Expedition's Quest for Mayan Gold Finds...a Pot, Stirs Outrage
A German expedition team assembled to find a lost $290 million Maya treasure allegedly submerged underneath Guatemala’s Lake Izabal has returned home empty-handed, but controversy continues to grow over the treasure adventure and its motives.
Joachim Rittstieg, a retired 74-year-old mathematician claiming to have deciphered the famous Dresden Codex, a 400-year-old Mayan book, says he discovered information on page 52 leading to "a giant treasure of eight tons of pure gold" in Lake Izabal.
He left Germany with a group of scientists and journalists in early March on a mission funded and exclusively covered by BILD, a major German newspaper. The group’s dispatches were billed "BILD on the scene."
However, the hunt for Mayan gold turned up empty. In fact the only artifact found on the trip was a pot located on the northern shore of Lake Izabal.
But Rittstieg, in an exclusive interview with Fox News Latino, said he considered the trip a success even if the only artifact recovered was a pot he promptly gave to Guatemalan authorities –because it was never about finding gold....
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Joachim Rittstieg, a retired 74-year-old mathematician claiming to have deciphered the famous Dresden Codex, a 400-year-old Mayan book, says he discovered information on page 52 leading to "a giant treasure of eight tons of pure gold" in Lake Izabal.
He left Germany with a group of scientists and journalists in early March on a mission funded and exclusively covered by BILD, a major German newspaper. The group’s dispatches were billed "BILD on the scene."
However, the hunt for Mayan gold turned up empty. In fact the only artifact found on the trip was a pot located on the northern shore of Lake Izabal.
But Rittstieg, in an exclusive interview with Fox News Latino, said he considered the trip a success even if the only artifact recovered was a pot he promptly gave to Guatemalan authorities –because it was never about finding gold....