- "I'm not leaving till I see what's hidden in the center of that statue. It has to be important."
- ―Indiana Jones[src]
A set of Mayan ruins were near the coast, along the central coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico. The settlement included step pyramids and stone houses. Underneath a city complex was a temple with a large calendar stone, and a stone statue of Kukulkan in the center.
In 1957, after several weeks of work, Indiana Jones had discovered the secret entrance to the underground temple. Despite George McHale's warnings of a storm, Jones continued, crawling across the massive calendar stone towards the central statue. Reading the glyphs as he passed, he saw that the outer ring contained the Mayan genesis story and the birth date of the world. The inner rings told the story of the K'iche Maya tribe, which normally settled in Guatemala, and whose presence had not yet been seen this far north. The story also included the origins of Kukulkan. The innermost ring listed the end of the Long Count calendar.
Reaching the center, Jones saw a chamber inside the statue of the snake god, and descended into the deep chamber through the snake's mouth. Falling into an underground river, Jones was carried by the current and managed to snag some roots with his whip as he shot out of the cave at the coastal cliffs. Climbing up the cliff, Jones returned to his camp where he was captured by Antonin Dovchenko and his soldiers, who had also captured McHale, and killed all of Jones' indigenous workers. The prisoners were taken to Nevada, along with a bag of Jones' recently found artifacts: some potsherds, a Mayan fertility idol, and a carved stone with rare glyphs. These artifacts were destroyed when the Soviets dumped out the bag outside Hangar 51.
