•  Copan is the name by which the site has been known since 1576. We don't know the site's original name at all, but new advances in Maya epigraphy (the science of reading the ancient Maya glyphs) have lead to a possible reading of the Copan Emblem Glyph. Epigraphers say it may be read as "Corner", "Summit" or "Motmot", possibly referring to Copan's position as the easternmost border of the Maya World. However, the name Motmot would be very confusing, as it is a species of bird found in the area (Eumomota superciliosa) ... The emblem glyph is represented by a bat, or Tz'otz' in Mayan.

• The Maya language is quite complex, but even more so was the Maya's writing. Since the discovery of the intriguing stone monuments buried in the middle of the Central American jungles it has taken scientists a very long time to conclude that there are many ways in which the same word may be represented. The same goes for numbers...

• A seeming simple system using a dot (to represent 1) and a bar (to represent 5) is the basic ingredient of the Maya's vigesimal numerical system. The Maya independently developed the concept and understood the value of the number zero as early as 374 AD, many centuries before Europeans did (Zero was understood in Europe as late as the 12th century AD)... Zero was represented by a shell glyph. In this sense 10 was represented by 2 bars stacked on top of each other, and 12 as these two bars plus two dots at the top... However, the Maya numbers could also be represented in a glyph form, resulting in sophisticated and full figured face type glyphs or representations for every number found in some of the stelae at Copan.

• Maya writing is complex and it may be said that scientific interest in these wonderful texts has finally yielded some understanding onto parts of their meanings, hidden for centuries. Full texts have been deciphered, revealing the history of the ancient sites, breaking the mystery of Maya Hieroglyphic writing.

•  There is a famous stone monument at Copan called Altar Q. The first archaeologists and researchers, in the early 1900s, originally thought it portrayed a group of Maya astronomers, but later it was discovered that it contains an orderly succesion of portraits and the glyphs by which the names of 16 of Copan's Dynastic Rulers were known, linking the founder of the dynasty Yax K'uk' Mo' with the last established ruler Yax Pasaj Chan Yoaat.

• Jade was a commodity and a valuable trading good, whoever controlled the jade trade routes held amazing power… The lords of Copan controlled the jade trade routes for many centuries…

•  Copan dominated a site called Quirigua for a very long time. Quirigua is only 50 kilometers away in present day Guatemala and is on the banks of the Motagua River. Quirigua was a big producer of jade, which was the main reason for the relationship between both sites and for their histories being so deeply intertwined. It is written in Quirigua's history that they acknowledged the ancient Maya City of Copan as their mentor and their ally. An unexpected turn of events led to the fateful death of Copan's 13th ruler, Waxaklajuun Ubaah' K'awiil (or Eighteen Rabbit) in Quirigua in 738 A.D. The Quirigua ruler K'ak' Tiliw Chan Yoaat (Cauac Sky) took control of the region and the relationships of power between both cities changed after this event, and Copan became the vassal of Quirigua for 7 years. Copan's glory was never fully restored after its ruler's death.

• In the construction of new buildings it was very common for the ancient Maya of Copan to deface a building commissioned by a previous ruler and to build their own new facade or crest and make new additions to the buildings on top of the old... This is how the Maya attained ever taller, bigger, and more impressive buildings. One may say they recycled the old to build the new. You may witness this phenomenon around Copan –called the Iconoclastic Phenomenon, which literally means the destruction of icons- at most structures, with the notable exception of Rosalila. Rosalila is located beneath Structure 16 and it was a temple so sacred to the Maya of Copan they buried it completely and with exceeding care.

•  At Copan, as in other Maya sites, there were common funerary practices such as burying their dead in their home's courtyard. There are many women buried this way among the ancient Maya, even outnumbering the men. This suggests women were very important among Maya society. However, there is one burial of a female that stands out among all the rest, called the Margarita burial. This was the burial of a woman covered in cinnabar, more commonly known as the Lady in Red. Her name is now lost to us, but she was found with a very important offering: a vase with a Macaw and a Quetzal bird representation... There are reasons to believe this may have been Yax K'uk' Mo' 's wife or for sure his successor's mother... There is evidence of repositioning of her bones when the next construction phase began. The chamber she lay in was sealed and the lady's importance was remembered in a ceremony that took place before the temple was built on top of the chamber. Among the ancient Maya women often played important roles in politics. She undoubtedly played a very important role in Copan, even after her death, as her exhumation and reburial attest. Unfortunately, her bones were stolen in the late 1990's by vulgar grave robbers...

• In ancient times Copan's population -of around 27,500 inhabitants- made it the most important city in the Eastern region of the Maya World. Since it was abandoned in the 9th century A.D. the population in the Copan River valley was never comparable to the population during the Terminal Classic period until the 1980's, when as many people lived in the Copan River Valley again.

• Plaster casts made in the late 19th century of the magnificent Copan sculpted stelae are kept in storage at the British Museum in London. The man who made those casts would later be regarded as the foremost explorer of the Maya World and of Copan and many other sites in Central America and Mexico. His name was Sir Alfred Percival Maudslay.

The years passed and as Garcia de Palacio's account of his visit to Copan lay buried -in old colonial archives- so did the general interest in the area. It wasn't until brief accounts of Diego Garcia de Palacio's journey were published on British newspapers in the early 19th century that any interest in Copan arose.

