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Archaeologists discovered maze of stone temples in underground caves MEXICO CITY - Mexican archeologists have discovered a maze of stone temples in underground caves, some submerged in water and containing human bones, which ancient Mayans believed was a portal where dead souls entered the underworld.

Analysis of Rare Textiles From Honduras Ruins Suggests Mayans Produced Fine Fabrics An analysis of textile fragments excavated from a 5th century Mayan tomb in Honduras, some of the few surviving textiles from the Mayan civilization, revealed high quality fabrics produced by highly skilled spinners and weavers. Newswise — Very few textiles from the Mayan culture have survived, so the treasure trove of fabrics excavated from a tomb at the Copán ruins in Honduras since the 1990s has generated considerable excitement. Textiles conservator Margaret Ordoñez, a professor at the University of Rhode Island, spent a month at the site in...

Time Line of Decipherment When the Spanish conquered the Maya empire in the 16th century, they forced their new subjects to convert to Christianity and speak and write in Spanish. But long before the Maya used the Roman alphabet, they had created their own rich and elegant script, featuring more than 800 hieroglyphs. Sadly, the glyphs' meanings were lost in the decades following the Conquest. Ever since, scholars have struggled to decode these symbols, pronounce the words they form, and understand the stories they tell. In this time line, follow the centuries-long decipherment, which has only recently reached the point...

Anthropologists from Wheaton College (Illinois) and The Field Museum have discovered how the ancient Maya produced an unusual and widely studied blue pigment that was used in offerings, pottery, murals and other contexts across Mesoamerica from about A.D. 300 to 1500. First identified in 1931, this blue pigment (known as Maya Blue) has puzzled archaeologists, chemists and material scientists for years because of its unusual chemical stability, composition and persistent color in one of the world’s harshest climates. The anthropologists solved another old mystery, namely the presence of a 14-foot layer of blue precipitate found at the bottom of the...

Satellites spot lost Guatemala Mayan temples Wed Feb 20, 2008 1:29pm EST GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Ancient Mayan astronomers aligned their soaring temples with the stars and now modern archeologists have found the ruins of hidden cities in the Guatemalan jungle by peering down from space. Archeologists and NASA scientists began teaming up five years ago to search for clues about the mysterious collapse of the Mayan civilization that flourished in Central America and southern Mexico for 1,000 years. The work is paying off, says archeologist William Saturno, who recently discovered five sprawling sites with hundreds of buildings using a...

The victims of human sacrifice by Mexico's ancient Mayans, who threw children into water-filled caverns, were likely boys and young men not virgin girls as previously believed, archeologists said on Tuesday... Maya priests in the city of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan peninsula sacrificed children to petition the gods for rain and fertile fields by throwing them into sacred sinkhole caves, known as "cenotes." The caves served as a source of water for the Mayans and were also thought to be an entrance to the underworld. Archeologist Guillermo de Anda from the University of Yucatan pieced together the bones of...

CANCUN, Mexico - On a neighborly sightseeing jaunt Thursday with the leaders of Mexico and Canada, President Bush said the three were working to improve vital relationships that can better the lives of all their people. Mexican President Vicente Fox treated Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper to an hour-long tour of the ancient Mayan ruins at Chichen Itza before they began two days of talks amid spring breakers in this Caribbean resort city. "This is a good start to a very important series of discussions," Bush said, standing alongside the other two with the massive pyramid called "El...

Mayan leaders announced that priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after US President George W. Bush visits next week. "That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a national association of indigenous people and peasant farmers, said Thursday. Bush's seven-day tour of Latin America includes a stopover beginning late Sunday in Guatemala. On Monday morning he is scheduled...

Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday. "That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday. Bush's seven-day tour of Latin America includes a stopover beginning late Sunday...

Mayan leaders will spiritually "cleanse" ancient ruins in Guatemala after a visit by US President George Bush, unpopular because of foreign policies going back to Central America's civil wars. The leaders said they would hold a spiritual ceremony to restore "peace and harmony" at the Mayan ruins of Iximche after Bush tours the site on Monday. "No, Mr Bush, you cannot trample and degrade the memory of our ancestors," said indigenous leader Rodolfo Pocop during a press conference. "This is not your ranch in Texas." "We've burned this flag for what the Yankee did all over the world."

