Tag: Mayan culture
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PhD student finds lost city in Mexico jungle by accident
The BBC has a story about the accidental discovery of a huge Maya city. Luke Auld-Thomas, a PhD student at Tulane university in the US, came across a laser survey by a Mexican organisation for environmental monitoring and noticed something interesting… a lost city deep in the jungle of the Mexican state of Campeche. The…
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Divers in Mexico’s Underwater Caves Get a Glimpse of Rarely Seen Artifacts, Fossils and Human Remains
Smithsonian Magazine has an article about the underwater caves of Mexico. They call them cenotes and these particular caves are located in the Yucatán Peninsula. They date to a few million years ago and preserved remnants of the Mayan culture and sometime fossils of extinct animals. The underwater caves of the Yucatán Peninsula are a…
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She thrifted this vase for $4. It turned out to be an ancient Mayan artifact
Anna Lee Dozier purchased this vase at a thrift store about 10 minutes from her Washington, D.C., home. It turned out to be an authentic Mayan artifact that dates to between 200 AD to 800 AD. Anna Lee Dozier NPR WBEZ in Chicago has the story of a great find. A 1,200 year old Mayan…
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Scientists Discover an Unexpected Danger Lurking in Ancient Mayan Cities
SciTechDaily has a story about an unexpected discovery in some Mayan ruins. It shouldn’t be surprising that pollution isn’t a modern invention. The Romans used lead extensively and maybe have suffered lead poisoning. Now, some researchers at the Australian Catholic University have discovered mercury pollution in some of the cities of the Mayan civilization in…
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NYT: Unearthing a Maya Civilization That ‘Punched Above Its Weight’
The NY Times has a story about the discovery about 2,500 year old Mayan ruins. The ruins were found just three years ago near Chiapas, Mexico in a pasture. The researchers, Dr. Charles Golden and Andrew Scherer have been collaborating in the remote areas of historical Mesoamerica since the late 1990’s. They worked together on…
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Why did the Maya civilization collapse?
Live Science has a story about the Maya and what may have caused the collapse of their society about 1000 years ago. Usually a mix of environmental and political problems are sited as the reason for the collapse. There were severe droughts between 800 CE and 1000 CE. However, collapse may be a bad description…
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Drought and the Mayan Downfall
Via BBC: Scientists have long thought that severe drought caused its collapse. But Mexican and British researchers now think that a sustained drop in rainfall of only 25-40% was enough to exhaust seasonal water supplies in the region. The findings were published in the journal Science….
