A team of researchers led by an associate for Harvard’s Peabody Museum, William A. Saturno, announced last week that they have discovered the oldest known Mayan mural.

The mural, which Saturno found by sheer accident in San Bartolo, Gautemala, dates back to 100 BC, tests revealed. Saturno first stumbled over the site while on a field expedition for the Peabody’s Corpus of Mayan Hieroglyphic Inscriptions in 2001.

At the San Bartolo site in the northeastern Peten region of Guatemala, several tunnels and trenches, originally dug by looters, run under a larger pyramid. Saturno was seeking shade in one such tunnel when his flashlight revealed the corner of a wall painting.

“In Western terms, it’s like knowing only modern art and then stumbling on a Michelangelo or a Leonardo,” Saturno, who is also an assistant professor of archeology at the University of New Hampshire, said in a press release.

Saturno’s discovery sheds new light on early Mayan kings and provides scholars with new information regarding royal use of art and writing as a representation of their power and right to rule.

The 30-foot mural, buried 50 feet below the ground, illustrates the Mayan creation story in three sections. The first depicts the establishment of order in the world by four Mayan deities. The second and third sections portray the life, death, and resurrection of the maize god, who by Mayan legend crowned himself king of the world.

The last panel also shows a Mayan king and his lineage from the maize god. Here, the panel appears to provide the most clues to the purpose of the mural. Researchers suggest that the mural was intended to represent the Mayan king’s divine right to rule.

Saturno and his team suspect that the king is buried in a recently-discovered tomb nearby.

The detail and skill shown in the mural are of particular interest to scholars, who now have evidence that wall painting was a much older Mayan art than previously thought.

Saturno’s research has been funded by National Geographic, and the details of the find will be described in the January issue of the magazine. Saturno has also been supported by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology, the Annenberg Foundation, and the Reinhart Foundation.

Saturno has just begun to scratch the surface of the San Bartolo site, he said. Earlier this year, he discovered a second room that will require excavation in the near future.