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In an ancient Maya temple-pyramid in Guatemala, archaeologists recently discovered the scorched bones of at least four adults who were likely members of a royal lineage. The burning signaled a deliberate and potentially public desecration of their remains, according to new research.The bones offer a rare glimpse of intentional corpse destruction in Maya culture to commemorate dramatic political change.All of the remains belonged to adults, and scientists identified three of the individuals as male. Two were between 21 and 35 years old, and one was between 40 and 60 years old, researchers reported Thursday in the journal Antiquity. Among the...

Image Credit : National Geographic (Social) - RUBÉN SALGADO ESCUDERO Archaeologists have discovered an intact jade mask in the tomb of a Maya King at Chochkitam, a little-known Maya polity in northeastern Peten, Guatemala. Contemporary inscriptions indicate that Chochkitam was a royal city with a lineage traced back to Preclassic times. The site was first reported in 1909, with ongoing studies recording three main monumental groups connected by a long central causeway. In a recent announcement on National Geographic, excavations at Chochkitam have led to the discovery of an interlocking jade mask in the burial of a Maya King. Jade...

There is a God and he lives in the hearts of the jurors.

Archaeologists in Mexico have discovered the burials of 13 individuals — including two who were beheaded as part of sacrificial rituals and five whose skulls had been elongated through intentional deformation — near a Maya pyramid at the Moral-Reforma archaeological site near Tabasco...The burials date to between A.D. 600 and 900, a time when the Maya civilization flourished in the region, the INAH said in an Aug. 23 translated statement. The burials consist of human skulls, fragments of jaws, and bones of the lower and upper extremities, the archaeologists said in the statement. Their analysis also revealed that some of...

Maya... were entranced by elemental mercury as well as its vermillion-hued offspring, mercury sulfide, also known as cinnabar. Cinnabar is by far the most prevalent of the two compounds in the archaeological record. Archaeologists have unearthed numerous artifacts made of it and turned up evidence that the Maya extensively used cinnabar-based paints. Pure elemental mercury is a rarer find, usually linked with ritual caches or elite burials. One of the most dazzling discoveries was a bulbous vessel retrieved from an underwater site in Guatemala holding as much as 500 cubic centimeters of elemental mercury. The wide presence of the toxic...

An ancient Maya relief sculpture that was identified in a German antique shop has been returned to Mexico via the Mexican consulate in Frankfurt on Tuesday. It’s believed that the artifact was looted from Mexico. The relief carving depicts a profile of a skull. Experts believe the block relief would have been part of a wall, where similarly stacked carvings were intended to recall a Tzompantli (skull rack). Mesoamerican palisades were part of a ritual display of skulls belonging to sacrificial victims and prisoners of war. The artifact is thought to have been created during the Late Classic or Postclassical...

Ruins,Of,The,Ancient,Mayan,City,Of,Kabah,In,The Shutterstock/Yucatan Peninsula A team of archaeologists discovered a long-lost Mayan city beneath the jungle in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula in June, filled with pyramids, palaces and even a sports complex. The ancient Mayan ruins, currently named Ocomtun, were identified in the Balamku ecological reserve, which is more than 50 hectares in size, big enough to hide pyramids that rise some 50 feet into the sky, according to a news release from Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History. The site is believed to have been built and in use sometime around 250-1,000 A.D. and contained a number of large buildings,...

A team of archaeologists has made a discovery in Mexico, where they have uncovered the remains of a long-lost Maya city hidden within the dense jungle of the Yucatán Peninsula. Upon further investigation, these experts have come across multiple structures that resemble pyramids, towering over 15 meters (50 feet) in height. The archaeologists have given the site a name: Ocomtún, which means “stone column” in the Mayan language. The Maya civilization is one of the most remarkable societies in the Western Hemisphere. They gained renown for their majestic pyramid temples and grand stone structures, which once adorned the regions we...

Nothing lasts forever. Just ask Ozymandias, or Nate Fisher. Only the wind inhabits the cliff dwellings at Mesa Verde in Colorado, birds and vines the pyramids of the Maya. Sand and silence have swallowed the clamors of frankincense traders and camels in the old desert center of Ubar. Troy was buried for centuries before it was uncovered. Parts of the Great Library of Alexandria, center of learning in the ancient world, might be sleeping with the fishes, off Egypt's coast in the Mediterranean. "Cities rise and fall depending on what made them go in the first place," said Peirce Lewis,...

...A group of 15 masked protesters rushed the stage at the festival, where Hansen was in the middle of an interview with one of the L.A. Times columnists, according to the outlet. Members of the protest were reportedly targeting Hansen after his years of research revealing an ancient Maya complex in Guatemala."This is stolen land!" and "[redacted]" were among some of the cries heard from protesters as they threw around chairs, the L.A. Times reported. They also held a banner that read "Gringo colonizer fuera del Mirador," in reference to Hansen's work at the El Mirador ancient site...Hansen and others...

