The Mayan city of El Mirador was a booming metropolis 900 years before Jesus walked the earth. It is estimated that 100,000 Maya lived in and around the great city. Mysteriously the city was abandoned, repopulated, and then abandoned again. For the past 1000 years the rain forest reclaimed the ruins of El Mirador, which now lies buried beneath ten feet of soil and debris. The painting above was published in a National Geographic article about El Mirador in the 1980s.