President Bush’s most recent trip to Latin America has brought with it the standard anti-U.S. protests. Most of these being nearly identical to the ones that are regularly held on weekdays in the United States where participants are not actually missing work, American flags are lit on fire, and rioters hold poorly spelled signs and scream in broken English. By some estimates, the most recent protest in Bogata drew as many as 250-300 Third Worlders who took time out of their busy schedules of chewing coca leaves, kidnapping for ransom, and playing soccer with rolled up rags on dirt lawns,...

1500-year-old Mayan paint job peeled back Jill Rowbotham | January 23, 2008 MORE secrets of the Mayan civilisation are being revealed via groundbreaking research into paint pigments used on a temple at one of the culture's most significant sites: Copan, in Honduras. Brisbane physical and chemical sciences PhD student Rosemary Goodall used an infrared analysis technique, FTIR-ATR spectral imaging, never before applied in archeology. It revealed a map of the painted surfaces of stucco masks that adorn the corners of the Rosalila temple, built in about AD550. Mrs Goodall found that the Mayans mixed finely ground muscovite mica in their...

The findings, archaeologists say, are some of the first strong evidence that the ancient Maya civilization, at least in places and at certain times, had a market economy similar in some respects to societies today. The conventional view has been that food and other goods in Maya cities were distributed through taxation and tributes controlled by the ruling class. Archaeologists suspected that a wide clearing at the center of the ruins of Chunchucmil might have been a market, not a ritual plaza. Rock alignments peeking above the surface seemed to outline the positions of stalls and regular pathways; the rock...

Physicists explore subatomic particle strategy for revealing archaeological secrets At its most glamorous, the life of an experimental high-energy physicist consists of smashing obscure subatomic particles with futuristic-sounding names into each other to uncover truths about the universe—using science's biggest, most expensive toys in exciting locations such as Switzerland or Illinois. But it takes a decade or two to plan and build multibillion-dollar atom smashers. While waiting, what's a thrill-seeking physicist to do? How about using some of the perfectly good, and completely free, subatomic particles that rain down on Earth from space every day to peek inside something really...

Muons Meet the MayaPhysicists explore subatomic particle strategy for revealing archaeological secrets Betsy Mason At its most glamorous, the life of an experimental high-energy physicist consists of smashing obscure subatomic particles with futuristic-sounding names into each other to uncover truths about the universe—using science's biggest, most expensive toys in exciting locations such as Switzerland or Illinois. But it takes a decade or two to plan and build multibillion-dollar atom smashers. While waiting, what's a thrill-seeking physicist to do? SUBATOMIC ARCHAEOLOGY. Physicists plan to use muons generated by cosmic rays to probe the interior of the Pyramid of the Sun at...

Chemical residues found in soil from Mexico's Yucatan peninsula indicate that ancient Mayans traded food in marketplaces, a practice long considered unlikely by archaeologists... [yet] archaeologists have long recognized that the cities were home to more people than the local agricultural capacities could have supported... So for years, archaeologists looked for evidence of advanced farming practices that could have ramped up agricultural capacities beyond what archaeologists can observe, thus sustaining the populations. The idea that Mayans might have imported food and other goods wasn't taken seriously because most archaeologists thought that the Maya elite had a system whereby underlings were...

Rare Maya "Death Vase" Discovered Blake de Pastino National Geographic News Updated December 4, 2007 An extremely rare and intricately carved "death vase" has been discovered in the 1,400-year-old grave of an elite figure with ties to the Maya Empire, scientists say. The vase is the first of its kind to be found in modern times, and its contents are opening a window onto ancient rituals of ancestor worship that included food offerings, chocolate enemas, and hallucinations induced by vomiting, experts say. Archaeologists discovered the vase along with parts of a human skeleton while excavating a small "palace" in northwestern...

Maya rulers' growing demand for animals of symbolic value may have caused a decline in big game, like jaguars, in ancient Latin America, a new study suggests. Faced with environmental problems and doubts about their ability to provide for their followers, the Maya elite may have ordered more hunting of large mammals whose meat, skins, and teeth provided proof of power and status, the study says. Kitty Emery, an archaeologist at the Florida Museum of Natural History, has studied 80,000 animal bones found in 25 Maya trash mounds to map the effects of ancient hunting on animal populations over 4,000...

