Mayans & Incas

Ancient rope and textiles found in a Peruvian cave are the oldest ever found in South America. The textiles were discovered 30 years ago in Guitarrero Cave high up in the Andes but were never conclusively dated until now, the find gives scientists a tantalising glimpse back in time at the lifestyles of theancient people of the Americas.

Textiles and rope fragments found in a Peruvian cave have been dated to around 12,000 years ago, making them the oldest textiles ever found in South America, according to a report in the April issue of Current Anthropology.  

View: Full article |  Source: Past Horizons  

The indigenous Mexican language Ayapaneco is dying out with only two people left alive who can speak it.To make matters worse neither will speak to the other and nobody else knows more than a few words. 75-year-old Manuel Segovia and 69-year-old Isidro Velazquez are the only two people left who can speak it fluently. Linguistic anthropologist Daniel Suslak has been attempting to get the two men to help him puttogether a dictionary of the language before it is lost forever.

Mr Segovia reportedly spoke the language with his brother until he died around 10 years ago, and he still converses with his son and wife, who understand him but are unable to speak more than a few words. Mr Velazquez is understood to not speak to anyone in the language. The men are also said to disagree over aspects of the language.  

View: Full article |  Source: Telegraph  

An expert in Mayan writing believes he has deciphered a code that will lead to eight tons of gold.Joachim Rittsteig, professor emeritus at Dresden University and forty-year scholar of Mayan history, has led a small group of German scientists on a mission to uncover a hoard of more than 2,000 gold tablets that he understands to belost beneath the waters of Lake Izabal in eastern Guatemala. His chief reference material, the Dresden Codex, is one of only a few major documents from which we have pieced together our understanding of Mayan culture.

It is the same codex that purportedly mentions an imminent apocalypse in 2012. Rittsteig"s interest, however, stems from mention of a city that housed the tablets that sank beneath the lake after a devastating earthquake in 666 BC. Rittsteig calculates that "just the gold in thetablets is estimated to be currently worth up to 211 million euros (290 million dollars). "  

View: Full article |  Source: Fox News: Latino  

The crack which measures up to 100m across is believed not to have been caused by an earthquake.USGS data for Peru confirms that there was no activity in the area at the time the crack appeared causing widespread damage andthe destruction of at least one house from which a small boy has been reported missing.

A most extraordinary report from southern Peru, the sudden appearance of an ‘enormous crack opens in the earth’ that measured three kilometers long by 100 meters wide which occurred Wednesday in the Huacullani district in the province of Chucuito in Puno. A crack which wasn’t caused by an earthquake.  

View: Full article |  Source: DBKP