But the Maya and these unknown people, Brady said, did seem to share a similar cosmological view. In both cultures, “there is a focus on the sacred, animate earth, which is the most important force in the universe.” In contrast to the Old World idea that the dead live on in the heavens, in Mesoamerican belief the dead live within the earth and mountains. Caves are sacred, as they are a direct connection to that underground spiritual world. The ancestors living underground continue to take care of the living, watching over them. The living can contact the dead by going deep into the caves, leaving offerings, conducting rituals, and praying. The cave is a church, in essence, a place where the living come to petition their ancestors for favor and protection.

The Cave of the Glowing Skulls and similar cave ossuaries discovered around the same time remain the earliest evidence of human occupation in Honduras. But were these people the actual ancestors of those who, a thousand years later, would build the cities in Mosquitia we had found at T1 and T3?

“Shit, I don’t know,” Brady said. “We have very little knowledge in this sea of ignorance. And of course the Mosquitia is farther into the frontier, and it’s even less known.” Three to two thousand years ago, he said, we have the burials but not the settlements; and then a thousand years later we have the settlements but not the burials.

After Talgua Caves, the archaeological record falls silent for a thousand years. People lived in eastern Honduras during that time, but no trace of them has yet been found.

Following that thousand-year gap in our knowledge of Honduran prehistory, small settlements begin to appear in Mosquitia starting around AD 400 to 500. Archaeologists believe the people of Mosquitia spoke a dialect of Chibchan, a group of languages that encompasses Lower Central America down into Colombia. This suggests that Mosquitia was more connected to its southern neighbors than to the Maya, who spoke an unrelated set of languages.

The major Chibchan-speaking civilization, the Muisca, lived in Colombia. It was a powerful chiefdom known for intricate goldwork. The Muisca confederation was the source of the El Dorado legends, based on a real tradition in which a new king, smeared in sticky mud and then covered with gold dust, would dive into Lake Guatavita in Colombia, washing off the gold in the lake as an offering to the gods.*

The original people of Mosquitia may have come from the south or been influenced from that direction. But that southward orientation would change as the Maya city of Copán, two hundred miles west of Mosquitia, rose in power and prestige. The appearance of modest settlements in Mosquitia around AD 400 to 500 roughly coincides with the founding of the ruling dynasty of Copán. We don’t know whether the two events were linked. We do know a great deal about the establishment of Copán, one of the most studied cities in the Maya realm. The people of Copán achieved remarkable heights in art, architecture, mathematics, astronomy, and hieroglyphic writing, and the city’s magnificent public monuments contain many inscriptions telling the story of its founding and history. The influence of Copán would eventually reach into Mosquitia.

In AD 426, a ruler named K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’ (Sun-Eyed Resplendent Quetzal Macaw) came down from the Maya city of Tikal, in Guatemala, and seized control of the settlement of Copán in a coup or invasion. He became Copán’s first “Holy Lord” and launched a dynasty of sixteen lords that would elevate Copán into a glorious city dominating the area for centuries.

Quetzal Macaw and his elite force of Maya warriors imposed themselves on a local population already living in the Copán valley. These original people may have been Chibchan-language speakers related to those in Mosquitia. Archaeological work at Copán suggests that after Macaw’s conquest it was a multiethnic city. Some neighborhoods at Copán had metates decorated with animal heads like those found in Mosquitia. Macaw married a Copán woman, probably the daughter of a local lord, no doubt to secure his legitimacy and form an alliance with the local nobility, just as European kings once did.

Copán is as far south as the Maya appear to have reached. Perhaps they were stymied by forbidding mountains and jungle. Perhaps they met resistance. As a result, even after the Maya invasion of Copán in the fifth century, Mosquitia was left to develop on its own. The two civilizations were not, however, isolated from each other. On the contrary, there was probably a vigorous trade between them, and possibly even warfare. From many bragging inscriptions of glorious combat and deeds, we know the Maya city-states were belligerent and engaged in frequent battles with each other and with their neighbors. These conflicts only intensified as the wealth and populations of the Maya city-states increased, swelling their hunger for resources.

In 2000, archaeologists found Quetzal Macaw’s tomb. For centuries, a bend in the Copán River had cut into the central acropolis of the city, and although its course was altered years ago, the old cutbank remained. The erosion had exposed layer upon layer of buildings erected as the city grew. Each main temple at Copán had been built over and around the previous one, creating a series of buildings nested together like Russian matryoshka dolls.

In a feat of clever detective work, archaeologists located the tomb by examining the cutaway embankment and identifying the original floor of the oldest building platform. They then tunneled in from the cutbank, following the floor, until they came to a filled-in staircase that led up into the original temple, which had been covered over by eight subsequent temples. They cleared the staircase and found at the top a sumptuous burial chamber containing the skeleton of a man. He was about five feet six inches tall and between fifty-five and seventy years old. Inscriptions, grave offerings, and other evidence confirmed this was the tomb of Quetzel Macaw.