Qualla: Lubaantun https://qualla.com/lubaantun en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:12 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/d/4/b/s/lubaantun-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Lubaantun https://qualla.com/lubaantun Lubaantun: Introduction https://qualla.com/lubaantun/ Photo credit Elelicht, CC BY-SA 3.0. In 1943, the adventurer F.A. Mitchell-Hedges purchased a crystal skull at a Sotheby's auction in London. It had previously belonged to collector Sydney Burney, and photographs had appeared in the journal Man as early as 1936. None of this stopped Mitchell-Hedges' adoptive daughter Anna from later claiming she had found the skull as a teenager at Lubaantun, a Maya ruin in the jungles of southern Belize. The story was nonsense -- investigators Joe Nickell and archaeologist Norman Hammond proved as much -- but it stuck, and for decades the crystal skull eclipsed the real wonder of Lubaantun: a city built entirely without mortar, from black slate blocks fitted together with such precision that they have held for over a thousand years.

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Image: Elelicht | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/4/b/s/lubaantun-wp/d4bs-lubaantun-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Lubaantun: Place of Fallen Stones https://qualla.com/lubaantun/ Photo credit Pgbk87, CC BY-SA 3.0. The modern Maya name Lubaantun means "place of fallen stones," and arriving at the site you understand why. Located in Belize's Toledo District, about 42 kilometers northwest of Punta Gorda and 3.2 kilometers from the village of San Pedro Columbia, the ruins rise on an artificial...

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Image: Pgbk87 | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/4/b/s/lubaantun-wp/d4bs-lubaantun-place-of-fallen-stones.mp3 0:06 2 full Lubaantun: Whistles in the Rubble https://qualla.com/lubaantun/ Photo credit Elelicht, CC BY-SA 3.0. Lubaantun's most remarkable finds are not its buildings but its figurines. Hundreds of mold-made ceramic whistle figurines, each with two finger holes allowing three notes, were excavated by T.A. Joyce during British Museum expeditions in 1926 and 1927. They depict cosmological f...

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Image: Elelicht | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/4/b/s/lubaantun-wp/d4bs-lubaantun-whistles-in-the-rubble.mp3 0:06 3 full Lubaantun: Cacao Capital https://qualla.com/lubaantun/ Photo credit C Michael Hogan, CC BY-SA 2.5. Research by archaeologists Robert Sharer and Loa Traxler established that Lubaantun was occupied briefly, from about AD 700 to 870, and served as the local capital of its area during that window. Ceramic and stone effigies with cacao pods have been found at the site, pointing to ...

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Image: C Michael Hogan | CC BY-SA 2.5

]]> Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/4/b/s/lubaantun-wp/d4bs-lubaantun-cacao-capital.mp3 0:06 4 full Lubaantun: Rediscovery and Reckoning https://qualla.com/lubaantun/ Photo credit Kaldari, CC0. Dr. Thomas Gann first investigated Lubaantun in 1903 after Q'eqchi' and Mopan Maya villagers told inhabitants of Punta Gorda about the large ruins. R.E. Merwin of Harvard's Peabody Museum cleared and mapped the site in 1915, discovering the first ballcourt with its hieroglyphic s...

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Image: Kaldari | CC0

]]> Sun, 22 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/d/4/b/s/lubaantun-wp/d4bs-lubaantun-rediscovery-and-reckoning.mp3 0:06 5 full