After passing through the city entrance and traversing the "visitor waiting area," you can view the main palatial area. This building does not attain the heights exhibited by the structures from other cultures; however, it has a feature that cannot be found elsewhere. The walls are extremely thick, leading scientists to imagine that this may have been a fortress against enemies. Not so, says Dr. Castaneda. There are numerous layers to these walls. Radiocarbon dating of timbers and other artifacts found within the walls indicate that these layers were built 20 to 40 years apart. This indicates that when a new ruler began his regime, he placed his own outer layer of rocks and timbers. This gives a relative timeline for the civilization that occupied this area.

Further complicating the scene is the "ball field." This is somewhat similar to the areas found in the Mayan cities, but this is built a bit smaller in dimensions. There are no acoustic areas, such as those found in Chichen-Itza. There are no hoops through which the ball was to be played. Plus, this area is much too far north and to the west of any known Mayan cities. This leads one to wonder exactly what was going on at Plazuelas.

One of the major discoveries is an area in which over 1,300 maps/models of the city were found carved into stones. This leads the principle archeologist to believe that Plazuelas had an important school of architecture and design. These models were templates from which aspiring city builders learned the art of city building.

Other buildings abound throughout this major pre-Columbian site, but the most important discoveries are yet to be found. Even with all that has been found, evidence exists that there is more than 100 times more area that was covered by the city and has not yet been found. I believe that this major archeological site can only be appreciated by repeated journeys and viewing the progress of the materials found over the next 50 or more years.

We drove toward the tiny village of Plazuelas until there was no more road. At this point, we were at the base of a mountain containing the modern village. We climbed upward through the town for another 250m to 300m in height. At this point, we came upon a plateau. In front of us spread the reconstructed city of an ancient culture, at least, what has been reconstructed thus far.

At the time of our visit, the site was not open to the public. It was because of my academic stature, and arriving with a group of university students, that the archeologist gave us a personal tour of Plazuelas. My understanding is that the site was scheduled to open to the public in late March or early May of 2005.

This special location was home to an unknown civilization from A.D. 500 until A.D. 900, at which time the entire area was abandoned. There are 18 buildings and other structures that have been identified and rebuilt at this time, with a larger area still being excavated. Even the imminent archeologist Carlos Castaneda Lopez has only been able to identify bits and pieces of the history of the site and its inhabitants.

Walking to the city's main entrance, we were able to see what was once the city's main gate. It contained an arced courtyard with 1.5m stone phallic symbols that could be raised or lowered when important visitors were present. This alone is worth the journey, but our 90-minute tour had only begun. Next came a structure believed to have been a waiting area for the visitors, who were representatives seeking to visit the ruler of this city. It had stone walls, with stone benches built into these walls. There were openings through which the archeologists believe water and sewage flowed out of the city.

This is only the beginning, but I need to continue in the next report about the marvels that await.