Archaeologist Julia Mayo works at a site called El Caño near the Pacific coast 90 miles southwest of Panama City. During five years of excavation, she has uncovered the burials of gold-laden chiefs from a still-unnamed civilization that flourished for several centuries before the Spanish arrived in the early 1500s... She's exhumed more than three dozen individuals, and three offered an answer: Boys in this culture seem to have enjoyed rank and privilege from the moment of their birth... As Mayo surveyed the deepening excavation one day, the meaning of the artifacts suddenly came to her: They were so small...