Maya mound bulldozed for road fill

Reports from the north indicate that one of the area’s major Maya sites has been excavated…not by archaeologists, but by a public works crew building cane feeder roads. A report on LOVE FM indicated that tour operator Tom Greenwood, who visited the site this morning, found that half of one mound at the site, which lies near the village of San Pablo, had been bulldozed and its contents, including large amounts of pottery shards and other artifacts, had been used as fill for a road across a nearby swamp. Greenwood reported the sad news to the Ministry of Tourism and the Environment in Belmopan. The practice of using Maya ruins as landfill was common place a quarter century ago but has been unheard of since Belize’s consciousness of its heritage was awakened over the last few decades.