Many of the member communities are not connected to the electricity grid. They live off of car batteries for basic electrical infrastructure such as lighting and charging cell phones. Currently, recharging their battery necessitates an arduous, two-hour trek up and down mountains to Copan. It can take a day and it’s exhausting work.

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Again I asked, and Mr. Harrison responded, “To me, it was a calling of the heart. I can only say that working with PFC brings me great happiness and a purpose to my life. My business career started in the commercial real estate business, and a medical recruiting company. Life was good to me, and I made a lot of money, but something was missing. When I retired in 1990, I realized that it was time to give back a little for all I have gotten out of life, so I went back to college and got a paramedic license. Then followed six of the most incredible years of my life working in a job that I loved and enjoyed, until I was involved in a work-related injury and found myself sitting on the sidelines again wondering what I could do to re-acquire the excitement of running on an ambulance with all the adventure that goes with it.”

He added, “Fighting boredom, and not wanting to get back into the corporate rat race, I took a vacation to Honduras. I liked the country, so in 1997 I decided to spend a month or two in Copán Ruinas, to study Spanish. I met a lot of great people there who taught me some of the many customs and introduced me to the indigenous Chortí Maya who live and work in the Copán Valley. Soon, I found myself taking school supplies to children in the mountain villages. Before I knew it, I was hooked.”

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Project leaders announced that the stairway conserves 90 blocks with more than 130 hieroglyphs that refer to events registered in the Classic Maya period (250-900 CE), Artdaily reported.

Javier Lopez Camacho and Kenichiro Tsukamoto also said that despite other stairways that are generally linked to monumental buildings at the central area of ancient sites, the one found at El Palmar is related to the periphery of the site and small structures.

According to the two archeologists, the first 4 steps were in good shape, while the 5th and 6th were in parts and needed to be restored.

Epigraphist Octavio Esparza Olguin, who studied the hieroglyphs, believes the texts narrates a visit paid by foreign people, maybe dignitaries, to El Palmar, and the steps were carved on September 13th, 726 CE.

The inscriptions also contain Information about the lords of the site, as well as visits by lords of Copan and Calakmul, the cities which kept contact with El Palmar before being defeated, respectively, by Tikal and Quirigua (Guatemala) between 736 and 738 CE.

El Palmar excavations also yielded a burial with an offering which dates back to the time when the stairway was constructed in 8th century CE.

The skeletal remains were found along with two vessels and other bones. Preliminary analyses conducted by physical anthropologist Jessica Cerezo-Roman suggests that the remains belong to a high-rank male.