BBC.Natural.World.Secrets.of.the.Maya.Underworld.DVB.XviD.mp3.www.mvrroup.

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A transcript.

Timings are approximate.

/bigbreaths June 2005

0:21
Hidden in this jungle are 3000 years of human history - one of the world's greatest ancient
civilisations. Here, on Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, the Maya built cities, temples and palaces
and yet we still don't know how they thrived.

The forest has grown back and nature has taken over again, leaving many riddles unsolved.
Like the riddle of the missing river. Almost every other ancient civilisation was founded
beside a great river, but there are none here, not even any streams. Where is the Nile? The
Ganges or the Euphrates of the Maya ?

What they did have were thousands of these pretty little pools scattered through the jungle.
Called Cenotes, they are the Yucatan’s only source of fresh water. Could they, by themselves,
have supported an entire civilisation? The Maya believe that Cenotes were entrances to
another world, an underworld. At face-value they seem to be little more than beautiful jungle
waterholes, so was the underworld just a myth? People today can do something the Maya
could only have dreamt about - breathe under water. These modern explorers have made
some remarkable discoveries, not only about the Maya, but about the forest and its animals,
too. What they have found in the underworld, has changed our understanding of the Yucatan,
forever.

The Yucatan, a peninsula the size of England, separating the Gulf of Mexico from the
Caribbean Sea.

2:58
American-born Sam Meecham is a cave diver. He has been exploring the waters under the
Yucatan for more than a decade, but he has still only seen a fraction of what is down there.
His mission is to explore as many Cenotes as he can, working with scientists to try to make
sense of it all.

The puzzle of the Yucatan peninsula is extremely complex. I arrived here in 1994 with the
intention of only being here for six months, and 10 years later, I find myself still here, so
interested and curious in what I have discovered.
But Sam wasn't the first foreign explorer to be drawn to Mexico's jungles by a passion for
adventure. Back in 1839, John Lloyd Stevens, an American diplomat and travel writer, set
off into the Yucatan, inspired by rumours of a lost civilisation. For a while, he found nothing,
even though clues lay all around him.

Finally, he stumbled upon the ruins of a great city, smothered by the jungle.

The wild tales that Stevens told made his name as a famous Victorian explorer, a hero of his
time, and to some, the original Indiana Jones.

Stevens’ fantastic revelations have inspired a whole new generation of explorers.

For me, one of great motivating factors in what we do here is that I am able to explore, in the
21st century, something I thought would never have been possible in my lifetime.

Just getting to the Cenotes is an adventure in itself. Like the Maya ruins, they are scattered
over thousands of square kilometres of trackless forest. But Sam is not alone - British-born
Steve Bogart shares Sam's passion for exploration. They have been Cenote hunting together
for years.

With local help, they mount expeditions deep into the Yucatan’s exterior. It can take days to
find a new Cenote.

5:44
As we travel through the jungle looking for Cenotes, of course there is always the usual
assembly of spiny trees and cactuses. We have crocodiles, we have snakes, scorpions,
tarantulas, you name it, it's all there. But really, if you know what to look for and know
where to go and when not go, you can avoid a lot of these problems.

Finally, a new, unexplored Cenote. Never mind the jungle treks, the real danger for Sam and
Steve begins at the bottom of these enchanting little pools, considered sacred by the Maya.

It's very easy to see how the ancient Maya would have perceived the Cenotes as very sacred
spaces - they are absolutely beautiful jewels out in the middle of this jungle. And to walk up
to the edge of a Cenote and to look down into the crystal clear water and see the fish
swimming below in the natural daylight, casting these incredible shafts of light through the
water, is very inspiring.

As the sole sources of water in this jungle, these pools are also magnets for wildlife, and to
Cenote specialists like grebes, their whole world.

With thick forest on all sides, they seem as isolated as islands in an ocean.

7:32
Peccaries, deer and other forest animals use Cenotes as watering holes, but that doesn't mean
they are easy to see - the jungle does its best to keep them hidden.

But some animals, you can't help but notice.

8:19
Howlers are sloppy eaters. Coatis following below can fill their stomachs solely out of what
they have dropped. Spider monkeys. They are infinitely quieter than howlers, but much
more agile. With their hooking hands and long arms, these monkeys can live their entire lives
in the dense forest canopy.

For nine months of the year, there is no rainfall here, and much of the forest struggles to
survive. But some trees seem immune to the drought. What is their secret? Such are the
riddles of the Yucatan.

