Located near the border of present day Guatemala, is the ancient Maya city of Copán. A relatively small Mayan site, it dates back nearly 2,000 years and was once the easternmost city-state in the...
Hidden deep in the jungles of Mexico are the ruins of the great Maya city of Palenque. Known for its stunning architecture, sprawling temples, artwork and treasures, it has been luring explorers,...
Warriors in jaguar skins stand over their defeated opponents dressed as quetzal birds, priests invoke the sacred avian and feline powers, and a merchant sets off on a journey with a pack full of...
Mayapan is a Maya site located in the modern Mexican state of Yucatan , about 55 km (34 miles) to the southeast of Merida, the state’s capital. This reconstruction of the site’s history poses a...
For several years now, reports have circulated about the worrisome decline of the population of bees. Periodically, newspaper headlines lament the bees’ disappearance as an irreversible tipping point...
An academic study has made a remarkable claim about the role of chocolate in ancient Mayan society. An archaeologist is arguing that chocolate was used as money by the ancient Maya. That is right,...
In order to commemorate and honor Mexican heritage, teams from Mexico and Belize competed against each other in a three millennia-old game known as Ulama. The game took place in the ancient Mayan...
Hieroglyphic inscriptions on the tomb of an ancient Mayan King have been translated more than 60 years after archaeologists discovered the hidden burial crypt in the rainforests of Mexico. The glyphs...
A new study shows that animal domestication was not only a question of food for the ancient Maya. Remains of a variety of species, including small dogs, large cats, and some turkeys, suggest the Maya...
With the help of airborne laser mapping technology, a team of archaeologists, led by University of Arizona professor Takeshi Inomata, is exploring on a larger scale than ever before the history and...
Elaborate designs adorn unique monoliths in an ancient Mayan site in Guatemala. There are immense stelae hailing past rulers and huge stones carved with majestic beasts and curious creatures. The...
There is a kid’s poem written by Jean Marzollo that begins: “In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” It goes on speak about the challenges and wonders of Columbus’s voyage to...
After two months of investigations using state of the art non-invasive imaging equipment, as well as the good old-fashioned technique of crawling through tight spaces on hands and knees,...
In the mountain rain forest of Chiapas, México, sits the ruins of Palenque, considered the most beautiful ancient Maya city. Silhouetted against a backdrop of natural hills and valleys, the elegant...
An unexpected discovery of a royal burial inside a previously unknown substructure of Temple XIII in Palenque, Mexico, set off a decades-long archaeological mystery. In 1994, a young Mexican...
Today, there are over six million people that speak a language that evolved out of the Maya civilization, which inhabited parts of what are now Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador for...
After the collapse of Teotihuacan and other major centers of the Mesoamerican Classic Period (circa 250-750 AD) such as Monte Alban, Tikal, and Palenque, Mesoamerican civilization entered uncertain...
The Maya were a powerful pre-Columbian civilization who thrived between AD 600 – AD 800. They were literate, had a complex language including pictograms, glyphs, and phonetic representations. They...
On the 3rd of January 1931, an article appeared in the Modesto News-Herald entitled ‘Mystery of the Loltun Cave hermit’. The article recounted the encounter between a man by the name of Robert Stacy-...
A group of archaeologists have discovered in Belize a large, carved jade pendant that once belonged to an ancient Maya king, inscribed with a historical text delineating its first owner. The newly...
Beauty is a fickle thing. Worse than that, it is (as often as not) one of the most painful goals in the realms of the wealthy and elite. In China, the binding of feet was once seen to create...
Using the largest set of radiocarbon dates ever obtained from a single Maya site, archaeologists have developed a precise timeline that clarifies patterns leading up to two major collapses of the...
The delightful hobby of playing games isn't a modern invention. While people in ancient times didn't have Pokemon Go to entertain themselves, they still spent hours of fun games both inside and...
In my book, Olmec Language and Literature , I explain how I deciphered the Olmec language. One of the most important documents used in my research was a Bi-lingual Mayan-Olmec text inscribed on a...