The first modern explorer to visit Copan was Juan Galindo (originally an Englishman born to a theatrical family, and whose original name was John). Galindo had set out from Europe to establish a farm in Jamaica, but landed in Guatemala, where he became an officer and an administrator working at the service of Central America, at the time a Federal Government uniting all 5 Central American provinces. He was commissioned to inspect the ruins at Copan in 1834. He was well qualified to document the site and already had some experience as an amateur field archaeologist, having explored Palenque in Chiapas and Utatlan (Gumarcaaj) in Guatemala's Quiche region. When he was done with his visit to Copan a version of his report was sent off to the Societé de Géographie in Paris. That publication was considered incomplete, because of the omission of the maps Galindo had drawn at the site. However, he is credited with having been the first person to conduct a formal excavation at Copan in the Acropolis' West Courtyard. One of his most important findings was a rich burial with various offerings of very ornate vases that bears his name. Visitors at the Copan tunnels will have the opportunity to see the exact location of the tomb found by Juan Galindo.

Up to this date there had been ample speculation as to the nature of the ancient texts depicted on the Copan stelae, on vases and on wooden carvings. Various early authors suggested they were representations of Gods or priests engaged in heavenly or ritualistic endeavors. As elsewhere in the Maya World it was never suspected that these writings dealt with purely mundane and historical events. Although they are recognized as true works of art, the first to express an accurate opinion regarding these texts was John Lloyd Stephens in 1841. Presumably, Stephens had read Galindo's accounts of a fabulous trip through the jungle a year earlier and he became very enthusiastic at the prospect of fielding his own expedition and documenting the cities and the work of the ancient Maya, a newly "discovered" ancient civilization of the New World. Stephens wanted to be a witness to it all; and the grandeur narrated by earlier explorers would become but references on a very serious text that came forth as the result of his trip to the area.

John Lloyd Stephens' “Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan” is the earliest documented piece of research on the Maya region. The document exposes not only the hardships of travel and the lives of people in the region in the early 19th century, but most relevantly the state in which they found the Maya sites they explored and the archaeological wealth found at each of these ancient cities. Accompanying him on his journey was the British artist Frederick Catherwood, whose engravings represent the earliest of all images we have of the Maya World. Some people dare say that without his artistic output the publishing of “Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan” would not have been as noteworthy as it is, for Stephens' descriptions are rich and accurate, but Catherwood's pictures are worth a thousand words. In this publication, pertaining to an era of discovery and of pushing new frontiers further, the monuments of the Great Plaza at Copan are represented in amazing detail. Together, Catherwood and Stephens, not only made great artistic representations and documented the sites, they also accurately predicted the content of these mysterious writings they came to be so familiar with, they were the first to suspect they pertained to secular and not religious matters.

Thanks to both early explorers much of Copan was documented and after the publication of “Incidents of Travel” wide interest in the Maya was generated. However, not many expeditions to the lush and humind jungles of Central America were fielded, due to the difficulties that such an expedition entailed. It wasn't until 1885 that an English explorer, Sir Alfred Percival Maudslay, set out to make his best effort to accurately and scientifically represent the sculpture of Copan and other Maya sites. He came to the Copan valley with the experience gained after successfully completing his studies of the smaller Maya site of Quirigua, in neighboring Guatemala. He came to Copan, a larger and richer site (not only for its size, but mostly for its abundant sculpture) where he conducted the first serious study of Copan with a scientific approach. He made casts of the stelae of Copan and his artist wife Annie Hunter assisted him in documenting the site. His findings were later published in “Biologia Centrali-Americana", a famous series of the time, after convincing its editors of the importance of adding a few volumes on the region's archaeological wealth. This series is said to be “the most important publication by which Maya studies has thus been enriched” according to Mayanist scholar Sylvanus G. Morley. Maudslay may be regarded -in this sense- as the father of modern Maya archaeology.

Maudslay took it a step further and started conducting excavations and restorations at the site, realizing that crested vaults atop the “pyramids”, which had been earlier described by Galindo, needed to be consolidated. He exposed and later reconstructed them, first describing the Maya corbelled arch, which he named the Horizontal Arch. His most important contribution is -without a doubt- the detailed study of Structure 21, which was completely destroyed years later by the Copan River. Had it not been for Maudslay's foresight in conducting those excavations in this magnificent building, the information extracted from the stone by Maudslay would have been forever lost.

While Maudslay focused on Maya architecture, Central Americans focused on separating the provinces and on going to war. There was little science could do about the turmoil affecting the region. After political matters settled enough in Central America and it was again safe to resume travels to Honduras, Charles P. Bowditch did. Bowditch, was a great sponsor of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University. He lobbied and received permission to conduct additional research at the ruins of Copan for a period of 10 years, starting in 1891. Since the Honduran Government could not provide enough funding for trained professionals to conduct research at the site, it was agreed upon by the University and Government officials that 50% of all the objects found in the course of the study at the site would serve as payment for the project. To modern archaeolgogy's standards this would seem like an excessive payment, and an extraordinary amount of cultural riches leaving its place of origin, for the sake of adornment of a museum hall. However, in the late 1800s this was considered a “very good deal”. There were no regulations regarding cultural or ancient artistic objects at that time. However, the project did not complete the scheduled number of excavation seasons with only four expeditions sent out between 1891 until 1895, one expedition a year. In spite of this, the Honduran Government paid dearly with some of the site's most important historical treasures, still housed at the Peabody Museum in Boston today. These expeditions were regarded as highly successful with the crowning contribution of 9 stelae discovered in the course of investigations.

After this, came an era of true progress surrounding Maya archaeology, with the participation of several academics. The era of explorers gave way to a new era of scientific discovery, involving some of the most prestigious names and institutions in North American academic circles.