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For a quarter of a century, two archaeologists and their team slogged through wild tropical vegetation to investigate and map the remains of one of the largest Maya cities, in Central America. Slow, sweaty hacking with machetes seemed to be the only way to discover the breadth of an ancient urban landscape now hidden beneath a dense forest canopy. Even the new remote-sensing technologies, so effective in recent decades at surveying other archaeological sites, were no help. Imaging radar and multispectral surveys by air and from space could not “see” through the trees. Then, in the dry spring season a...

...Anabel Ford, an archaeologist at UC Santa Barbara and director of the university's MesoAmerican Research Center, suggests... that the forest gardens cultivated by the Maya demonstrate their great appreciation for the environment. Her findings are published in the current issue of the Journal of Ethnobiology in an article titled "Origins of the Maya Forest Garden: Maya Resource Management." ...The ancient Maya, who farmed without draft animals or plows, and had access only to stone tools and fire, followed what Ford calls the "milpa cycle." It is an ancient land use system by which a closed canopy forest is transformed into...

Obama's daughter is named Malia. His half-sister's name is Maya. Editor's note: The second clip in this playlist is a post that compares President Obama's statement about Sasha's health to that of Michelle Obama. President Obama seems to be mistaken -- Sasha did not have meningitis.

I need the image to confirm the fact she has a Hawaiian birth certficate despite being born in Indonesia.

Some of the Central American rainforest's hidden treasures are being revealed by the Maya, more than a millennium after their passing. A study of the giant trees and beautiful flowers depicted in Maya art has identified which they held sacred. Created during the Maya Classic Period, the depictions are so accurate they could help researchers spot plants with hitherto unknown medicinal uses. The research is published in the journal Economic Botany. Plants played a significant role in the ecology, culture and rituals of the Maya people, whose artwork reflected the rich diversity of plant life around them. But while numerous...

What destroyed the ancient Mayan civilization that built sophisticated calendars and ruled the Yucatan peninsula for millennia? The answer may be as simple as they cut down the trees. That's the theory from new scientific research developed in large part through University of Alabama in Huntsville satellite analysis technology, Vice President for Research Dr. John Horack says. The "satellite archaeology" technology and its uses in Central America were in the briefing package prepared for President Obama to take to the Conference of the Americas summit, Horack said... The Mayan findings will be presented to the Society of American Archaeologists meeting...

Did someone mention Doomsday? For those who miss the good old days of the easygoing 20th century, a shrill reminder of Y2K is back. At least the mounting fear that an upcoming date could be the death of us all. Late last week, Prof. John Beddington, the U.K. government's chief scientist, warned a sustainable development conference that a "perfect storm" of food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources will land on the world's doorstep in 2030. But those souls who can't wait that long to panic, mark 2012 on your armageddon-out-of-here calendar. A growing number of books and blogs...

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – Archeologists have uncovered carved stucco panels depicting cosmic monsters, gods and serpents in Guatemala's northern jungle that are the oldest known depictions of a famous Mayan creation myth. The newly discovered panels, both 26 feet long and stacked on top of each other, were created around 300 BC and show scenes from the core Mayan mythology, the Popol Vuh. It took investigators three months to uncover the carvings while excavating El Mirador, the biggest ancient Mayan city in the world, the site's head researcher, Richard Hansen, said on Wednesday. The Maya built soaring temples and elaborate...

I don't know if this is the proper way to format a vanity, but I figured someone on FR would know the answer to this question. I have seen in many Obama-birth-certificate-related articles the claim that Maya Soetoro-Ng has given two different locations for the birth hospital of Obama. Most recently I've seen this claim made in World Net Daily articles on the subject. The problem is that I've been unable to verify this was the case. I've contacted WND, and they've ignored me -- I simply asked for attribution. No response thus far. Does anyone have any reliable proof...

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,...