The answers lie underground. But Sam and Steve won't get to go there until tomorrow.

9:29
In the dark, the jungle seems even denser and the sounds, even stranger. This is when
Cenotes really come alive. Tapiers love water, for bathing, as much as drinking. But visiting
a Cenote means coming into the open, which, for good reason, they only do after dark.

Like watering holes anywhere, Cenotes are where predators, in this case Jaguars, come to
hunt.

But to the Maya, Cenotes were more than just jungle watering holes, they were central to
their world. Cities and temples were often built right next to them. These sacred wells were
gateways to the underworld – a terrifying place of spirits and of fearsome gods who
demanded respect. At the bottom of many Cenotes lie offerings made to the underworld.

For archaeologists, Cenotes are time-capsules that provide clues to how the ancient Maya
lived and died.

Sometimes, even the people, themselves, were sacrificed to the gods they feared so much.
Every pot and skeleton has its own story to tell.

The discoveries of underwater explorers are helping archaeologists rewrite the Yucatan’s
ancient history.

12:31
Yucatan’s explorers aren't just interested in the clues to Maya history that they might find at
the bottom of these pools. They want to know what might lie beyond them. Is there, indeed,
an underworld?

Could this Cenote be a gateway to a whole new world? If it is, where does that world lead?
Every new Cenote presents a new opportunity.
Cenotes really present us with the truest form of exploration found today. When we come up
to the side of a Cenote, we literally have no idea what we are going to find at the bottom of it,
until we actually get in and investigate. And, for me, that is one of greatest thrills about what
we do.

Cenotes aren't just simple pools, they are caves - flooded caves whose roofs have collapsed.
But Sam and Steve have yet to discover to what extent Cenotes are connected to each other
by flooded tunnels. If there is a network of flooded tunnels down there, how far does it go?

What they are doing is carefully charting an, as-yet, uncharted part of the planet. Somewhere
no other human being has ever gone. It is one of the riskiest things an explorer can do.

14:23
This type of diving isn't for everybody. And, definitely, you have to want to do it, in order to
be involved in it. The first cave dive that I ever did, actually, I was pretty nervous. Talk to an
astronaut that sat on top of a rocket full of fuel and blasted off to the moon, sure I bet they
were a little bit nervous, but look at what we’ve gained through space exploration. All those
people were willing to take a risk to achieve an incredible goal.

Sometimes there is hardly enough room to squeeze through. Getting stuck or damaging vital
equipment now would be fatal

We are diving in an extremely hostile environment. It is underwater, it's dark, it's easy to get
disoriented and therefore it is easy to have panic attacks. There is two ways out of a panic
situation, luck and death. And therefore, panic is not an option for us. You really have to
take three deep breaths, calm yourself and assure yourself that you are able to get out of that
situation.

Exploration is rarely without risks. But one of the biggest rewards is seeing something that
has never been seen before. What they have discovered down here is just staggering.

The Maya did have an underworld. And it is as strange and as beautiful a place as any myth
might describe.

They have revealed a vast system of flooded caves, underpinning much of the peninsula. It
has changed our view of the Yucatan, forever.

17:05
In a sense, this is like exploring outer space, the weightlessness, the utter strangeness, the
thrill of the unknown. Cave divers call this inner space. Sam has got close to a long held
ambition.
One of my childhood dreams was to become an astronaut. I am not an astronaut now, but I
feel that I am as close as I can come to outer space exploration in the work that we do here.
We are completely dependent on life-support equipment, we travel into a completely alien
and foreign environment that we don't know a whole lot about. And many of the cave
systems that we dive in have seen fewer visitors than the surface of the moon.

It's amazing to think that a whole civilisation once sat on top of all this, trying to imagine
what was down here. The reality of this place can be as surreal as anything the Maya may
have dreamt of.

Sometimes, what seems to be air, isn't. It's just a different kind of water.

18:30
Some caves contain layers of water that just don't mix. There is so much about this system
that we don't yet understand. Sam and Steve's aim is to find out how it all connects. They are
making maps.

Light ahead reveals a new Cenote. They will record its position, then swim back to where
they started the dive and try to return here, overland.

The more they explore, the more connections they find. But they have got a long way to go.
There are still thousands of Cenotes left to investigate.

19:30
The return journey is, in many ways, more difficult.

Underground, they went where the tunnels led them. Up here, they are looking for one tiny
pool among thousands, hidden somewhere in a dense jungle. For this, they will need satellite
positioning and aerial photographs.

