Melissa Badillo, Director, Institute of Archaeology
"So these are the wind jewels that have been recovered here in Belize from various archaeological projects and the reason why we wanted to highlight these three pieces is that they have a part to play, a central part to play in agriculture and as we all know no civilization can be sustained without some kind of sustenance and so the wind jewels were highlighted because they played a critical role in ceremonies that the ancient Maya participated in at the start or end of their cycles."

Jules Vasquez
"One from Nim li Punit is outstanding it looks like somebody took a sharpie yesterday and etched it out. It's so vivid explain that one and the counterpart Stella from Nim li Punit and how they correlate."

Melissa Badillo, Director, Institute of Archaeology
"Sure, so the wind jewel was actually recovered from a burial crypt or a tomb at Nim li Punit in structure 7 which interestingly did not contain any remains of a human body in there. It was just all a variety of jade pieces ceramics and some lithic material, but interestingly we have evidence that the ruler from that site was actually wearing the wind jewel itself and you can see on the Stella the central image is wearing that similar shaped object on their chest and some of the hieroglyphs that we have on there has been translated to indicate that he specifically put this wind jewel on to carry out the ceremony for scattering and that is also related to you know some ritual ceremony for the start of their agricultural season."

We'll have the full report on the modern aspects of this exhibition in tomorrow's news.