The City At The Beginning Of The World

The only Maya city with an urban grid may embody an ancient creation myth

- Lizzie Wade

FOR YEARS, ARCHAEOLOGIST Timothy Pugh thought he was simply following the cows as he walked across the site of Nixtun-Ch’ich’, an ancient Maya city in northern Guatemala. The site, whose name means, roughly, “a rocky place,” is located on a peninsula that juts out like a pointed finger into Lake Petén Itzá. It is now part of a cattle ranch, covered with tall grass—perfect grazing land. Most of the other Maya sites in the area are obscured by dense thickets of jungle, so this was a lucky break for Pugh and his colleagues. Still, the nearly knee high vegetation wasn’t easy to move through. Pugh tended to follow the paths the cattle had already created as they tamped the grasses down with their hooves while they grazed, picking their way between mounds containing the remains of ancient ceremonial platforms up to 13 feet high.