Dr. James Fitzsimmons

Late 7th, early 8th century, roughly, when this one is sort of being constructed.

Wow.

So you would imagine some sort of high priest type person coming out?

It's rulers, yeah.

It's mostly rulers and royal family members that are doing this.

And you look at those steps.

Don't think of the steps as just steps.

Sometimes those are platforms, too, and those are performance spaces, too.

So there's dancers and stuff on them.

There's all kinds of stuff that's happening.

The other thing that I would say about most of your Maya centers,

and Mesoamerican centers more generally, is that they're not... The past is not in black and white or in gray and white or brown or something like that, right?

It's in color.

Everything is in color.

So this would have been painted... And it's painted to clash.

It's not painted to look nice with the jungle.

It's painted to...

you know, bright reds with like hematite sparkles in them.

So there's like a glitter bomb when you walk past it, you know, it's, it's designed to like, or like bright white.

No, no, you want like, you want something to clash.