On Ancient Walls, a New Maya Epoch

New York Times ^ | May 16, 2006 | JOHN NOBLE WILFORD

[nickcarraway]

On the sacred walls and inside the dark passageways of ancient ruins in Guatemala, archaeologists are making discoveries that open expanded vistas of the vibrant Maya civilization in its formative period, a time reaching back more than 1,000 years before its celebrated Classic epoch.

The intriguing finds, including art masterpieces and the earliest known Maya writing, are overturning old ideas of the Preclassic period. It was not a kind of dark age, as once thought, of a culture that emerged and bloomed in Classic times, at places like the spectacular royal ruin at Palenque beginning about A.D. 250 and extending to its mysterious collapse around 900.

At the derelict ceremonial center of pyramids and wide plazas, a site in remote northeastern Guatemala known as San Bartolo, archaeologists have uncovered the unexpected remains of murals in vivid colors depicting the Maya mythology of creation and kingship.

The murals date to 100 B.C., and nearby, a column of hieroglyphs, a century or two older, attests to an already well-developed writing system.

News of the discoveries, announced in the last six months by an American-Guatemalan team led by William A. Saturno of the University of New Hampshire, is reverberating through the small community of Mayanists.

They see these and other recent finds as strong evidence for the early origin and remarkable continuity of the culture's concepts of cosmology and possibly governance over more than a Preclassic millennium.

The Classic splendor was no sudden, unanticipated efflorescence.

Coming away from a visit to San Bartolo, Michael D. Coe, a retired Yale Mayanist who was not involved in the work, called the murals "one of the greatest Maya discoveries of all time."

[nickcarraway]

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[Red Badger]

The pictures show the way to "El Norte"............

[chit*chat]

Great Stuff ( ( ( (Ping) ) ) )

[FarmerW]

Ping for later

[wizr]

Thanks for the post.

Ping

[wizr]

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[blam]

[sionnsar]

Thanks!

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Nick!

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[Dustbunny]

Have to check this out later.

[RightWhale]

It's good to see a rise of civilization in the archaeological evidence. Civilizations that suddenly appear in full bloom give rise to questions such as where they came from.

[SunkenCiv]

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