NARRATOR: Central America.
[music playing]
In western Honduras lie the impressive ruins of
the ancient Maya city of Copan.
And though Copan's temples, pyramids, and monuments
rank among the most important of any Mayan sites,
researchers looking to explain the incredible achievements
of the Maya have been drawn to a 72-step structure known
as the Hieroglyphic Stairway.
The Hieroglyphic Stairway at Copan
was constructed in the early 700s AD
with the intent of writing out the history of Copan
at that time.
And so it was designed as a public monument
to the glory and success of all the kings from Yax K'uk' Mo'
all the way to the 13th one who commissioned it to be built.
NARRATOR: Carved into 1,200 stones in the massive monument,
the ancient Maya symbols, known as glyphs,
make up what historians believe is
one of the oldest and most sophisticated
systems of writing.
But for centuries, the glyphs found throughout Mesoamerica
were undecipherable.
Then, in 1880, German librarian and anthropologist Ernst
Forstemann cracked the code.
Ernest Forstemann was a librarian at Dresden.
And in his desk, he kept one of the four Maya books,
the "Dresden Codex."
He was a brilliant mathematician and extremely logical
and had enormous insights.
And at a time when we couldn't read a single Maya hieroglyph,
he was able to figure out the Maya calligraphy.
GERARDO ALDANA: Maya hieroglyphic writing
is very robust.
And that's because it uses really two components.
There are logographs.
Logographs are really pictures that represent entire words.
So balam, for example, which is jaguar,
could be written with just the head of a jaguar.
On the other hand, we have these things that we
call phonetic complements.
And these are glyphs.
They're images that represent sounds.
NARRATOR: According to interpretations
of the Hieroglyphic Stairway, the glyphs
chronicle not only the history but also the origin
of the ancient Maya rulers.
GERARDO ALDANA: The hieroglyphs are really
attached to what was important to royalty at the time,
and that was lineage and the genealogies of the kings.
They went out of their way to demonstrate how they were
connected to their ancestors and the gods of their ancestors
to establish their right to rule.
This is a picture I took of the--
a closeup of a sculpture of Uaxaclajuun
Ub'aah K'awiil, the 13th ruler of Copan.
And he's depicted here on the front in all of his finery.
And then, the sculptor put a hieroglyphic passage
on the side.
We don't think commoners could read.
But all the elites could.
And the king could.
So he or another elite individual
could come here and impress people by saying,
this demonstrates the semidivinity of our king
and his power to intercede between us and the heavens.
NARRATOR: But just what was the real source
of power and authority behind the Maya priests and kings?
Do the hieroglyphs reveal an otherworldly truth
to their origin as the Maya themselves maintain?
Ancient astronaut theorists believe the answer is yes.
GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: What we have to think about today
is, where did the origin of the priesthood come from?
And the origin is nothing else but
that they, the initial cabal of priests, they
were all in contact with extraterrestrials.
And that's why they were revered.
Our ancestors thought they were gods
because they didn't understand the nuts and bolts
aspects behind those visits.
But when it all comes down to it,
it was all a huge misunderstanding
and a way to keep the common people in place.