Hey,
I have been working on a novel called Indiana Jones and the lost library of the Maya based on the legend of the library of mayan books hidden away from the Spanish in a cave in Southern Belize. Here is a small sample of the story I have based my Indiana book on. I also wrote this story based on my own experinces in meeting the explorer James Mills or as he is really known as John Coppage.
The Lost Library of the Mayan Itza by Daryl Friesen
The first time I ever met James Mills was at the Dallas airport. I was on my way back to Roatan, Honduras to hopefully locate a pirate treasure, which I believed to be buried on the island. Little did I know at the time that the story I was about to hear, if true, could lead to one of the greatest discoveries in all of Mayan archaeology. Mills and I left the airport and got into his car. We headed off to some small Texas restaurant to discuss his project. He seemed very secretive about it the whole time. He chain smoked cigarettes as he drove down the highway, and started telling me how he first got involved with this project four years ago.
He had taken a trip to the south of Belize to do some exploring for Mayan ruins, deep in the jungles behind a Mayan city called Lubantan. The city's fame comes from the discovery of the crystal skull by explorer Mitchell Hedges. Mills said that he started to hack his way through the jungle for several miles before becoming exhausted. He never found anything and decided to quit for the day. As he began to walk back out of the jungle towards Lubantun, he came to a remote Mayan settlement. The Mayas there were very friendly and invited him to stay the night. That evening, he sat around and discussed Maya history with one of the men from the village. The man told him that he knew why he was here and that it was unnecessary for him to suffer so much hiking through the jungle when he had what he was after in his hut.
Of course Mills was intrigued and the man came out bearing a large box of Mayan artifacts which he collected over the years. Mills gave them all a good inspection, but most of it was very typical stuff: old Mayan whistles and broken pieces of pottery with small illegible paintings on them. Mills went to sleep in his hammock not sure of what to do next when he noticed that there was a blue florescent glow coming from the inside of the box of artifacts. He immediately went to the box and found something underneath all the artifacts was in fact glowing. He reached in and found himself touching a large stone. He couldn't believe what he had in his hands, an ancient carved piece of glowing stone.
In the morning, he asked his Mayan friend how much for the stone and was told $50US. Mills bought it and went on his way. He then told me how he got the stone out of the country. Mills had some friends in Honduras who helped him smuggle it to Honduras and then had it flown out of the country in a US Military cargo plane. I asked him if I could see the stone and he said yes. We pulled over to a restaurant and he opened up the trunk of his car. There it was, the stone, I could not believe my eyes! After Mills had returned to the States, he had the tablet translated. He could not disclose to me the person who translated it for him, but he could tell me what they said. This is where the story gets really interesting!
Apparently, the tablet is some kind of ancient Mayan map. Several of the ancient well known Maya ruins are located on it such as Tikal in Guatemala, Carcoel in Belize, as well as several smaller sites such as Lubantuun and Xunatinich. There was one large unknown site marked in the area southwest of Belize, deep in the Mayan Mountains behind Lubantun. He explained that according to recent archaeological maps of Southern Belize, modern archaeologists do not know of any major Mayan ruins in that area. After learning that his discovery may show the location of an unknown Mayan ruin, Mills decided to return to Central America to do more research. He headed to the archives in Guatemala City. It was there where he would find a piece of information that would bring his quest to a much higher level.
Jackson
More about John Coppage (James Mills)
http://www.sanpedrosun.net/old/jones.html