State-of-the-art technology gets them close, but on the final stretch, they get a helping hand
from birds.

Turquoise-browed Motmots. These are true Cenote birds, they feed on the abundant insects
near the water and often nest inside the caves.

Their distinctive call almost always means there is a Cenote nearby.

It was the ancient Maya who first used them as guides to water. This works just as well
today.

Now they have located the new Cenote, Sam and Steve need to find out if it has further
connections with other parts of the system.

In our corner of the Yucatan peninsula, the collaborative efforts of cave diving explorers have
mapped and explored over 550 kilometres of underground, underwater passageway in over a
hundred different cave systems. The promise of future exploration is high, there is so much
left that we still have yet to explore.
This may seem like nothing more than an elaborate game of join-the-dots, but each time Sam
and Steve go back underground, they never lose sight of the potential dangers of their work.

One of the truisms of cave diving is that ‘complacency breeds death’. And every single dive
we approach as if it’s the first dive we had done. And we have a ritual that we go through of
matching our gear, checking for leaks, and making sure that everything is in optimal 100%
condition for diving.

Sam couldn't have a better dive buddy than Steve, he is one of the region's most experienced
cave divers and a master technician. He knows his equipment inside out.

OK, one of the first things you will notice is that we are actually taking two tanks with us,
rather than one. That's because we are diving in an alien, potentially hostile environment, and
we need redundancy in all our life-support equipment and gas supply is obviously very very
critical to us. We also use a gas management planning rule know as a rule of thirds, so we
would use one third of our gas swimming into the cave, one third swimming back out again,
so that when we surface we have one third in reserve. And that is an emergency reserve,
should it take it us longer to exit than we anticipated or if we needed to share air with a
buddy.

A thin piece of white string, carefully laid, quite literally becomes their lifeline. It may be the
only way that they can find their way back out of the labyrinth.

23:37
They mark it with arrows that always point back towards the entrance and safety. It is also a
measuring tape - regularly spaced knots tell Sam and Steve how far they have gone.

As we explore the cave systems, we try to be smart as we can and generally, we are trying to
go in a particular direction. And we have compasses that work under water and using those
compasses, we are able to determine which route to take.

It is quite common to come up to a split in a passageway. We have to determine which is the

Using spools of string, Yucatan’s cave divers have measured the longest underwater cave in
the world - over 133 kilometres long.

24:52
Exploration wouldn't be exploration if everything always went to plan. This time, the divers
have come to a passage too tight to squeeze through and they are forced to stop.
They follow their safety line back, and live to dive another day.

But explorers wouldn't be explorers if they let such setbacks discourage them. There is
always the thrill of the next dive.

It's pretty-much guaranteed that every time we go into a Cenote it is going to be a different
experience, it’s something new, it's something exciting, and that's what really draws me in.
One of many interesting things of diving here is to watch all the wildlife that thrives in the
crystal clear water.

That includes sailfin mollies, small fish that stick to the bright sunlit zones in the open water
pools of Cenotes. For a male, it is a hectic life. He has a three-dimensional territory to patrol
and is constantly chasing other males out while trying to keep his harem of females in.

In both cases, success depends on how effectively he displays his sail fin.

It's a big job for a little fish.

26:31
Some fish, like these tetras, have proved to be real opportunists. They have learnt to follow
divers’ torches into the dark to feed right inside the caves.

Our divers take care not to bring any uninvited guests with them, because the underworld has
its own unique creatures - an entire food chain of over 30 species that live out their lives in
the pitch dark.

Most cave animals are white, because in a world without light, colour is pointless. Even eyes
are useless, and many creatures just don't have them. Down here, touch and smell are all that
matter.

Among the strangest and most ancient of cave beasts is the remipede - a sort of primitive
centipede that is rarely seen and found only in waters exceptionally low in oxygen. Relics of
one of the earliest chapters of life on Earth, they are among the caves’ top predators, combing
the water for shrimps and isopods. If the remipede doesn't seem to know which way is up,
that's because, in the water and in the dark, up and down aren’t so relevant.

28:15
In the underworld, even the fish are surreal - ghostly white, with blanks where eyes should
be.

