Now it is time for what a malas lost world. Located in northern guatemala, the maya Biosphere Reserve is the largest rainforest north of the amazon and one of the worlds most important hotspots for biodiversity. It also was once the heart of the maya civilisation. Today, hundreds of houses, fortifications, temples and other structures lie hidden beneath the jungle. I like this part. But some archaeologists are determined to change that. Theyve devoted their careers to getting the jungle to give up its secrets, and new technology has revealed that, despite decades of work, they have only begun to scratch the surface. Theres a deep hole, and thats where theyre digging right now. Car starting. Dont let me down. The maya city of holmul has been an obsession of archaeologist Francisco Estrada bellis for the last 20 yea rs. He calls it the gift that keeps on giving. Lets try not to get stuck. Yeah. In recent years, his work has been aided by the use of lidar, a technology currently transforming archaeology. Ive come to holmul, on the border with belize, to learn more about what estrada belli has discovered. This was one of the most populous places on earth a thousand years ago, if you think about it. Were already estimating eight to 11 Million People in an area of 9,000 km2. And yet they were using very Sustainable Practices so that they could do this for 2,000 years. And so, you started excavating. In holmul in 2000. That was our first season, yeah. It was very adventurous. We worked for two weeks, and then it started raining. We didnt have any cars and the roads were all flooded, so we got on out on horses. The city of holmul dates back to 800 bc. It was abandoned 1,700 years later. One of its mysteries that estrada belli has been trying to solve its empty tomb. I think i know why they abandoned it, because the date of the building matches with a guy whos supposed to be from here, being sacrificed at tikal, in the year 748. 0k. And after that, pretty much all monumental construction stopped here. So, tell me what that would have meant. So, tikal was defeating its archenemy, the snake kingdom, and they already defeated the actual snake kings and now they were going after its former allies. This is historical archaeology. We dontjust talk about processes any more and theories, now we talk about specific events, specific people. Because we can read the inscription. And yet, this tomb was almost destroyed before estrada belli, or any another archaeologist, were able to discover it. And here is the tomb chamber. Wow. Looters came and dug a hole right behind this doorway. And they missed by the structure with the freeze by 27 metres, ill show you. So thats the frieze right there. Whoa so thats the corner image of one of the dead kings. You can imagine what they would have done. They would have said, oh, my gosh, theres definitely something cool behind this and they would just blast through it. Its all there and it goes for eight metres that way and another five this way, has been damaged on purpose by the ancient maya. Nothing else, really, is damaged in the whole carving. Just his face, his necklace, a little ceremonial head. The maya believed everyone had a soul, including images of people and things. And so when they were burying something, they would let the soul out by killing the image. Thats the god of the underworld. And hes holding something. Hes holding a hieroglyph. Its two syllables. Two words, really. 0ne means the first, and one means the food. So hes holding the first of it and hes offering it to him. I love the faces on this. So thats the eye . Thats the spiral eye. Hes got blue under the eyes. Hes tired. Laughter. Hes been up all night because hes the god of the night sky. And this here is the glyph that says. Hes the vessel of the snake kings. What did you feel in that moment when you realised that . When i saw the glyph, i thought, well, my careerjust made a big turn. Exactly its like, jackpot estrada belli was lucky to find this freeze. The jungle doesnt make for especially easy archaeology. 100 years ago, an archaeologist from harvard first came to holmul and discovered these temples, but he missed the oldest carving which dates all the way back to 350 bc. The notes were rather incomplete because the archaeologist died shortly after working here, by a mysterious disease that he contracted here. He returned from here with a massive sore on his nose which never healed. Thats what happens with this bug. Eventually he died, he never finished his reports. It was actually published by one of his friends at harvard, posthumously. They forgot to mention this tunnel, and he had found the window of an earlier pyramid and stopped. So, we kept digging and theres this massive carving that explained what the temple is all about. So are these beetles still around . Yes. 0h, great its called the assassin bug. Good, im glad were going in now. Welcome to the underworld. It even made a sound. Turn the light on. Watch your step. Were going to walk around the exterior and go to the front. And this is the front of the building. Whoa god, its a lot bigger than i was expecting. Yeah, its all perfectly preserved. Wow. For 2,400 years. And what you have is a massive head of an earth monster with the mouth open, these are the teeth. And here inside the mouth of this monster is the face of an old man. And even today the maya in guatemala that worship an old man, it has the same wrinkles, the teeth like that. Its the image of the god of the underworld. Its not going to change. Jungle creatures and diseases are just two of the problems that archaeologists have had to face. But historically, the bigger threats to the rain forest and its archaeology have been logging and looting. This is el diablo. The devil. The devil, yeah. Laughs. We dont know why they choose that name. Its an early classic building, we call it between 300 ad to 600 ad. Wow. Now were going to go and try to see some of the earliest version of this building. And what was it used for . This was the funerary temple. Heres where the remains of the fierce king of el zotz rests. This devil temple was allegedly named because the sides are dangerously steep. But maybe more fitting is that its king who ruled in the fourth century ad was buried with the remains of six sacrificed children. Two metres below here, thats where we found the tomb. Yeah, thats where we found the tomb, two metres away. So im standing on top of a kings tomb . Yes, from 370. 