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Some people still think the world will end in 2012, because that’s where the Maya calendar ends. C.G.P. Grey explains how that strange idea came about. An even simpler explanation came from Dan Pirraro a couple of years ago. If this goes too fast for you, the script is at Grey’s website. Link -via The Daily What
Photo: INAH
When archaologists lowered a small camera into an unexplored Maya pyramid, they saw this fascinating image: a 1,500-year-old blood-red funeral chamber.
The tomb was discovered in 1999, though researchers have been unable to get inside due to the precarious structural state of the pyramid above. Any effort to penetrate the tomb could damage the contents within, according to the team, which is affiliated with Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History.
Instead, the archaeologists lowered the 1.6-by-2.4-inch (4-by-6-centimeter) camera through a 6-inch-wide (15-centimeter-wide) hole in an upper floor of the pyramid.
National Geographic has more photos: Link
Scientists mapping the ruins of the abandoned Maya city of Caracol in Belize knew they had tackled a big job, uncovering the city from the encroaching jungle. They didn’t know how big it really is until modern mapping techniques took a look underneath the forest canopy.
An April 2009 flyover of the Maya city of Caracol used Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) equipment—which bounces laser beams off the ground—to help scientists construct a 3-D map of the settlement in western Belize. The survey revealed previously unknown buildings, roads, and other features in just four days, scientists announced earlier this month at the International Symposium on Archaeometry in Tampa, Florida.
How much bigger is it?
…the project also revealed thousands of new structures, 11 new roads, tens of thousands of agricultural terraces, and even a number of hidden caves throughout a city, which is now known to stretch over 68 square miles (177 square kilometers).
Caracol was burned around A.D. 895, and was completely abandoned by the year 1050. Link -Thanks, Marilyn!
(Image credit: University of Central Florida Caracol Archaeological Project)
The Dresden Codex is an eleven-foot-long Maya manuscript, inscribed on both sides, produced around the beginning of the 13th century. Scholars believe it to be a copy of an earlier book composed between 700 and 900 AD, which would make it the oldest book from the western hemisphere. The contents covers the Maya calendar, mathematics, astronomy, and religious beliefs. See more images from the Dresden Codex and later reproductions at BibliOdyssey. Link
Photo: Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project
Archaeologists have found new clues from the Maya ruins of Kiuic in Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula that may shed light on the collapse of the Maya civilization ten centuries ago:
… The latest discoveries from the site may capture the moment of departure.
"The people just walked away and left everything in place," says archaeologist George Bey of Millsaps College in Jackson Miss., co-director of the Labna-Kiuic Regional Archaeological Project. "Until now, we had little evidence from the actual moment of abandonment, it’s a frozen moment in time." [..]
When the team started exploring the hilltop palaces, five vaulted homes to the south of the hilltop plaza and four to the north, the archaeologists found tools, stone knives and axes, corn-grinder stones called metates (muh-TAH-taze) and pots still sitting in place. "It was completely unexpected," Bey says. "It looks like they just turned the metates on their sides and left things waiting for them to come back."
Let’s tell the archaeologists to hurry up. 2012 is just around the corner …Here’s an interesting article by Dan Vergano for USA Today: Link
