Mayans & Incas

Call it "The Passion of the Maya": Mel Gibson is quietly filming a movie in a Mexican jungle about the collapsed civilization. Given Gibson's cinematic history, experts on the ancient Maya are looking forward to his upcoming epic, "Apocalypto," with a mixture of curiosity and dread. They're pleased that Hollywood will feature a period of world history still little understood but worry that once again a movie may sacrifice historical accuracy for the sake of a good story."A lot depends on how well they depict the Maya. It may serve as a really good springboard into a lecture," saysarchaeologist Lisa Lucero of New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.

"Or it may be something we have to nip in the bud in that first lecture."Gibson wasn't available for comment, and the public relations firm for his Icon Productions declined to offer any details on the film's plot.But according to the film's website, "Apocalypto" promises "a heart-stopping mythic action-adventure set against the turbulent end-times of the once-great Mayan civilization." The story centers on a kidnapped hero's bid to escape a mass sacrifice at one Maya center. According to another description of the plot in Time magazine's March preview, a ruler orders the mass sacrifice of hapless captives toappease the gods and avert a drought.The only problem, and big cause for worry among archaeologists, is "the classic Maya really didn't go in for mass sacrifice," Lucero says. "That was the Aztecs." Other concerns: the modern-day Mayan Yucatec language spoken in the film is not the language of the ancient Maya, and the film's Mexican shooting locale is not the classic Maya homeland, says Penn State archaeologist David Webster.

View: Full Article | Source: AZ Central

Lasers have been used to peer through the rain forests and reveal an ancient Maya metropolis in western Belize.The airborne lasers allowed researchers to get a better picture of what the settlement had been like, as it turns out it was far larger than anyone had previously thought. An April 2009 flyover of the Maya city ofCaracol used Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) equipment—which bounces laser beams off the ground—to help scientists construct a 3-D map of the settlement in western Belize.



View: Full article | Source: NationalGeographic

Archaeologists in southern Mexico announced Monday they have discovered a 2,700-year-old tomb of a dignitary inside a pyramid that may be the oldest such burial documented in Mesoamerica. The tomb held a man aged around 50, who was buried with jade collars, pyrite and obsidian artifacts and ceramic vessels.

Archaeologist Emiliano Gallaga said the tomb dates to between 500 and 700 B.C. Based on the layers in which it was found and the tomb's unusual wooden construction, "we think this is one of the earliest discoveries of the use of a pyramid as a tomb, not only as a religious site or temple," Gallaga said. Pre-Hispanic cultures built pyramids mainly as representations of the levels leading from the underworld to the sky; the highest point usually held a temple.

View: Full Article | Source: Discovery Channel News

Are the myths and stories about hidden treasures true? On the image below, you can see typical Inca archaeological artifacts. The Incas have created lots of statuettes, ornaments, many of them can be seen in museums across the planet. The Peruvian authorities prohibit anyone from taking out archaeological artifacts of the country, but even so, many objects are still being smuggled out of the country. The first person to have been accused for taking out archaeological values was Hiram Bingham himself. He is said to have taken around 5.000 artifacts from Inca sites that he had discovered. Bingham has found many objects that can be considered treasures, but not of very high value. For example, at the archaeological site of Machu Picchu he has found objects made of stone, bronze, ceramic and obsidian, but no gold or silver.

The Incas were well known for producing large numbers of silver and gold objects, like the real size gold replicas of maize and other plants, that were found in Cuzco.The Inca treasures found by the conquistadores, archaeologists, travelers were primarily artistical creations, of great value to scientists, but of no little material value.  The Incas often used precious metals like gold, silver, copper to make statuettes and decorated them with precious stones, such as emeralds. The values of the statues varies, depending not only on its material, but also on what it represents, when it was made and how well preserved they are.  Many legends, stories speak about the supposed existence of large amounts of precious objects, anything from gemstones to golden statuettes. Amateurs seem more likely to believe the myths, but specialists also show curiosity to studying them. What we see in movies about hidden Worlds and large amounts of gold being uncovered, death traps like in Indiana Jones, for example, are rather fiction, products of imagination. So are there any beliefs based on true facts about Inca treasures? Yes! There are, but one has to study them in detail in order to understand them...