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The murals also provide information about a man buried beneath them. During an excavation, the archaeologists found the skeleton of a man dressed like the sages in the mural. It's possible the man once lived in the room, which later became his final resting place, Saturno said. Archaeologists discovered the approximately 1,250-year-old mural in the ancient city of Xultun, located in the northeastern part of present-day Guatemala. During an archaeological study of Xultun, an undergraduate student inspecting an old looters' trail noticed traces of paint on an ancient wall covered by dirt... the elements had been kind to the building...

Doomsday? No way. Ancient Maya said we’ll be around another 7,000 years or so.This December, not everyone is concerned with making plans for the New Year—especially not the people who think doomsday will get here first. Instead of planning parties, they're stockpiling food, refining escape routes, and honing survival skills ahead of the alleged date on which the Maya calendar "ends"—December 21, 2012. So should we all be preparing for imminent apocalypse? According to the scholars, no. The ancient Maya are usually cited as the predictors of the world coming to an end this month: One of their "great cycles"...

A vast city built by the ancient Maya and discovered nearly a century ago is finally starting to yield its secrets. Excavating for the first time in the sprawling complex of Xultún in Guatemala’s Petén region, archaeologists have uncovered a structure that contains what appears to be a work space for the town’s scribe, its walls adorned with unique paintings — one depicting a lineup of men in black uniforms — and hundreds of scrawled numbers. Many are calculations relating to the Maya calendar. One wall of the structure, thought to be a house, is covered with tiny, millimeter-thick, red...

Conservator Angelyn Bass cleans and stabilizes the surface of a wall of a Mayan house that dates to the ninth century. The figure of a man who may have been the town scribe appears on the wall to her left. Archaeologists working in one of the most impenetrable rain forests in Guatemala have stumbled on a remarkable discovery: a room full of wall paintings and numerical calculations. The buried room apparently was a workshop used by scribes or astronomers working for a Mayan king. The paintings depict the king and members of his court. The numbers mark important periods in...

For a quarter of a century, two archaeologists and their team slogged through wild tropical vegetation to investigate and map the remains of one of the largest Maya cities, in Central America. Slow, sweaty hacking with machetes seemed to be the only way to discover the breadth of an ancient urban landscape now hidden beneath a dense forest canopy. Even the new remote-sensing technologies, so effective in recent decades at surveying other archaeological sites, were no help. Imaging radar and multispectral surveys by air and from space could not “see” through the trees. Then, in the dry spring season a...

Satellites spot lost Guatemala Mayan temples Wed Feb 20, 2008 1:29pm EST GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - Ancient Mayan astronomers aligned their soaring temples with the stars and now modern archeologists have found the ruins of hidden cities in the Guatemalan jungle by peering down from space. Archeologists and NASA scientists began teaming up five years ago to search for clues about the mysterious collapse of the Mayan civilization that flourished in Central America and southern Mexico for 1,000 years. The work is paying off, says archeologist William Saturno, who recently discovered five sprawling sites with hundreds of buildings using a...

Source: University of New Hampshire Released: Wed 15-Feb-2006, 09:15 ET NASA, UNH Scientists Uncover Lost Maya Ruins – from Space NASA and University of New Hampshire scientists are using space- and aircraft-based "remote-sensing" technology to uncover remains of the ancient Maya culture using the chemical signature of the civilization's ancient building materials. Newswise — Remains of the ancient Maya culture, mysteriously destroyed at the height of its reign in the ninth century, have been hidden in the rainforests of Central America for more than 1,000 years. Now, NASA and University of New Hampshire scientists are using space- and aircraft-based "remote-sensing"...

ANTIGUA, Guatemala (Reuters) - Archeologists excavating a pyramid complex in the Guatemalan jungle have uncovered the earliest example of Mayan writing ever found, 10 bold hieroglyphs painted on plaster and stone. The 2,300-year-old glyphs were excavated last April in San Bartolo and suggest the ancient Mayas developed an advanced writing system centuries earlier than previously believed, according to an article published on Thursday in the journal Science. The glyphs date from between 200 BC and 300 BC and come from the same site in the Peten jungle of northern Guatemala where archeologist William Saturno found the oldest murals in the...

WASHINGTON - Archaeologist William Saturno said Tuesday he was awe-struck when he uncovered a Maya mural not seen for nearly two millennia. Discovered at the San Bartolo site in Guatemala, the mural covers the west wall of a room attached to a pyramid, Saturno said at a briefing. In brilliant color, the mural tells the Maya story of creation, he said. It was painted about 100 B.C., but later covered when the room was filled in. "It could have been painted yesterday," Saturno said in a briefing organized by the National Geographic Society, which supported his work and will detail...

March 14, 2002 Archaeologists Find Mayan 'Masterpiece' in Guatemala By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD rchaeologists exploring deep in the rain forest of Guatemala have uncovered what they think is the earliest intact wall painting of the Maya civilization. A depiction of scenes from mythology and ritual, the 1,900-year-old mural is being hailed by experts as a masterpiece. Even though only part of the mural has been exposed so far, scholars said the scenes and portraits promised rare insights into the society and religion of the Maya. The paintings, dated about A.D. 100, are described as more extensive and better preserved than...