San Bartolo

Lore & Background

San Bartolo's fame derives from its splendid Late-Preclassic mural paintings still heavily influenced by Olmec tradition and from examples of early Maya script. The Maya site includes an 85-foot pyramid named 'Las Ventanas' (The Windows); the Temple of 'Las Pinturas' (The Paintings); an early royal tomb in the 'Tigrillo Complex' (Ocelot Complex); and (in the 'Jabalí' [Wild Boar] group some 500 mt. to the east from the central Plaza) a triadic complex similar to the H group in Uaxactún and Tikal's North Acropolis. The pyramid was constructed from ca 300 BC (base rooms) and was completed ca 50 AD. San Bartolo is often studied alongside the closely related site of Xultún.

In Their Own Story

The jungle swallows sound the moment the rotors fade. Two operators peel off to the ridge for overwatch; the other two work the trail toward the compound. Somewhere ahead, a radio crackles in a language none of them fully parse. The mud is black and deep. A patrol rounds the bend, and the whole world narrows to the crosshairs, the breathing, the count. Three seconds of silence. Then the compound is theirs, and San Bartolo is a little less hostile. But the island is large, and the night is long, and there are still doors to open.

Reader's Guide

In 2001, in the base of a pyramid, a team led by William Saturno (a researcher for the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology) discovered a room with murals that were carbon-dated as from 100 BC, making them the oldest ones to date. Excavation started in March 2003. The murals were stabilized and a special technique was used for photographically recording the paintings. Fallen fragments were pieced together and also photographed. Detailed reconstruction drawings were made by Heather Hurst. The iconography of the mural scenes was subsequently analyzed and interpreted by project iconographer Karl Taube. Besides the murals, the oldest known Maya royal tomb was discovered in San Bartolo, by archaeologist Monica Pellecer Alecio.

Did You Know?

• The murals on the northern and western walls of the chamber in the base of the temple pyramid ('Pinturas Sub-1') depict elements of Maya creation mythology reminiscent of the Popol Vuh as well as of Yucatec cosmological
• The earliest inscriptions which are identifiably Maya have been found at San Bartolo; they date to the 3rd century BC.
• In 2022, scholars working on the San Bartolo-Xultun Regional Archaeological Project presented evidence for the earliest known calendar notation in the Maya region, the 260-day ritual calendar date of '7 Deer,' from the m