Aventura - ancient Maya city discovered on modern papaya farm in Corozal Friday, 01 June 2007 By Joseph Stamp Romero - Staff Reporter Excavated structure where platform was found. Platform can be seen to the left of the gentleman. Archeologists say they have stumbled on three Mayan foundations, which are part of a large Mayan city called Aventura, dating back to the early Classic Period of the Mayan Civilization. Among the artifacts retrieved are the bones a man and a woman, believed to be 1,800 years old. The Belize National Institute of Archaeology have said that they found what appears...

Political correctness has so disemboweled academic standards that Ph.D. truly means "pile it higher and deeper." Case in point: Alicia Estrada, an assistant professor of Central American studies at California State University, Northridge, Thursday night accused Mel Gibson "of misrepresenting the Mayan culture in the movie" Apocalypto. Estrada, in a superior display of historic ignorance, stated "that representations in the movie that the Mayans engaged in sacrificial ceremonies and had bloodthirsty tendencies were both wrong and racist."Quite to the contrary, archeological evidence of Maya "sacrificial ceremonies" and "bloodthirsty tendencies" are ubiquitous. It all started with the discovery of murals at...

Mr Bush will speak about social justice and equality President George W Bush is in Guatemala for a one-day visit, after a stop in Colombia where he pledged his personal support to its fight against drugs. He will discuss security, trade and immigration with Guatemala's president. This is the fourth stop in Mr Bush's tour of Latin America, which has seen protests at every stage. Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez, has used a parallel tour of the region to speak out against what he calls the interference of the "American empire". Mr Chavez started his tour last week in Argentina,...

Collapse of civilisations linked to monsoon changes 11:13 04 January 2007 NewScientist.com news service Catherine Brahic The downfall of the one of the greatest Chinese dynasties may have been catalysed by severe changes in climate. The same climate changes may have simultaneously led to the end of the Maya civilisation depicted in Mel Gibson's new film Apocalypto. So says Gerald Haug of the GeoForschungsZentrum in Germany and colleagues, who studied geological records of monsoons over the past 16,000 years. They have found a startling correlation between climate extremes and the fall of two great civilisations: the Tang dynasty in China...

Some descendants of the Maya tribes depicted in Mel Gibson's Apocalypto have denounced the movie as racist and not representative of their ancient culture. In an interview with Reuters, Ignacio Ochoa, director of the Nahual Foundation, said, "Gibson replays, in glorious big budget Technicolor, an offensive and racist notion that Maya people were brutal to one another long before the arrival of Europeans and thus they deserved, in fact, needed, rescue." Lucio Yaxon, described by Reuters as a 23-year-old Mayan human rights activist, added, "Basically, the director is saying the Mayans are savages." Today's (Thursday) Los Angeles Times noted that...

Ancient Canoe Found by Wichita State University Professor on Belize Research Dig WICHITA, Kan., Oct. 10 (AScribe Newswire) -- An ancient canoe -- more than likely the oldest canoe ever uncovered in Mesoamerica -- was discovered this summer in a cliff-top cave in Belize by an excavation team being led by Wichita State University archaeologist Keith Prufer. Prufer estimates that the canoe very likely dates to 200 to 800 AD, based on previous findings in the area. Carbon testing is currently being wrapped up to confirm that the canoe is indeed the oldest found in Mesoamerica, the geographical region from...

Madrid, Aug 26 (EFE).- The decline of the Maya civilization began some 1,100 year ago when millions of Indians working on the contruction of tall pyramidal temples and palaces learned that their kings weren't gods, Spanish anthropologist Andres Ciudad told EFE. The collapse of this culture with its brilliant mathematicians, astronomers and engineers, came when monarchs stopped being immortal in the eyes of their subjects, said Ciudad, who is deputy dean of the Faculty of Geography and History at Madrid's Universidad Complutense. The inhabitants of Mayan lands, which extended through much of what is now Guatemala, El Salvador, Belize, Honduras...

