Tulane archaeologists discover ancient Mayan monuments
Tulane archaeologists discover ancient Mayan monuments
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Tulane graduate student Maxime Lamoureux St-Hilaire discovered this hieroglyphic panel in near pristine condition during excavations of La Corona’s palace. (Tulane Public Relations)
By Jed Lipinski, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune
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on July 18, 2015 at 9:00 AM, updated July 18, 2015 at 9:04 AM [/font]
Tulane University archaeologists have discovered several Mayan hieroglyphic panels in Guatemala that shed new light on the culture and history of the ancient civilization. The discoveries include a well-preserved stela, or monument, from the archaeological site El Achiotal that dates to the fifth century.
Marcello Canuto, director of Tulane's Middle American Research Center who co-directs the La Corono Regional Archaeological Project in Guatemala, said the stela depicts an early king of one of the less understood periods of ancient Mayan history.
Tulane graduate student Luke Auld-Thomas uncovered a shrine containing fragments of a broken stela that one expert said dated back to A.D. 418. Another Tulane grad student, Maxime Lamoureux St. Hilaire, discovered two panels in a nearly pristine state during his excavations in La Corona's palace.
"The fact that these stela and these panels were preserved by the ancient Maya themselves long after they were first carved adds a new wrinkle to our interpretation of how much the ancient Maya valued and strove to preserve their own history," Canuto said in a Tulane news release.
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2015/07/tulane_archaeologists_discover.html
Anthropology:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12292205