Maya cities older than realised

[Melvadius]

Article in USA today - 22/6/08

 

Don't tell Indiana Jones, but most archaeologists pack spades, not bullwhips, and big discoveries usually come after lots of digging, not looting. Maya discoveries in Mexico that are rewriting the history of this classic civilization, for example, are coming from years of careful digging, not looted idols.

The classic Maya were part of a Central American civilization best known for stepped pyramids, beautiful carvings and murals and the widespread abandonment of cities around 900 A.D. in southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and El Salvador, leaving the Maya only the northern lowlands of the Yucatan peninsula. The conventional wisdom of this upheaval is that many Maya moved north at the time of this collapse, also colonizing the hilly "Puuc" region of the Yucatan for a short while, until those new cities collapsed as well.

 

But that story of the Maya is wrong, suggests archaeologist George Bey of Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss., who is co-leading an investigation of the abandoned city of Kiuic with Mexican archaeologist Tomas Gallareta of Mexico's National Institute of Archaeology and History. "Our work indicates that instead the Puuc region was occupied for almost 2,000 years before the collapse in the south," says Bey, by e-mail. .....

 

Continued at:

 

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/colum...aya-kiuic_N.htm

[ASCLEPIADES]

Article in USA today - 22/6/08

 

Don't tell Indiana Jones, but most archaeologists pack spades, not bullwhips, and big discoveries usually come after lots of digging, not looting. Maya discoveries in Mexico that are rewriting the history of this classic civilization, for example, are coming from years of careful digging, not looted idols.

The classic Maya were part of a Central American civilization best known for stepped pyramids, beautiful carvings and murals and the widespread abandonment of cities around 900 A.D. in southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and El Salvador, leaving the Maya only the northern lowlands of the Yucatan peninsula. The conventional wisdom of this upheaval is that many Maya moved north at the time of this collapse, also colonizing the hilly "Puuc" region of the Yucatan for a short while, until those new cities collapsed as well.

 

But that story of the Maya is wrong, suggests archaeologist George Bey of Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss., who is co-leading an investigation of the abandoned city of Kiuic with Mexican archaeologist Tomas Gallareta of Mexico's National Institute of Archaeology and History. "Our work indicates that instead the Puuc region was occupied for almost 2,000 years before the collapse in the south," says Bey, by e-mail. .....

 

Continued at:

 

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/colum...aya-kiuic_N.htm

Salve, M et gratiam habeo for such interesting link.

 

Regrettably, a considerable fraction of Mesoamerican archaeology has been plagued by a peculiar cultural bias.

 

Briefly, many old-world scholars tend to downgrade their findings' datation, because New World's civilization can't precede those from the Old World. Conversely, American Continents' scholars tend to upgrade their estimations.

[DecimusCaesar]

Great article, I recently got into reading about the Maya after getting my hands on a copy of Linda Schele's brilliant 'A Forest of Kings: The Untold History of the Ancient Maya' . I've also had a look at Michael D. Coe's seminal work, The Maya, which has had to be republished seven times in the last few decades due to the massive strides made in Maya archaeology.

The Maya certainly are one of the greatest civilisations of the classical world (although their classical period spanned AD 200 to 900) and I wouldn't be surprised if Maya cities were occupied earlier in history. After all, since the 1960's most historians have had to completely re-write their works on the Maya people. The PreClassic Maya do date back as far as 2000 BC, it's just that the Maya city states weren't founded till much later.

[ASCLEPIADES]

From WiredScience (one of Viggen's favourites):

Yucatan Jungles Are Feral Maya Gardens

By Alexis Madrigal - October 11, 2007

 

The jungles of the Yucat