A tomb believed to be that of a king has been discovered by a Japanese researcher and other archaeologists in the Copan Ruins in western Honduras, the researcher said Friday.
The king is believed to have been one of 16 who ruled from the fifth to ninth century in what is today's Copan, the city where the great Mayan civilization developed and flourished, said Kanagawa University researcher Seiichi Nakamura.
Nakamura, 42, said his team also found two roughly cigar-shaped decorations made of light-green jade. He believes the decorations belonged to the king because they bear images of war and politics.
One of the decorations measures 24 cm in length. The figure of a person believed to be a warrior is engraved on the surface.
The other decoration measures 20 cm in length, with lattice-like patterns engraved on the surface -- a symbol of a man of political power.
Nakamura said the team found the jade decorations, along with human bones and earthenware, in a stone room under a small collapsed shrine on the west side of the ruins in mid-September.