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Archaeologists unearthed a nearly 3,000-year-old Mayan city in Guatemala — complete with pyramids and mysterious monuments — that reveals new traces of the ancient civilization. The ancient metropolis known as Los Abuelos — Spanish for “The Grandparents” — dates back to about 800 to 500 BC and is believed to be one of the earliest and most significant ceremonial centers of the Maya civilization in Guatemala’s dense Petén region ... Officials said the roughly six-square-mile historic area — named after two human-like rock figures believed to represent an ancestral couple — features “remarkable architectural planning,” including pyramids, sacred sanctuaries and...

Image Credit : National Geographic (Social) - RUBÉN SALGADO ESCUDERO Archaeologists have discovered an intact jade mask in the tomb of a Maya King at Chochkitam, a little-known Maya polity in northeastern Peten, Guatemala. Contemporary inscriptions indicate that Chochkitam was a royal city with a lineage traced back to Preclassic times. The site was first reported in 1909, with ongoing studies recording three main monumental groups connected by a long central causeway. In a recent announcement on National Geographic, excavations at Chochkitam have led to the discovery of an interlocking jade mask in the burial of a Maya King. Jade...