The Spanish invaders of Mexico called them cenotes. This came from a mishearing of the Maya word tz’onot, which was used to…
Two decades have passed since the American archaeologist and anthropologist Michael Coe published Breaking the Maya Code (1992). This told the dramatic…
Exactly 100 years ago, the explorer Hiram Bingham found Machu Picchu on the eastern slopes of Peru’s soaring Andes mountains. He was…
The fact that llamas defecate communally so that their dung is easily gathered underpins the cultural achievement of the Inca civilisation and…
The 100th anniversary of the ‘rediscovery’ of Machu Picchu in July 1911 has been marked by the return to Peru of some…
Shaped from the clays of the Amazon estuary, the elaborately decorated red, white, and black ceramics of the Marajó culture are a…
The enigmatic moai that brood over Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in the South Pacific are one of archaeology’s great mysteries. When Europeans…
When first discovered in 2001 by the archaeologist William Saturno of Boston University, the mural-covered room at San Bartolo, a remote and…
The most avidly acquired antiquities of the New World during the last 50 years have been Maya relics from Mexico and Central…
Archaeologists and soil scientists have come up with the novel theory that the open areas conventionally described as ‘ritual plazas’ in Mayan cities…
Robots roam at Teotihuacan, Mexico Robots for exploring deep under pyramids are a new fashion in archaeology. One revealed a hidden door…
A team of archaeologists, working Peruvian Andes, has hailed as ‘sensational’ the discovery of three ‘ancestor stones’ on an isolated Andean mountainside.…
Machu Picchu symbolises the extent, technical skill, and productivity of the Inca Empire in its heyday.…