There are other signs of life down here. This is the perfectly preserved tooth of a
Gomphotherium, a relative of the elephant that has been extinct for 10,000 years. Ancient
animal remains, and these stalactites and stalagmites - only ever formed in air, are hard
evidence that these caves used to be dry. And Yucatan’s history goes deeper still - the walls
of these caves are made of soft limestone, telling us that this was once a huge coral reef.
29:25
Some caves near the surface have air pockets and cracks in their ceilings that allow bats to
come and go. Cave swifts, too. It's the perfect sheltered place to roost and nest.

No wonder the Maya thought that bats were from the underworld. They would have seen
them flying straight out of the ground, as night fell.

By exploring underground, Yucatan’s divers are peeling back the many layers of the
peninsula, and are slowly revealing the incredible relationship between its flooded caves and
everything they affect at the surface.

30:07
There are many ways in which these two worlds connect. Tree roots. This is the jungle’s
secret. How, with hardly any surface water, it can still grow so dense.

Some trees and vines push their roots through gaps in the limestone to the permanent water
supply below. It doesn't matter how dry it gets on the surface, they rely on the underworld.
These deep-rooted trees provide animals with a year-round supply of leaves, flowers and
fruit.

30:55
This vital connection between the forest and the ground beneath it, must have intrigued the
Maya. It could only have reinforced their belief in the power of the underworld. They, too,
relied on its gift of water. A few Cenotes could help a whole city survive even the harshest of
dry seasons.

But Sam doesn't just look to archaeology for his understanding of the Maya - he can talk to
them.

Direct descendants of the ancient Maya still live here. One of them, is Don Fermin Zippe, a
good friend of Sam’s.

The Maya still practice slash and burn farming - growing crops then letting the forest grow
back to replenish the soil. In fact, the ancient Maya did this on a grand scale. Incredibly,
most of the jungle here, previously thought to be pristine, has actually been cut down and
regrown many times over the last 2000 years.

The Maya may have stopped building large cities and temples, but they live-on today as
skilful farmers, thriving, despite the thin soils and harsh seasons of the Yucatan.

Maya communities are close-knit and the Mayan language is still spoken.

“Cenote” is derived from the Maya world word for “well”. Almost every village is built
around one. Other Cenotes mark boundaries between the communities.

33:22
Cenotes were, and are, quite literally central to their world.

As well as a distinct language, the Maya have a distinct set of beliefs. Their stories and
fables, passed down the generations, describe everything around them - the Cenotes, the
jungle, the animals.

One Maya belief is that the powerful forces of the underworld determine their prosperity and
their destiny.

Don Fermin still practices the Maya religion. He prays to the gods of his ancestors and
regards Cenotes as windows into their world.

In advance of Sam’s more difficult dives, Don Fermin sometimes makes offerings to the
underworld, asking for a safe passage. And this dive will be difficult.

But it will reveal yet another twist in the Yucatan’s many-layered history - a cosmic event that
affected not only the world of the ancient Maya, but possibly, the rest of the world as well.

Some Cenotes near the north western tip of the Yucatan aren't at all like the ones that Sam
and Steve are used to exploring. These are much deeper, sheer, vertical sink-holes, known as
“Pit Cenotes”.

This Cenote is definitely a lot deeper than ones that we normally would encounter. Today we
got to about 45 metres of depth and still we couldn't see the bottom.

This appears to be the bottom, but it isn't. It is a cloud of hydrogen sulphide, made from
rotting vegetation. It is toxic and corrosive - not somewhere you would want to hang around.

The hydrogen sulphide layer is actually pretty intense, as you are descending down into the
Cenote, it gives the appearance that you are coming up on the floor and all of a sudden you
realise it is not the floor, it is a cloud. It is made up of sulphur, primarily, so it has got a rotten
egg smell to it. In extreme cases, where it is very strong, you can feel it burning any exposed
skin that you have.

36:45
Why are these Cenotes so different? They are evidence of a critical turning point in the
Yucatan’s distant history - something that was only noticed 20 years ago, when satellites gave
us a new perspective on life on Earth.

If you look at normal Cenotes from space, their pattern is scattered and random, but the Pit
Cenotes, form a distinct semicircle, 165 kilometres across.

Seismic studies have shown that the circle is completed under the sea. So what does this
huge circle represent? The answer lies at least 65 million years ago, when the Yucatan was a
shallow tropical sea.
The disastrous event that caused the circle was so massive, that some think it could have led
to the demise of the dinosaurs. An enormous meteor, heading for what is now the very tip of
the Yucatan peninsula.

