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Archaeologists have discovered what they believe was the gruesome scene of a royal massacre in the ancient city of Cancuén, once one of the richest cities in the Maya empire. The bones of 31 executed and dismembered Maya nobles were found in a sacred reservoir at the entrance to the royal palace in Cancuén in the Petén rain forest of Guatemala. Researchers also found a shallow grave nearby containing the skeletons of two people they believe were the king and queen. The bones of more than a dozen executed upper-class Maya were found at a third burial site north of...

Muons May Unlock Secrets of Teotihuacan If tombs are discovered in the Pyramid of the Sun, they could shed light on the governing style in the ancient city of Teotihuacan, Mexico. Does the Pyramid of the Sun harbor any tombs? What might such tombs reveal about the society that two millennia ago built one of Mesoamerica's largest pyramids? In an experiment à la Luis Alvarez, who in the late 1960s concluded that there are no tombs in Egypt's Chephren pyramid, a collaboration of physicists and archaeologists hopes to glean answers to these questions by monitoring the passage of muons through...