ATM Cave Closed – Tourist Dropped Camera On Ancient Skull

The Actun Tunichil Muknal cave or ATM - for short, may be the most prized and treasured Mayan site in Belize - and that’s because of the spectacular skeletal remains of 15 individuals that can be found there.

They are estimated to be over a thousand years old - and the most precious is the so called Crystal Maiden, the skeletal remains of a young woman.

Not far from Belmopan, it is a popular tourist destination, but a couple weeks ago, during one of the regular tours, one of the tourists got a little careless around one of the skeletons. He dropped his camera, fracturing one of the thousand year old skulls.

No, it wasn’t on the famous crystal maiden - but it is still a very serious issue, and today we spoke to Director of the Institute of Archaeology Jaime Awe who told us how serious it is, and how they plan to prevent this from happening again.

Tags: ATM, Actun, Belize, Camera, Camerasastoolsofunwittingvandals, Cave, Gravity, Muknal, StoooooooooopidTourist, Tunichil

0 members like this

Comment by Logos Tartaros on May 25, 2012 at 1:18pm: Something similar happened when I was there in 2004. To get to the Crystal Maiden you had to climb an aluminum ladder that was quite tall. A young women dropped her camera while climbing the ladder and it bounced all over the place...