380 ad. But nothings in there any more . No, we removed, we excavated, and everything now is in a national museum. The looters hadnt gotten to it, so everything was still there . Everything still there, we found it, we found it, the chamber was completely sealed. When we open, we still feel that cold breeze and like a smell, like something was in the putrefaction process, when we open it. In 2010, when we found the tomb of the fierce king of el zotz, we were working on it. Unfortunately, looters can come and they are really well organised and can take everything from you. One day we hired a group of guards to protect it, but it didnt work because some of them tried to too. I confronted them, one of them put his gun shot. At the time, i think i was a good liar. Itold him, you know, this is a computer. We have internet, which we dont have, and we are filming everything. And thats when it stopped. Another major challenge for the maya Biosphere Reserve is illegal logging, often tied to drug trafficking. And when the jungle is cleared, it doesnt just affect the animals in the rainforest, but the maya sites, which are often irretrievably damaged. They will clear the forest around archaeological sites, plant the marijuana, loot the sites while the marijuana was growing and then collect to harvest. And put all they got on small planes to go to the us. Several illegal activities are still going on in guatemala. Illegal logging, which is not a problem here specifically, but in other parts of this region, its a big problem. Drug trafficking. Were fortunate here at holmul, but out at western guatamala, they cut the forest to build airstrips, airplanes from colombia, land there, and its a trans shipment place to go across to mexico and from there to the us, and they burnt all the forest in the process. Whereas this area has done much better because it was given in concession to local communities for sustainable logging. So in the last 20 years, the local communities have stopped the drug trafficking, the land invasions, the deforestation, and thats why sites like this are still covered by forest. We think what we have in place here works much better because the local communities are empowered and have an incentive to protect the forest. Which is the sustainable logging. For as long as they can continue, they will protect the forest. This man is Vice President of the arbol verde concession which has been given to local residents for sustainable logging. While logging might seem an anathema to the forest, it turns out that concessions like these can have quite the opposite effect. By being run with strict adherence to Sustainable Management principles, Community Concessions like this one have actually protected the reserve. One of the Biggest Challenges to archaeologists in the maya Biosphere Reserve isnt logging or even looting. Its a fact that its extremely difficult to find or identify structures in a jungle as thick and wild as this one. And thats where a technology thats relatively new to archaeology, lidar, has been transformative. So, this hill is supposedly a pyramid. They think it might be may be as big as the great pyramid, the mundo perdido, its definitely steep. It looks like a hill. So, its Pretty Amazing that theyre able to find that out through lidar. Were right here. 0nly10 of tikal has actually been excavated and discovered . This feels very indiana jones. Lidar is a type of Remote Sensing technology thats used to create extraordinarily detailed 3d maps and representations. In the reserve, lidar is being employed in two ways, from aircraft to create topological maps, and from hand held scanners to build better 3d models of a particular site or structure. The process of beaming lasers from aircraft, the largest survey, is the initiative of the foundation for mayan cultural and natural heritage. Its amazing. Probably a pre classic structure. Its massive. This is one of the bigger temples of tikal. What is lidar, exactly . What makes it such a great tool . It really strips off the forest canopy with billions of laser beams that map individually, each return, every time they hit something on the surface. That will give tremendous use for the forests and the biomass. And you said billions of laser beams. How many billions of laser beams . I think our first data said 60 billion returns. So, thats an incredible amount of data. And how long did it take to collect that . Really, only a couple of weeks. It was Something Like eight flights. 2,100ka of area is covered in that amount of time. You obviously have a great appreciation for an understanding of how sophisticated the mayans were. Yes. But did the lidar increase that understanding even more . Yes, the lidar showed without any doubt that we totally underestimated their engineering capabilities in terms of landscape modifications to make the land more sustainable, to irrigate, bringing water to places to cultivate, to stop erosion. Its pretty mind blowing. Thats how i felt. And i thought the mayans were sophisticated already, but not at this scale. One of the sites where lidar has been especially helpful is here, el zotz. Lidar is the first step. It shows us everything. It gives us the footprint, but then archaeologists still have to go out, and get there and check it. They have to get there. Lidar makes it so that as archaeologists, we dont have to spend all her time figuring out whats there and instead, we can focus in and excavate and addressing questions we want to. So much of our time is spent mapping and just trying to find places, and what lidars shown us is that we werent very good at it. A lot of sites around here were abandoned at the end of what we call the classic period. Around 900, Something Like that. El zotz had People Living here up till the 1300s. Were probably somewhere near the old communal royal, the new spanish road that passed down through Central America and supposedly was built on top of a major pre columbian three way. But no one has actually pinpointed where that ran through. We wonder will lidar eventually reveal that for us. That would be amazing. The first king of el zotz was such an important character that a temple was created for him so he would never be forgotten. 