For hundreds of years, linguists have been trying to decode the ancient hieroglyphic script of the Mayans, left behind on monument carvings, painted pottery, and drawn in handmade bark-paper books...
About 1,400 years ago, the Loma Caldera volcano of El Salvador erupted, covering the small Maya village of Ceren in ash and preserving it in pristine condition to the present day. Unlike at Pompeii...
While archaeologists and historians know much about the lives of Maya royalty and rulers, the lifestyles of the poor and middle class are wrapped in mystery. A new study that is examining hordes of...
A new study has found that the Maya civilization of Central America had a considerable impact on the surrounding environment, the effects of which are still visible. Activity from 2,000 years ago...
An enormous, 1,000-year-old temple in Mexico is sitting precariously over a deep sinkhole and experts worry that the entire pyramid may eventually collapse. The famous El Castillo (the Castle) is a...
Archaeologists working for the La Corona Regional Archaeological Project who discovered the ‘end-date’ of the Maya calendar in 2012, have now discovered a Mayan stela dating back to the 5 th century...
It was just over five years ago that researchers in Mexico discovered an enormous pyramid of the Maya civilization in Toniná, Chiapas. The fact that the pyramid had remained concealed under what was...
Eighty miles south of Cancun in Mexico, stands the ruins of an ancient Mayan city called Tulum. Built atop a 12-meter (40-foot) cliff rising abruptly from the Caribbean waters, this place is...
When Europeans arrived in the New World, they did not only kill people with war, slavery and disease, they also attempted to destroy the cultures of the native peoples. Among so many cultural...
In the Andes region, in Bolivia, on the shores of Lake Titicaca archaeologists have recently made a distinctly gruesome discovery at a site known as Wata Wata , in the form of three decapitated heads...
A walled Maya city from 2,600 years ago was laid out in a grid that suggests the ruler who oversaw the design was a particularly powerful person. The city, Nixtun-Ch'ich' in Petén, Guatemala, is...
One of the most famous of all creation stories is that found within the Book of Genesis, where the Judaeo-Christian god is said to have created the world in six days. Prior to the coming of...
A new study suggests the rulers of the Maya city of Nakum used water as a social control method. They represented themselves as rainmakers, researchers say, showing themselves on monuments with water...
Many centuries ago on the border of Belize and Guatemala, Maya people built a large city surrounded by a cultivated jungle garden that was home to around 20,000 people, which archaeologists call El...
The prevailing theory among archaeologists holds that prehistoric people settled down as they began to grow crops and manage livestock and then built progressively more advanced civilizations with...
Music has held a special role in human society for thousands of years. In ancient China, for instance, sets of bronze bells were played for entertainment and ritual purposes at court. The...