Guatemala City, Aug 22 (EFE).- Fourteen Guatemalan Indians were publicly flogged, forced to kneel on bottle caps and shorn of their hair after being convicted by a traditional assembly of various offenses, local media reported Tuesday. The so-called "Maya punishment," provided for in traditional codes acknowledged by the modern nation-state, was applied Monday in the northwestern town of Nahuala, community leader Pascual Ixmata told the press. The 14 accused - four of them women - were whipped and forced to kneel on bottle caps, and their hair was cut off. The male miscreants, who were charged with sniffing glue, also...

Climate and the Collapse of Maya CivilizationA series of multi-year droughts helped to doom an ancient culture Larry C. Peterson, Gerald H. Haug With their magnificent architecture and sophisticated knowledge of astronomy and mathematics, the Maya boasted one of the great cultures of the ancient world. Although they had not discovered the wheel and were without metal tools, the Maya constructed massive pyramids, temples and monuments of hewn stone both in large cities and in smaller ceremonial centers throughout the lowlands of the Yucatán Peninsula, which covers parts of what are now southern Mexico and Guatemala and essentially all of...

"The Maya are the only pre-Columbian culture whose texts have been preserved up to our time in the thousands. They reveal the Maya to have been a people like all others. In the 7th and 8th centuries AD, the area was the most populous in the world and the city-states waged wars against each other," says Kettunen. Kettunen explains that there are quite human reasons why the idealised image of the Maya arose. An early authority on Maya studies, the British archaeologist Eric Thompson had experienced two world wars. "He wanted to believe that the world had had at least...

Could the small tomb, designated KV63, hold a royal mummy, perhaps that of Tutankhamen's widow or even his mother? ...Otto Schaden, the man who found them, leads the American team. He believes they may have located the mummy of Tutankhamen's widow, Ankhesenamen, after traces of her name were found on the seal of one urn. The secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, thinks the final coffins may contain the remains of the pharaoh's mother, whose identity is unknown, and not the wife of Tutankhamen, the boy king who died at age 18.

On the sacred walls and inside the dark passageways of ancient ruins in Guatemala, archaeologists are making discoveries that open expanded vistas of the vibrant Maya civilization in its formative period, a time reaching back more than 1,000 years before its celebrated Classic epoch. The intriguing finds, including art masterpieces and the earliest known Maya writing, are overturning old ideas of the Preclassic period. It was not a kind of dark age, as once thought, of a culture that emerged and bloomed in Classic times, at places like the spectacular royal ruin at Palenque beginning about A.D. 250 and extending...

EL PERU WAKA, Guatemala (Reuters) - Archeologists outsmarted tomb raiders to unearth a major Maya Indian royal burial site in the Guatemalan jungle, discovering jade jewelry and a jaguar pelt from more than 1,500 years ago. The tomb, found by archeologist Hector Escobedo last week, contains a king of the El Peru Waka city, now in ruins and covered in thick rainforest teeming with spider monkeys. He may have been the dynastic founder of the city, on major Mayan trade routes that could have stretched from the city of Tikal in Guatemala up through Mexico. "If this is indeed the...

A major royal tomb has been unearthed beneath the principal pyramid in the western center of Waka'. The discovery was made by Dr. Héctor Escobedo of Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, co-director of the Waka' Project, and his student, Juan Carlos Melendez. This marks the second royal tomb discovered at Waka'. In the spring of 2004, SMU archaeologist David Freidel and his students discovered a queen's tomb more than 1,200 years old and dating to the Late Classic period of Maya civilization. The new tomb was discovered in a different pyramid and dates to the Early Classic period between...

Source: University of New Hampshire Released: Wed 15-Feb-2006, 09:15 ET NASA, UNH Scientists Uncover Lost Maya Ruins – from Space NASA and University of New Hampshire scientists are using space- and aircraft-based "remote-sensing" technology to uncover remains of the ancient Maya culture using the chemical signature of the civilization's ancient building materials. Newswise — Remains of the ancient Maya culture, mysteriously destroyed at the height of its reign in the ninth century, have been hidden in the rainforests of Central America for more than 1,000 years. Now, NASA and University of New Hampshire scientists are using space- and aircraft-based "remote-sensing"...

WASHINGTON - Archaeologist William Saturno said Tuesday he was awe-struck when he uncovered a Maya mural not seen for nearly two millennia. Discovered at the San Bartolo site in Guatemala, the mural covers the west wall of a room attached to a pyramid, Saturno said at a briefing. In brilliant color, the mural tells the Maya story of creation, he said. It was painted about 100 B.C., but later covered when the room was filled in. "It could have been painted yesterday," Saturno said in a briefing organized by the National Geographic Society, which supported his work and will detail...

