Much like another idea
we see demonstrated again and again

at all these ancient American sites,

the importance of astronomical
and geometrical knowledge.

[suspenseful music playing]

At Pueblo Bonito,
the whole structure is perfectly aligned

to the cardinal directions,
north, south, east, and west,

showing its builders understood
their place on the planet.

What's more, on the equinox,
something magical happens.

The sun rises and sets perfectly in line
with the west side of the southern wall.

[Nathan] It wasn't
just some random accident.

It was so well-thought-out.

And what's, I think,
appealing to people about that

is that it's the same sky
that we can see today.

- Yes.
- We can still see the alignments.

[suspenseful music continues]

I've heard that there were functionaries
called sun priests here in the past.

Is that right?

They were the sun watchers,
the sun priests.

They were people dedicated
to the architecture.

There were people dedicated
to watching the sky.

Yeah.

What were the main celestial events
that they were tracking?

Summer solstice, winter solstice,
equinoxes, when the sun rises due east?

That ties back to the agriculture.

[Graham] Right.

Having that calendar on the landscape
is critical for survival.

And the fact
that they were able to do that

with these monumental structures,

I think it all goes back to their ability
to find success with farming.

[Graham] It's an argument
I've heard before,

but there's a problem with assuming

all this effort
had to do only with farming.

[suspenseful music continues]

Around 90 miles north of Chaco Canyon
stands a distinctive sandstone ridge

topped by two pinnacles known as
Chimney Rock and Companion Rock.

Near them, we find a Chacoan great house
complete with two kivas.

It turns out
that that whole structure was placed there

in a very precise alignment

to allow observation of a lunar event
that only occurs once every 18.6 years,

and that is the extreme
northern standstill of the moon.

It's when the rising and setting moon

reaches its most northerly point
in the night sky

before appearing to rise
and set further south

as part of a recurring cycle.

The moon rises between Chimney Rock
and Companion Rock

only at that time and at no other time.

This is the kind of knowledge
that has to be handed down

generation to generation.

You don't just notice it once

and then build a structure
to memorialize it.

[suspenseful music fades]

It speaks to
an ancient intellectual endeavor

to understand the cosmos
that surrounds us,

and that cosmos is full
of motion and changes,

and the long-term observation
of those motions and changes

requires a really dedicated effort,

in many cases over thousands of years.

[wind howling]

Once researchers started looking
for lunar alignments

in the buildings in Chaco Canyon,

all sorts of remarkable examples
were found.

[intriguing music playing]

When the moon reaches
its extreme southern standstill in winter,

again once every 18.6 years,

it rises in a line
through three great houses six miles apart

with Pueblo Bonito at its middle.

And 9.3 years later,
at the halfway point in this cycle,

the summer moon rises in a line
across a large structure

just east of Pueblo Bonito
to another one 11 miles to the southwest...

while that same setting moon
shines across one great house,

again through Pueblo Bonito,

more than 17 miles beyond the canyon
to yet another great house.

And one thing is certain.

The 18.6-year lunar cycle
has no influence whatsoever

on the growing of crops.

Why, therefore, did the ancient Puebloans

go to such lengths
to mark it in their architecture?

[intriguing music fades]

That speaks eloquently to the fact
that no economic purpose was involved,

that this was about the celebration

of the connection
between heaven and earth.

[wind howling]

What's now clear is
that all these Chacoan structures combine

to form a ritual calendar
laid out upon the Earth...

[intriguing music playing]

...in a canyon that may have been chosen
for this very purpose

as a terrestrial counterpart
to the Milky Way.

[intriguing music subsides]

But the connections with the cosmos,
sky and ground, as above, so below,

that were so important to Chaco culture

aren't limited
to its vast building complexes.

About five miles southeast
of central Chaco...

I'm heading up from the canyon floor

in search of something intriguing
that adorns these rugged canyon walls.

Ancient works of art
carved into the living rock.

[intriguing music continues]

These are precious records,
stories in stone

that have been continually revised,
altered, and added to

over who knows
how many thousands of years.

There are human figures
that appear to be dancing

and playing musical instruments.

[intriguing music intensifies]

Spirals and serpents coil
along the canyon walls,

which also feature
strange creatures and geometric forms,

much like those that appear
in artwork of the Amazon,

possibly inspired by psychedelics.

Whichever part of the world you're in
and whichever period of history it is,

once you come to the cave art
and the petroglyphs and the rock art,

you find again and again
exactly the same visuals

that you find
with the ayahuasca experience

and other psychedelics being repeated.

[uptempo tense music playing]

As well as these visionary elements,

Chacoan rock art reflects the same focus
on astronomy found in its architecture.

This image has been interpreted
as an eclipse,

the sun darkened by the moon,
while its corona flares outwards.

And this, a supernova,

now known to have been visible
in the daytime sky

during the ancestral Puebloan period
in AD 1054.

Why create such imagery
in such a hard-to-reach location

unless there was
a compelling reason to do so?

[dramatic music playing]

In the absence of any apparent economic,
strategic, or political motive,

it follows that some higher purpose
must have been involved.

It seems to me more and more obvious

that Chaco Canyon
is a ritualized landscape

and that its origins can't be limited
to a mere thousand or so years ago,

but must go back much further,

perhaps even as far back
as the last Ice Age.

[music intensifies, fades]

To your knowledge,
how far back in the past can we trace

any kind of human presence
here in Chaco Canyon?

