What is our World Heritage? The concept of World Heritage is remarkable. The Pyramids of Egypt, Angkor Wat, Easter, Island, Petra, Chichén Itzá…these make up our world’s heritage. World Heritage sites belong to all the peoples of the world, irrespective of the territory on which they are located. They are irreplaceable sources of life and inspiration....Read More
Far Horizons specializes in upscale, educational tours throughout the world, each led by a renowned scholar who reveals the secrets and solves the mysteries of the sites we explore. Our small groups experience a wide range of journeys to countries where the boundaries of archaeological and historical knowledge are being tested and pushed ever outward....Read More
The Petex-Batún is the most inaccessible and rarely-visited region of Guatemala. Today it is lightly populated, and yet more than 1,500 years ago Maya rulers jockeyed for supremacy as they created immense cities here. During the 1990s mounting evidence indicated that a single kingdom, called Snake (‘Kan’), had a huge influence in the ancient Maya world. Today,...Read More
Deep in the remote southern area along the border with Guatemala, recent excavations have exposed remains of pyramids and cities that until recently, were nearly impossible to reach. Hieroglyphic texts found here are changing our knowledge of the Maya by revealing history that has been hidden for more than one thousand years. So what is the...Read More
Five hundred years ago the first contact between the great civilizations of Mesoamerica and Europe was just beginning. But it did not begin with Cortes’ landing in Mexico in 1519. Eight years earlier, a small lifeboat from a shipwrecked Spanish vessel drifted ashore on the southern coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. The local Maya did not...Read More
Who was Frederick Catherwood? Here’s the incredible story… One day in 1839, English explorer Frederick Catherood and American explorer John Lloyd Stephens climbed the crumbling steps of the pyramids in the Maya city of Copán. The pyramids had been overgrown by the jungle and even the inhabitants of the region forgot about their origins. These...Read More
The Toltecs are the most mysterious and controversial group from ancient Mesoamerica. The interpretation of their importance to the greater cultural traditions of the region have ranged from seeing them as the “mother culture” from which all others sprang, to a group that didn’t even exist historically and were nothing but a figment of the Aztec...Read More
by Stanley Guenter This trip to the Maya area picks up where “Capital Cities of the Ancient Maya” leaves off. After visiting Palenque we explore a number of sites in the Rio Bec region of southern Campeche, where little-visited Maya ruins feature entrances built to resemble the mouths of gigantic serpents. The site of Calakmul...Read More
By Stanley Guenter, Study Leader Over the last decade the site of Ek Balam has emerged as one of the great surprises in Maya archaeology. A relatively small site, although possessing sizeable mounds, excavations in Ek Balam’s Acropolis have revealed one of the best preserved stucco facades in Mesoamerica. Arranged around a doorway in the...Read More
No Bañarse! by Sara Barbieri, Tour Manager (on January 2009 trip) When you are traipsing through the jungle in the pouring rain feeling the water seep through your clothes, you do begin to wonder what you are doing—oh yes, stalking a Maya ruin at Yaxha! The world around you is still and green and there...Read More