Imagine at the moment that this meteor slammed into our planet, it was so huge that if one
edge of it was touching our planet, the outer edge of it would be at the same altitude as a
commercial jet liner flies today.

The immense impact crater was gradually buried under limestone, built up by coral reefs over
millions of years. But the crater’s shape was echoed in the way this limestone then eroded to
form the distinctive semicircle of Pit Cenotes. When the Maya arrived, they built great cities
and temples around these sacred wells, unwittingly outlining the footprint of this global
catastrophe.

Once again, the Yucatan’s history can be read by looking deep into its landscape.

But it has one more secret to reveal, one last riddle to be solved.

39:28
When it does rain here, it rains hard.

But this huge amount of water doesn't settle on the ground, it vanishes. It seeps through the
limestone into the underworld.

But this freshwater is only the top layer - it floats above an enormous body of much heavier,
salt water. This is the halocline - the interface between the two. It is this contrast between
the gin-clear fresh water and the hazier, salt water that can make diving here so surreal.

40:20
Divers have discovered that the freshwater here does more than just float. It flows, in huge
underground rivers, probably the largest underground river system in the world.

Nearly two centuries ago, John Lloyd Stevens rediscovered the Maya civilisation. People
have long wondered how they thrived without a great river. Now, we appear to have found
their Nile.

These great rivers must flow out to sea, but where? Sam needs to find out. He comes across
the skeleton of a manatee, a sea mammal. He must be getting close.

Meter by meter, Cenote to Cenote, cave divers are mapping the rivers from source to sea.
But while doing so, they have made an alarming discovery.

41:53
The modern world is taking over.
I am amazed at the change that has taken place in such a short time in this area. It seems that
every time I go out of my door, there is a new building that has been built.

The coastal strip of Cancun and the Riviera Maya is one of the fastest-growing tourist areas
in the world.

There is one specific occasion where we were actually diving beneath a major construction
project. And, as we were diving along, the entire cave was literally shaking as we were diving
through it. And it wasn't until the next day that we came back that we realised that they had
been perforating through the ceiling of the cave, and along one of the lines that Steve had laid
the previous day, there was actually a cement piling going right down through the cave
system.

New construction could inadvertently block or pollute the great underground rivers of the
Yucatan with far-reaching effects, still too complex for us to understand. The Maya
underworld faces a new chapter in its long and varied history.

The decline of the ancient Maya could teach us a thing or two. Some say they developed too
far, too fast. Others, that a succession of droughts left them without water. Everyone here
still relies on the underworld. It is, and always was, the lifeblood of the peninsula. Without
it, the Yucatan would be a hot, dry and hostile place.

43:46
By mapping the course of every river to the sea, Sam and other divers are hoping to draw
attention to them, so further damage can be avoided.

Their work has not only helped us to understand the Yucatan’s past, but it can help to
safeguard its future.

Sam’s journey down this river is nearly over. There is more light and more air, and the roots
are roots of mangroves. And there are manatees. These gentle herbivores come to the
underworld’s outflow to drink fresh water and to cool off. What they mean to Sam, is that he
has made it.

One last tunnel, and a journey that began in a jungle pool, ends-up off a Caribbean beach.
Tomorrow he will be back in the forest, looking for a new Cenote and the next river. And
when all the Cenotes are explored and all the maps are finished, maybe the Yucatan will be
better understood.

In a more mystical way, the ancient Maya understood it. They knew they were at the mercy
of the underworld. At the ruins, archaeologists are revealing ever-more about this great
civilisation - how they lived, and what they believed. But now, a whole new frontier has
opened, underground.

Sam and Steve are not the first explorers to have been enchanted by the riddles of the
Yucatan, but they have, quite literally, taken exploration to a whole new level.
To this day, it is only thought that we have charted a fraction of the Maya underworld and
many of these areas still remain untouched and uncharted.

Sam continues with his passion. He certainly has his work cut-out for him in the coming
years.

My feelings about exploration can be very easily summarised in a poem I read about the
Yukon goldrush. And in that, the author says, “it is not the gold, it’s finding the gold”. It’s
finding the Cenote and diving down into it and seeing what is there that really is the thrill for
me. Really for all of us, it is a motivation to think that you can live in the 21st-century and
still be able to explore. We are only just scratching the surface of what exists here. I have
absolutely no doubt that this place will continue to provide incredible scientific discoveries
for years to come.

Sam and his explorer colleagues have risky, yet fascinating days ahead of them - unveiling
the many secrets of the Maya underworld.