Divers probe submerged Mayan ruins
Scuba divers are exploring a volcanic lake in Guatemala to find clues about an ancient sacred island where Mayan pilgrims flocked to worship before it was submerged.
Samabaj, the first underwater archaeological ruins excavated in Guatemala, were discovered accidentally 12 years ago by a diver exploring picturesque Lake Atitlan, ringed by Mayan villages and popular with foreign tourists.
"No one believed me, even when I told them all about it. They just said 'he's mad'," says Roberto Samayoa, a businessman and recreational diver who grew up near the lake where his grandmother told him legends of a sunken church.
Samayoa dived for years at the lake, often stumbling across pieces of pottery from the Mayan pre-classic period. In 1996, he found the site, with parts of buildings and huge ceremonial stones, known as stelae, clearly visible.
He named it Samabaj, after himself, but only in the past year have professional archaeologists taken an interest, mapping the 400 square metre area with sonar technology and excavating structures on a raised part of the lake bed.
Researchers believe this area, 15 metres below the lake's surface, was once an island until a catastrophic event, such as a volcanic eruption or landslide, raised water levels.
The rising lake drowned the buildings around 250 AD, before the height of the Mayan empire.
Ceramics found intact there suggest the inhabitants left in a hurry.
"We have found six ceremonial monuments and four altars and without doubt there are more, which means this was an extremely important place from a spiritual point of view," says lead archaeologist Sonia Medrano.
The Maya built soaring pyramids and elaborate palaces in Central America and southern Mexico before mysteriously abandoning their cities around 900 AD.
Medrano, whose work is funded by the US-based Reinhart Foundation, says the island has ruins of small houses for about 150 people and is crammed with religious paraphernalia, leading researchers to believe Samabaj was a pilgrimage destination.
Worshippers probably flocked there from the surrounding area, hiring boats from the shore to row them out to the island for prayer and contemplation, says Medrano.
Excavating in the murky, green water is challenging, with artefacts hard to see and buried under thousands of years of sediment.
The exact location of the site is a closely guarded secret, since the archaeologists want to protect it from looters who fish in the ruins for artefacts to be sold, sometimes for thousands of dollars, on the black market.