The stone shows two people playing a Mesoamerican ball gameImage: Lorenzo Hernandez/REUTERS The piece displays Mayan hieroglyphic writing surrounding two players standing next to a ball. The Pok Ta Pok ball game was a traditional practice of Mesoamerican peoples. An apparent stone scoreboard has been discovered at the Chichen Itza archaeological site in southeastern Mexico, archaeologists have said. The piece measures just over 32 centimeters (12.6 inches) in diameter and weighs 40 kilograms (around 90 pounds). It dates from between A.D. 800 and 900. It displays Mayan hieroglyphic writing surrounding two players standing next to a ball, according to Mexico's...

More than 500 years ago in the midwestern Guatemalan highlands, Maya people bought and sold goods with far less oversight from their rulers than many archeologists previously thought....the ruling K'iche' elite took a hands-off approach when it came to managing the procurement and trade of obsidian by people outside their region of central control.In these areas, access to nearby sources of obsidian, a glasslike rock used to make tools and weapons, was managed by local people through independent and diverse acquisition networks. Overtime, the availability of obsidian resources and the prevalence of craftsmen to shape it resulted in a system...

Belize's Midnight Terror Cave is still leaving clues about more than 100 people who were sacrificed to the Maya rain god there more than a millennium ago. Used for burial during the Maya Classic period (A.D. 250 to 925), the cave was named by locals who were called to rescue an injured looter in 2006. A three-year excavation project by California State University, Los Angeles (Cal State LA) professors and students concluded that the more than 10,000 bones uncovered in the cave represented at least 118 people, many of whom had evidence of trauma inflicted on them around the time...

Toxic levels of a pollutant commonly associated with the wastes of modern industry have been uncovered amid the most unlikely of archaeological sites. Long before conquistadors from far-off lands introduced the decay of war and disease, Maya cultures were dusting the soils of their urban centers with the heavy metal mercury. - snip - "Discovering mercury buried deep in soils and sediments in ancient Maya cities is difficult to explain, until we begin to consider the archaeology of the region which tells us that the Maya were using mercury for centuries." - snip - Perhaps the most widely used form...

The ancient Mayas are widely known for their achievements in architecture and astronomy but are perhaps less known for their commercial and seafaring skills. But the archaeological site Oxtankah’s history reveals how its inhabitants used marine resources for economic purposes.The Maya of Oxtankah were skilled sailors. The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) says they used canoes to access the Caribbean Sea for trading. They supplied products to interior Maya communities.While this Quintana Roo archaeological zone may not be as popular as the coastal Maya site of Tulum, its lush surroundings and interesting history make for a beautiful visit....

Archaeologists have discovered an approximately 2,000-year-old Mayan pot in a cave in Playa del Carmen, Quintana Roo.The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) announced the discovery in a statement Tuesday, saying that the 13-centimeter-high “chocolatier style” pot had been dated to the late pre-classic period of 300 B.C. to 250 A.D.INAH archaeologists José Antonio Reyes Solís and Enrique Terrones González visited a cave on a Playa del Carmen property owned by a religious association after receiving a report on it from biologist and speleologist Roberto Rojo.Reyes said they found the pot near the eastern wall of the Cueva de...

Measuring over 5ft (1.6m), it was found almost completely intact, submerged in a freshwater pool near the ruined Mayan city of Chichen Itza. The rare find came during construction work on a new tourist railway known as the Maya Train. In a statement, the Inah said archaeologists had also discovered ceramics, a ritual knife and painted murals of hands on a rockface in the pool, known as a cenote. Experts from Paris's Sorbonne University have been helping with pin-pointing the canoe's exact age and type, the statement said. A 3D model of it would also be made to allow replicas...

Human poop can reveal more than you might think, even when it's really, really old. In a new study of a Central American Maya civilization, samples of ancient feces have shown how the size of this community varied significantly in response to contemporary climate change. Researchers identified four distinct periods of population size shift as a reaction to particularly dry or particularly wet periods, which haven't all been documented before: 1350-950 BCE, 400-210 BCE, 90-280 CE, and 730-900 CE. In addition, the flattened poop piles show that the city of Itzan – which in the modern day would be in...

The National Guard and Federal Police were dispatched Monday to an outlying section of the Teotihuacán archaeological site to seize land where illegal construction work has continued in recent months despite stop-work orders.The National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and the Ministry of Culture said 250 National Guard troops and 60 agents of the Attorney General’s Office participated in an operation to seize two parcels of land in Oztoyahualco, an area of the México state site that is known as the “old city” because it is believed that the Teotihuacán settlement began there.In March, INAH suspended projects being built...

Frontal and lateral view of a Muna-type (AD 750-900) paneled flask with distinctive serrated-edge decoration. Credit: WSU ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Scientists have identified the presence of a non-tobacco plant in ancient Maya drug containers for the first time. The Washington State University researchers detected Mexican marigold (Tagetes lucida) in residues taken from 14 miniature Maya ceramic vessels. Originally buried more than 1,000 years ago on Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula, the vessels also contain chemical traces present in two types of dried and cured tobacco, Nicotiana tabacum and N. rustica. The research team, led by anthropology postdoc Mario Zimmermann, thinks the Mexican marigold was...