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To visit the ruins of Lubaantun (daily 8am-5pm; US$5) from San Antonio, head back along the road to Punta Gorda and after 8km turn left at the track leading to San Pedro Columbia , a Kekchi village 4km along the road. Head through the village, cross the Columbia River and just beyond you'll see the track to the ruins, a few hundred metres away on the left. Some of the finds made at the site are displayed in glass cases at the visitor centre : astonishing, eccentric flints (symbols of a ruler's power), ceramics and ocarinas - clay whistles in the shape of animal effigies. Lubaantun ("Place of the Fallen Stones") was a major Maya centre, though it was occupied only briefly, from 700 to 890 AD, very near the end of the Classic period. The city stands on a series of ridges which Maya architects shaped and filled, building retaining walls up to 10m high. There are no stelae or sculpted monuments other than ball-court markers, and the whole site is essentially a single acropolis, with five main plazas, eleven major structures, three ball courts and some impressive pyramids surrounded by forest. A recent restoration has confirmed that the famous Maya corbelled arch was never used here; buildings were instead constructed by laying stone blocks carved with great precision and fitted together, Inca-style, with nothing to bind them. This technique, and the fact that most of the main buildings have rounded corners, give Lubaantun an elegance sometimes missing from larger and more manicured sites. Perhaps Lubaantun's most enigmatic find came in 1926, when the famous Crystal Skull was unearthed here. Carved from pure rock crystal, the skull was apparently found beneath an altar by Anna Mitchell-Hedges (who still has it in her possession), the adopted daughter of the British Museum expedition's leader, F.A. Mitchell-Hedges. The skull was given to the local Maya, who in turn presented it to Anna's father as a token of their gratitude for the help he had given them.
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