Antonio del Río (c. 1745 – c. 1789) was a captain who led the first excavation of the

Mayan Mayan most commonly refers to: * Maya peoples, various indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica and northern Central America * Maya civilization, pre-Columbian culture of Mesoamerica and northern Central America * Mayan languages, language family spoken ...

ruins of

Palenque Palenque (; Yucatec Maya: ), also anciently known in the Itza Language as Lakamhaʼ ("Big Water or Big Waters"), was a Maya city state in southern Mexico that perished in the 8th century. The Palenque ruins date from ca. 226 BC to ca. 799 AD. Af ...

Chiapas, Mexico Chiapas (; Tzotzil and Tzeltal: ''Chyapas'' ), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Chiapas ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Chiapas), is one of the states that make up the 32 federal entities of Mexico. It comprises 124 municipalities a ...

. The expedition was undertaken in 1787 for

Charles III of Spain it, Carlo Sebastiano di Borbone e Farnese , house = Bourbon-Anjou , father = Philip V of Spain , mother = Elisabeth Farnese , birth_date = 20 January 1716 , birth_place = Royal Alcazar of Madrid, Spain , death_d ...

, following reports of the ruins from native inhabitants. It took the team two weeks to dig, and it then spent three weeks studying the site. He was accompanied by

Ricardo Almendáriz Ricardo Almendáriz () was a Guatemalan draftsman who accompanied Antonio del Río to the first excavation of pre-Columbian Maya ruins at Palenque in Chiapas, Mexico.Stuart 2007: 154 Undertaken in May and June 1787, the expedition was performe ...

who created drawings of the ruins still considered scientifically useful.

References

* * * *
Eighteenth-Century Drawings of Palenque at Library of Congress

External links

* 1745 births 1789 deaths 18th-century Mesoamericanists Spanish Mesoamericanists Mayanists People of New Spain {{mesoamerica-stub