A re-nomination and extension of the existing almost 7500 acres cultural World Heritage Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, UNESCO has recently enlarged it to 1.78 million acres designated as mixed natural and cultural property, the first one in the country. Located in the southern portion of the Yucatan Peninsula, the extension includes the remains of Calakmul, the...Read More

There are no paintings or statues that can be definitively credited to this queen, and yet she was described by historians as being physically alluring. Coins with her image that were struck in her time show a masculine face with a protruding nose – not (by our standards anyway) a woman who would stand out...Read More

Ancient Egypt was the first regional state to be brought under one political ruler, and new dating evidence suggests that this period of unification happened more quickly than previously thought. The first kings and queens of Egypt in order of succession were Aha, Djer, Djet, Queen Merneith, Den, Anedjib, Semerkhet and Qa’a. They would have...Read More

A gigantic stucco frieze was recently discovered during excavations of a building at Holmul, a ceremonial center in the northeastern Peten of Guatemala. Measuring 26 feet by 7 feet, and still containing traces of red, blue, green, and yellow pigment, deified rulers are prominently displayed in that is one of the best preserved Maya façades...Read More

A fleet of eight prehistoric boats has been discovered in a quarry in England. The vessels, all deliberately sunk more than 3,000 years ago, are one of the largest group of Bronze Age boats ever found in the same site. Most of the ancient boats are startlingly well preserved. One is covered inside and out...Read More

Within the great Olmec city of La Venta, which existed from around 1000 to 400 B.C., have been found many extraordinary offerings including one composed of 16 different figurines carved out of various stones, found in 1951 and now displayed in Mexico City’s National Museum. Recent investigation has proven that it is possible to identify...Read More

The British archeologist Sir Arthur Evans in the early 1900′s named the Minoans after a legendary Greek king, Minos. Based on similarities between Minoan artifacts and those from Egypt and Libya, Evans proposed that the Minoan civilization founders migrated into the area from North Africa. Since then, other archaeologists have suggested that the Minoans may...Read More

Mongol leader Genghis Khan began launching raids into present-day China almost immediately after uniting the nomadic tribes of the Mongolian plateau in 1206. His grandson Kublai Khan completed the conquest in 1279, and founded the Yuan Dynasty. Although he deemed the Chinese legally inferior and recruited outsiders such as Venetian merchant Marco Polo to administer...Read More

Kerma, in present-day northern Sudan, was the first Bronze Age kingdom in Africa outside Egypt. A catastrophic 30 year drought 4,200 years ago, which produced low Nile floods, created chaos downstream in Egypt’s old kingdom for at least a century, and archaeological evidence argues that other civilizations in the Near East and Mesopotamia were also...Read More

Spanish researchers have detected the pigment dehydroindigo in Maya Blue, the extremely durable blue paint used by the Maya to decorate their walls, codices, and pottery. The pigment is formed when indigo oxidizes during heating. “Indigo is blue and dehydroindigo is yellow, therefore the presence of both pigments in variable proportions would justify the more...Read More