The global holiday of a new year symbolizes all we have experienced for the duration of the year, and all our hopes and dreams for the year ahead. Such observances date back over 4,000 years, often...
Archaeologists performing excavations around a massive Maya pyramid located in El Salvador’s Zapotitán Valley near the ancient village of San Andrés, close to Lake Ilopango, discovered something...
More than one hundred handprints made by children 1,200 years ago on the walls of a cave in Mexico may have been part of a mysterious coming-of-age ritual of the ancient Maya. Reuters reports that...
A new study of hundreds of Maya habitations in Belize has revealed a massive wealth gap developed in the Classic Maya period. While it may not come as a surprise to discover that Maya society was...
Long-term analysis of a submerged salt plant in Belize has revealed extensive and surprising details about the salt making practices of the great Maya civilization during its Classic Period, which...
For the first time ever, scientists have identified a non-tobacco plant in ancient Maya drug containers. The researchers say the plant residues suggest that the Maya found a way to make tobacco...
The ancient Maya who populated the Yucatan Peninsula in the first millennium AD believed that there were three ways for the living to enter Xibalba, the world of the dead: through deep caves, through...
A new scientific study of an ice core sample from Greenland has demonstrated how the Central-American Ilopango mega-eruption wiped out an entire Maya area, 1,590 years ago. Oxford University...
A shipwreck identified in the Gulf of Mexico has thrown a light on a forgotten and dark episode in Mexican history. Archaeologists have identified a 19th-century slave ship. Before it sank, this...
In 1952, deep within the smoldering cedar and mahogany forests of southern Mexico , and after four years of arduous toiling, the archaeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier finally finished removing the...
There’s overdue pushback these days on the notion that civilization began in the Americas when Columbus “discovered” the New World in 1492. In fact, the Maya people built one of the world’s most...
Researchers have developed a unique experiment to determine the universality of certain emotional expression in the human face. It has long been debated by experts whether emotional expressions can...
Chichen Itza is an ancient Maya city located in the northern part of Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. The city is thought to have been founded around the 6th century AD. Nevertheless, it only rose to...
Reservoirs in the heart of an ancient Maya city were so polluted with mercury and algae that the water likely was undrinkable. Researchers from the University of Cincinnati found toxic levels of...
The coiled snake headdress is a significant artifact connected with Maya women, both ancient and modern. Images of ancient Maya women wearing this distinctive headdress have been found carved on...
The Mesoamerican ball game is the oldest known team sport in the world. It was practiced by ancient Pre-Columbian cultures of Central America and played almost a millennium before the establishment...