0nly be careful with these things, they are supporting the roof. When you are here, be careful. If you fall, fall this way. So, dont fall on the sculpture. So this was all from one king . Yes. For the first king. This king not only was powerful we know the extension of his power. We know this is on the top here and that then this had to be a defensive. Lidar is helping us recognise everything this king did to preserve him, his family and his legacy. The creation of a dynasty. So a find like this tells you there is a king, then the lidar helps you realise what the whole context is. Yes and how much even more there is, and how powerful he was. Everything they built, we can make more sense of it. And so you have been coming here for 20 years and know the area very well, but you still hadnt suspected that this was a major wall. I could see it was a wall, but i was thinking, what is a wall doing here . When you see it in the context of lidar, it makes more sense. Myjob is typically two things. I mapped a 100 metre long wall, i had no idea it continue for seven kilometres its a causeway, not a wall when you got that lidar data back and started to see all that, whatd you say . I was like oh my god, my god for hours. Oh, my god, look at this oh, my god, look at that its very humbling. You think you know what youre doing for all my career. Right, yep. And this thing is so much better than what any of us can do. We can do what we do in 20 years in two days. The same work and its better. The lidar shows how big the rain forest is and how many trees there are with much greater precision. Which can be instrumental in conserving the rainforest. Hello there. Wednesday brought another wet day, particularly to england and wales. And at one point, we had over 50 flood warnings in force. Now, im sure as the rain eases off, the number of flood warnings through Christmas Eve will gradually begin to drop away, but still the potential for a few problems. There is the rain bearing cloud, then, we had across england and wales, but my attention right now is being drawn to this area of cloud just running in across the north of scotland, because this is going to bring some of you snow. Yes, there could be a few centimetres lying on the ground in places, along with the risk of icy stretches as we head into the first part of Christmas Eve. A few showers also running down north sea coast, the irish seacoast, as our main band of rain continues to edge out of the way. It will be cold, mind you, a cold start to Christmas Eve, a widespread frost certainly for scotland, northern england, probably northern ireland, and perhaps into the north midlands and north wales as well. Now, it will be a cold day for Christmas Eve, these chilly northerly winds diving their way southwards and bringing showers down north sea coasts. They will continue to fall as snow in land across parts of scotland, perhaps over the north york moors, might even see an odd flake mixed in with these showers across Eastern England at times. But away from the east coast where it will be windy and cold, should be plenty of sunshine, but those temperatures way lower than they have been for a number of days now, 3 4 in scotland, may be 11 5 for parts of Eastern England. And as we head into christmas day, there will be a widespread and sharp frost, so certainly a chilly start to the big day. That might be quite a nice sunrise to start the day. Best of the sunshine across england and wales, but cloud will quickly building across the north west, and ultimately, we will see some rain move its way into northwest scotland, where it will be turning milder, as south westerly winds eventually pushing in, highs of 9 in stornoway. Best of the sunshine, then, hanging on across parts of southern and Eastern England, but cold, 11 5 degrees celsius. Beyond that, boxing day, and sunday, the second half of the weekend, weve got this area of rain pushing southwards across the country. Given that the ground is saturated, that rain is likely to lead to further localised flooding with wintry showers following the main band of rain through. Its notjust rain that could cause issues, its also going to become very windy, gusts could reach 50 70 mph, maybe Even Stronger than that. So there is the potential for some disruptive winds as well this weekend, and beyond that into monday, still windy for northern ireland. Further east, a mixture of rain, sleet and maybe some snow. This is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. My name is mike embley. A brexit deal within striking distance the signs from london and brussels point to an agreement now on the table, with an announcement expected on thursday morning. President trump issues full pardons to his former Campaign Manager Paul Manafort and roger stone, convicted of lying under oath to congress. Six million more people in england face the toughest level of coronavirus restrictions, as hospital admissions surge to their highest levels since april. And italy tightens measures and closes ski resorts. It now has the highest covid death toll in europe. The site she and the designer Stella Mccartney lead tributes to stella tenna nt Stella Mccartney lead tributes to Stella Tennant who has passed away suddenly at