Contact: Gregory Harris gharris@ucalgary.ca 403-220-3506 University of Calgary Jungle discovery opens new chapter in Maya historyUniversity of Calgary-led team discovers earliest known portrait of Maya woman A University of Calgary archaeologist and her international team of researchers have discovered the earliest known portrait of a woman that the Maya carved into stone, demonstrating that women held positions of authority very early in Maya history – either as queens or patron deities. The discovery was made earlier this year in Guatemala at the site of Naachtun, a Maya city located some 90 kilometres through dense jungle north of the more famous...

Archaeologists have discovered what they believe was the gruesome scene of a royal massacre in the ancient city of Cancuén, once one of the richest cities in the Maya empire. The bones of 31 executed and dismembered Maya nobles were found in a sacred reservoir at the entrance to the royal palace in Cancuén in the Petén rain forest of Guatemala. Researchers also found a shallow grave nearby containing the skeletons of two people they believe were the king and queen. The bones of more than a dozen executed upper-class Maya were found at a third burial site north of...

His most recent film, featuring flayings and floggings and with dialogue in Aramaic and Latin, was a worldwide hit. Now Mel Gibson has announced his next project will be set against the bloodthirsty backdrop of the Mayan empire - this time in an ancient dialect called Yucatec. Gibson's The Passion of the Christ last year became the most successful independent film ever made, grossing more than £200 million worldwide. It was also a hit in America's bible belt, which has long felt ignored by Hollywood. The star claims that his new thriller, Apocalypto, will champion another neglected cause, the millions...

Scientists working at a Guatemalan archaeological site that's more than 1,400 years old have reported finding a hieroglyphic-covered stone panel that, they say, conclusively identifies the ancient settlement as the enigmatic Site Q, a Maya city about which researchers have long speculated. Yale University archaeologist Marcello Canuto found the well-preserved panel last April at a site called La Corona. "[The] writing on the panel opens up a new chapter in Maya history," says anthropologist David Freidel of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, codirector of the expedition. "This new panel provides the critical test for establishing that La Corona is Site...

When most people think about Mayan archaeology they imagine excavations in royal tombs or trenches cut into tree covered mounds. Few of us would expect that a significant find could be made underwater... particularly in a swamp. But Belizean archaeology is a many-faceted field, as the presentations at this year's Archaeology Symposium, now underway in San Ignacio, amply reveal. Among the updates to last year's reports is a startling discovery made by a team from Louisiana State University. It is a find unlike any in all of the Meso-American world, and it was made right here in Belize. Janelle Chanona,...

Murder victims suggest female strength in ancient culture.Archaeologists have entered a long-sealed crypt in Guatemala to find an ancient murder scene. The tomb, in the ancient city of Waká, contains the remains of two women, one pregnant, arranged in a ritual tableau. Researchers say the young, wealthy women were probably slaughtered as part of a power struggle between Mayan cities. And that, they say, sheds new light on the role of women in the Mayan culture 1,600 years ago. "This tomb tells us that women were extremely powerful," says Dorie Reents-Budet, a Maya specialist who works for the Smithsonian Institution...

Mexico agrees to monitor foreign groups as Muslim recruitment rate skyrockets. WASHINGTON – Islam is on the move in Mexico and throughout Latin America, making dramatic gains in converting the native population, increasing immigration, establishing businesses and charities and attracting attention from U.S. government officials who have asked their neighbors to the south to keep an eye on foreign Muslim groups. The monitoring of foreign groups is intended to "avoid problems in Mexico that have an impact in the United States," said the head of the Attorney General Office's special terrorism investigation unit, Gen. Jorge Serrano. "The ones who ......

Former Earthwatch principal investigator finds the first wooden ruins and artifacts from Maya civilization in Belize Dr. Heather McKillop, William G. Haag Professor of Archaeology at Louisiana State University, has been investigating the ancient sea trade of the Maya civilization for 25 years, in the 1980s and 1990s with the help of Earthwatch volunteers. But her recent find of the remains of wooden structures and even a wooden paddle, perfectly preserved under the water of a Belize lagoon, was a turning point in Maya research. Her discovery, recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, confirms that...