You've probably heard very recently
in White Sands National Monument...

23,000-year-old footprints in White Sands.

- [Nathan] And that's not that far away.
- [Graham] No.

So it's quite likely that people
would have been in Chaco Canyon

maybe even...

maybe even 10,000 years before
any building was constructed.

[intriguing music playing]

I think they were

observing the landscape
and the sky for generations

- before they decided to build.
- [Graham] Yeah.

Chaco Canyon bears the fingerprints

of a culture
of highly-sophisticated astronomers.

Their intense focus on
the regular cycles of sun, moon, and stars

and on the wider majesty of the cosmos

wasn't just an idiosyncratic quirk
of their own.

It was shared in the same way,

using eerily similar symbolism,
art, and architectural alignments

by many other ancient cultures
all around the world.

[intriguing music continues]

The way Malta's megalithic
Temple of Mnajdra is precisely aligned

to capture the equinoxes
and the solstices.

Or how the axis
of the great Temple of Karnak in Egypt

targets the winter solstice sunrise.

Or the precision
with which the central tower

of Angkor Wat in Cambodia

aligns to the rising sun on the equinoxes.

There seems to have been
a worldwide architectural project

to reproduce the harmony
and directions of the heavens

in monuments on the ground
to bring heaven down to earth.

[intriguing music subsides]

But how far back does
this seemingly global human project go?

[intriguing music intensifies]

There are clues

in one of ancient America's
most accomplished civilizations

that once dominated what is now
southern Mexico and Central America.

The Maya.

The Maya to me are one
of the most fascinating cultures

of the ancient world

and a culture filled with
mystery and contradiction.

Many descendants of the Maya
still live here today

in the spectacular landscapes
of Chiapas and the Yucatán Peninsula.

[intriguing music continues]

Here, long before the Incas
and the Pueblo culture of Chaco,

the Maya civilization thrived.

It was a culture
that expressed its genius in many ways,

notably through magnificent feats
of architecture.

[intriguing music intensifies]

Surrounded by dense lowland rainforest,

this is the Mayan sacred realm
of Palenque.

[intriguing music builds, fades]

[suspenseful music playing]

[Graham] Palenque is
an absolutely breathtaking place.

With its awe-inspiring architecture
and engineering,

it has all the hallmarks
of a classic Mayan site.

Soaring pyramids,

a ceremonial ball court,

a looming palace,

and temples filled
with intriguing imagery.

The Maya are probably best known
for their incredible architecture,

for the amazing complexes
of pyramids that they created,

typically step pyramids,
and the beautiful elegance of the design

and the high precision of the workmanship.

That immediately tells us that
we're dealing with an advanced culture.

[dramatic music playing]

[Graham] Maya expert and guide
Mildred Lucas Garcia

has devoted more than a decade

to understanding Palenque better.

When did work begin here?

How long was this site occupied?

The city's foundation started
in the year 200 BC,

and it was abandoned over the 900s AD.

Right.

When I look at this incredible site,
these huge pyramids,

beautifully constructed,
beautifully designed,

it's clear that this was the work
of very skillful people,

and that they must have had
some kind of plan from the beginning.

But tell me, how did they do it?

[Mildred] We know
that there were quarries nearby.

That's why they decided to build
the city here

because they had
all the natural resources,

they had all the limestone in this area,

they had the water,

and this was a very strategic area
to build the city.

But how... how they built that,
that's unknown.

- We don't know.
- It's still a mystery.

- It's still a mystery. Mm-hmm.
- Yeah. Yeah.

Why did the Maya build pyramids?

Here in Palenque,
we see a lot of... a lot of pyramids.

[Mildred] The pyramids,
not only for the Mayas,

but for the ancient cultures,

represented the holy mountains.

Here in Palenque,
they built such big structures

to represent these holy mountains.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Graham] Mountains played
an important role

in the belief system of the Maya
as symbols of the source of creation.

But it appears that there may have been
more to the Maya's epic building project,

especially here at Palenque.

[Mildred] In Palenque,
some of the buildings were designed

following the astronomical observations.

Wow.

[Mildred] There's three buildings
known as the Group of the Crosses

that were used
as an astronomical observation area.

[Graham] Right.

[Mildred] These buildings
were perfectly aligned

with the summer solstice...

- Yeah.
- ...and with the spring equinox.

[suspenseful music continues]

Clearly, highly-skilled astronomers
were involved in the creation

of the whole complex.

Yes, it's true.

[intriguing music playing]

[Graham] But why would they go
to so much trouble

to align these massive structures

to solstices and equinoxes?

Given these incredible alignments,
one thing is clear.

If you want to know
what Palenque is really all about,

you have to look
not only at its architecture,

but also at the sky.

[intriguing music intensifies]

[intriguing music builds]

I've come to the Temple of the Sun
at a special moment on a special day,

dawn on the spring equinox,

when the sun rises precisely due east
and sets precisely due west

in a manifestation of cosmic harmony.

Here at the Temple of the Sun,
that sunrise creates a unique spectacle,

one still celebrated today
by the local community.

[Nicolás in Spanish]
The spring equinox, it is important

for the spirituality of the Maya.

Right here where we are
is the most important place.

[blowing conch]

[Graham in English] And I have
a front row seat for it.

[intriguing music ends]

[closing theme playing]

[closing theme ends]