Antonio del Rio's report on the ruins near Palenque (1787), printed at London in 1822

A royal order of 1786 sent an artillery captain into the forest of Chiapa to examine a ruined city, with a draughtsman, a requisition of Indian labourers and instructions to dig. He cleared it by felling and burning, broke open every chamber, crated the finds and wrote a numbered report. Printed in English thirty-five years later, it put a Maya city into European print - and wrapped the correct inference about Yucatan in a conjecture about the Phoenicians.