<p>TERRE HAUTE, Ind. — A fire destroyed a museum founded by a Holocaust survivor early Tuesday and arson is suspected, a museum official said.</p> <p>The fire was reported at the CANDLES Museum (search) just after midnight and gutted the building, a former printing plant along U.S. 41 south of the city's downtown.</p>

Last of two parts. The leader of the local Islamic organization preparing to build a major new mosque in Boston is allegedly linked to a network of Muslim companies and charitable groups in Virginia suspected by federal investigators of providing material support to Islamic terrorists. The chairman of the board of trustees of the Islamic Society of Boston, which has city approval to construct a $22 million cultural center and mosque in Roxbury, was also a leader of an Indiana-based Muslim organization known for its anti-Western rhetoric and for providing a platform for radical Islamists, some of whom have been...

Area professor breaks new ground on Maya By Roger Croteau San Antonio Express-News Web Posted : 09/28/2003 12:00 AM Findings by a Texas State University-San Marcos professor at an archaeological site in Belize have pushed back the date for the rise of the Maya civilization to 300 years earlier than previously believed. Anthropology professor James J. Garber has worked at the site, known as Blackman Eddy, each summer since 1990. Although smaller than many other Maya ruins, it was a major cultural center in the Upper Belize Valley. "I would say it's a very important finding," said Sandra Noble, executive...

Roots of Mesoamerican Writing For 7 centuries, the Maya recorded their history in elaborate stone carvings. Archaeologists have deciphered these hieroglyphs, but haven't been certain about their origins. Now a team describes what is potentially the oldest evidence of writing in the Americas. For many archaeologists, the two artifacts suggest that Maya script originated in an earlier culture known as the Olmec. Several clues have long suggested that the Olmec civilization, which flourished from 1200 B.C. to 400 B.C., was the first to develop cultural traditions, including writing, later adopted by the Maya, who reigned from about A.D. 300 to...

Introduction - Investigations of Bolivia Fuente Magna and the Monolith of Pokotia The following material is reprinted by permission from Bernardo Biadós Yacovazzo & Freddy Arce, OIIB - Omega Institute Investigations (Bolivia), INTI - NonGovernmental Organizacion (Bolivia). A large stone vessel, resembling a libation bowl, and now known as the Fuente Magna, was originally discovered in a rather casual fashion by a country peasant from the ex-hacienda CHUA, property of the Manjon family situated in the surrounding areas of Lake Titicaca about 75/80 km from the city of La Paz. The site where it was found has not been...

Archeologists found several offerings of "exceptional quality" in the mortuary chamber. Tomb with three bodies found in abandoned city of Teotihuacan Monica Medel, EFE - 9/30/2002 A tomb containing the remains of three bodies has been discovered in the Pyramid of the Moon at Teotihuacan, the well-known ruins outside Mexico City. The find is one of the most important in recent years and will provide valuable information on the lives led by the people of Teotihuacan, who disappeared in the mists of history after the city was abandoned in the year 600. The remains were found by a multidisciplinary...

Explorers View 'Lost City' Ruins Under Caribbean FROM REUTERS CUBA, Dec 8 (VNN) — Author: Andrew Cawthorne HAVANA (Reuters) - Explorers using a miniature submarine to probe the sea floor off the coast of Cuba said on Thursday they had confirmed the discovery of stone structures deep below the ocean surface that may have been built by an unknown human civilization thousands of years ago. Researchers with a Canadian exploration company said they filmed over the summer ruins of a possible submerged ''lost city'' off the Guanahacabibes Peninsula on the Caribbean island's western tip. The researchers cautioned that they did...

A mother lode of jade solves Maya mystery Hurricane exposes ancient mines Wednesday, May 22, 2002 By WILLIAM J. BROAD THE NEW YORK TIMES For half a century, scholars have searched for the source of the jade that the early civilizations of the Americas prized above all else and fashioned into precious objects of worship, trade and adornment. The searchers found some clues to the source of jadeite, as the precious rock is known, for the Olmecs and Mayas. But no lost mines came to light. Now, scientists exploring the wilds of Guatemala say they have found the mother lode...