The Mystery of the MayasThe ruins of once-beautiful cities in the forests of Central Ameri

The Mystery of the Mayas

The ruins of once-beautiful cities in the forests of Central America tell scientists much about the amazing people who built them. But they do not tell why these cities were suddenly abandoned over one thousand years ago. Around A. D. 800, something mysterious happened to the Mayan civilization. Walls and foundations for new buildings were left unfinished. To modern archeologists, it looked as if the cities had been abandoned. What happened？ What is the possible explanation of this mystery？

Early Discoveries

In the late 1700's, a group of explorers cutting their way through a forest in Central America came upon the ruins of an ancient city. Under a tangle of trees and vines, they found large, well-de- signed stone buildings and handsome stone monuments. Some of the stones were covered with a strange kind of writing. Carvings on other stones showed that at least some of the people who lived in the area long before were highly advanced.

Questions Raised

In the next 150 years, more cities were discovered. They seemed to be part of a great civilization stretching across 500 miles (about 800 kilometers) of forest. In 1881, an Englishman named Alfred Maudslay led the first big scientific expedition to study the ruins in the forest. Maudslay was an archeologist, a scientist who studies the remains of ancient communities for clues to how the people lived. Other expeditions followed, but at first they found more questions than answers: Who built the cities, and when the cities were built？ How had the people lived here in the middle of a rain forest？ Most puzzling of all, what happened to them？

Possible Answers

Gradually, some of the answers have been pieced together. Today, living in parts of Mexico and Guatemala, there are brown skinned Indian people called the Mayas. Scientists believe that the ancestors of these Indians built the cities and carved the stone monuments.

Dates carved on some monuments show that they were put up between A. D. 300 and 800, but bits of buried pottery tell us that the Mayas had lived in some of their cities for hundreds of years earlier. At the height of Mayan civilization, there must have been over two million people living in and around hundreds of beautiful towns and cities.

Archeologists digging in these cities have uncovered roads, a few water reservoirs, and temples built one on top of another. Handsome pictures made of sculptured plaster and painted in bright colors were found on the walls of buildings. Painted pots and pieces of carefully carved jewelry were discovered in tombs under the floors of temples. These pictures and objects showed much about the Mayas' life. There were scenes of people working, people at war, nobles holding court, priests in fantastic costumes, and Mayan gods.

Possible Errors

For a long time, archeologists worked only on uncovering large Mayan structures, such as temples, palaces, and ball courts. Little effort was made to find the remains of smaller buildings, such as houses. The seeming absence of houses led people to believe that the cities were only the homes of priests and rulers, who lived in the palaces. They thought the ordinary people probably lived in the countryside and came to the cities only for religious ceremonies.

New Evidence

In recent years, new evidence has been uncovered at a number of Mayan cities by different groups of archeologists. The University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia has just finished a twelve-year study of Tikal, the biggest of the Mayan cities. More than one hundred small houses varied, too. Some had many remains of finely decorated pottery. Others had fewer and plainer pieces. The houses were very close together, with little space to raise food, except in small gardens. Change of View

These new findings changed our picture of Mayan

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