Mysterious ruins may help explain Mayan collapse

www.usatoday.com...

Ringing two abandoned pyramids are nine palaces "frozen in time" that may help unravel the mystery of the ancient Maya, reports an archaeological team.
Hidden in the hilly jungle, the ancient site of Kiuic (KIE-yuk) was one of dozens of ancient Maya centers abandoned in the Puuc region of Mexico's Yucatan about 10 centuries ago. The latest discoveries from the site may capture the moment of departure.

"The people just walked away and left everything in place," says archaeologist George Bey of Millsaps College in Jackson Miss., co-director of the Labna-Kiuic Regional Archaeological Project. "Until now, we had little evidence from the actual moment of abandonment, it's a frozen moment in time."

The ancient, or "classic" Maya were part of a Central American civilization best known for stepped pyramids, beautiful carvings and murals and the widespread abandonment of cities around 900 A.D. in southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and El Salvador. They headed for the northern Yucatan, where Spanish conquistadors met their descendants in the 1500s (6 million modern Maya still live in Central America today).

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[edit on 9/23/2009 by JacKatMtn]

Have you ever heard the saying "you have to suffer for your art?" Many artists, such as Van Gogh, suffered malady's that may have contributed to their artistic output.

I've always harbored a pet theory regarding the Mayan collapse, whether it was from a pandemic, drought, or invasion (or combinations thereof) that they were at the time of their collapse (the Terminal Classic period) suffering greatly, thus were devoting themselves to artwork and architecture like never before. Perhaps their devotion to art offered a salve to sooth their worries, not that it would help them in the end.

reply to post by prjct


Some sites appear to have been abandoned quickly some over centuries while a few made it up to nearly the 17th century.