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David Stuart (Mayanist)
David S. Stuart (born 1965) is an archaeologist and epigrapher specializing in the study of ancient Mesoamerica, the area now called Mexico and Central America. His work has studied many aspects of the ancient Maya civilization. He is widely recognized for his breakthroughs in deciphering Maya hieroglyphs and interpreting Maya art and iconography, starting at an early age. He is the youngest person ever to receive a MacArthur Fellowship, at age 18. He currently teaches at the University of Texas at Austin and his current research focuses on the understanding of Maya culture, religion and history through their visual culture and writing system. Early life Stuart is the son of the archaeologist George E. Stuart and the writer, artist and illustrator Gene Strickland Stuart, both of whom wrote extensively for the National Geographic Society. He spent much of his childhood accompanying his parents on archaeological digs and expeditions in Mexico and Guatemala. There he developed a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Central America
Central America is a subregion of North America. Its political boundaries are defined as bordering Mexico to the north, Colombia to the southeast, the Caribbean to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the southwest. Central America is usually defined as consisting of seven countries: Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama. Within Central America is the Mesoamerican biodiversity hotspot, which extends from southern Mexico to southeastern Panama. Due to the presence of several active geologic faults and the Central America Volcanic Arc, there is a high amount of seismic activity in the region, such as volcanic eruptions and earthquakes, which has resulted in death, injury, and property damage. Most of Central America falls under the Isthmo-Colombian cultural area. Before the Spanish expedition of Christopher Columbus' voyages to the Americas, hundreds of indigenous peoples made their homes in the area. From the year 1502 onwards, Spain ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aztec Sun Stone
The Aztec sun stone () is a late post-classic Mexica sculpture housed in the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City, and is perhaps the most famous work of Mexica sculpture. It measures in diameter and thick, and weighs . Shortly after the Spanish conquest, the monolithic sculpture was buried in the Zócalo, the main square of Mexico City. It was rediscovered on 17 December 1790 during repairs on the Mexico City Cathedral. Following its rediscovery, the sun stone was mounted on an exterior wall of the cathedral, where it remained until 1885.Getty Museum, "Aztec Calendar Stone" ''getty.edu'', accessed 22 August 2018 Early scholars initially thought that the stone was carved in the 1470s, though modern research suggests that it was carved some ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mexica
The Mexica (Nahuatl: ; singular ) are a Nahuatl-speaking people of the Valley of Mexico who were the rulers of the Triple Alliance, more commonly referred to as the Aztec Empire. The Mexica established Tenochtitlan, a settlement on an island in Lake Texcoco, in 1325. A dissident group in Tenochtitlan separated and founded the settlement of Tlatelolco with its own dynastic lineage. In 1521, their empire was overthrown by an alliance of Spanish conquistadors and rival indigenous nations, most prominently the Tlaxcaltecs. The Mexica were subjugated under the Spanish Empire for 300 years, until the Mexican War of Independence overthrew Spanish dominion in 1821. Today, descendants of the Mexica and other Aztecs are among the Nahua people of Mexico. Since 1810, the broader term ''Aztec'' is often used to describe the Mexica. When a distinction is made, Mexica are one (dominant) group within the Aztecs. Names The ''Mexica'' are eponymous of the place name Mexico (''Mēxihco ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Xultun
Xultún is a large Maya archaeological site located 40 km northeast of Tikal and 8 km south of the smaller Preclassic site of San Bartolo in northern Guatemala. Site The site, which once supported a considerable population, has a 35 m tall pyramid, two ballcourts, 24 stelae (the last of which, Stele 10, dates to 889), several plazas, and five large water reservoirs (''aguadas''). Incompletely charted in the 1970s, it is the largest-known Classic Maya site that has yet to be archaeologically investigated. Nearby sites include Chaj K’e’k Cué, believed to be the residential area of the Xultún elite; Isla Oasis; and Las Minas. The latter sites contain large limestone quarries. Proyecto Regional Arqueológico San Bartolo-Xultun (English: San Bartolo-Xultun Regional Archaeological Project) (PRASBX) has been investigating this site and the nearby site of San Bartolo since 2001. The project currently (as of 2022) operates under the directorship of Dr. Heather Hurst and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
San Bartolo (Maya Site)
San Bartolo is a small pre-Columbian Maya archaeological site located in the Department of Petén in northern Guatemala, northeast of Tikal and roughly fifty miles from the nearest settlement. San Bartolo's fame derives from its splendid Late-Preclassic mural paintings still heavily influenced by Olmec tradition and from examples of early and as yet undecipherable Maya script. Site The Maya site includes an 85-foot pyramid named "Las Ventanas" (The Windows); the Temple of "Las Pinturas" (The Paintings); an early royal tomb in the "Tigrillo Complex" (Ocelot Complex); and (in the "Jabalí" ild Boargroup some 500 mt. to the east from the central Plaza) a triadic complex similar to the H group in Uaxactún and Tikal's North Acropolis. The pyramid was constructed from ca 300 BC (base rooms) and was completed ca 50 AD. San Bartolo is often studied alongside the closely related site of Xultún. Murals Discovery and reconstruction In 2001, in the base of a pyramid, a team led ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
La Corona
La Corona is the name given by archaeologists to an ancient Maya court residence in Guatemala's Petén department that was discovered in 1996, and later identified as the long-sought "Site Q", the source of a long series of unprovenanced limestone reliefs of exceptional artistic quality. The site's Classical name appears to have been Sak-Nikte' ('White-Flower'). The search for 'Site Q' During the 1960s, looted Maya reliefs from a then-unknown city surfaced on the international art market. One of these reliefs, showing a ball player, is now in the Chicago Art Institute; another is in the Dallas Museum of Art. Peter Mathews, then a Yale graduate student, dubbed the city "Site Q" (short for ''¿Qué?'' panish for "what?". "La Corona was located in February 1996 when a jaguar poacher and looter turned eco-tourism promoter named Carlos Catalán led Santiago Billy, a researcher on a Conservation International campaign to protect scarlet macaws, to the heavily looted site" Ian ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tikal
Tikal (; ''Tik'al'' in modern Mayan orthography) is the ruin of an ancient city, which was likely to have been called Yax Mutal, found in a rainforest in Guatemala. It is one of the largest archaeological sites and urban centers of the Pre-Columbian era, pre-Columbian Maya civilization. It is located in the archaeological region of the Petén Basin in what is now northern Guatemala. Situated in Petén Department, the site is part of Guatemala's Tikal National Park and in 1979 it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Tikal was the capital of a state that became one of the most powerful kingdoms of the ancient Maya. Though monumental architecture at the site dates back as far as the 4th century BC, Tikal reached its apogee during the Mesoamerican chronology, Classic Period, c. 200 to 900. During this time, the Maya city, city dominated much of the Maya region politically, economically, and militarily, while interacting with areas throughout Mesoamerica such as the great metr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palenque
Palenque (; Yucatec Maya: ), also anciently known in the Itza Language as Lakamha ("big water" or "big waters"), was a Maya city-state in southern Mexico that perished in the 8th century. The Palenque ruins date from ca. 226 BC to ca. 799 AD. After its decline, it was overgrown by the jungle of cedar, mahogany, and sapodilla trees, but has since been excavated and restored. It is located near the Usumacinta River in the Mexican state of Chiapas, about south of Ciudad del Carmen, above sea level. It is adjacent to the modern town of Palenque, Chiapas. It averages a humid with roughly of rain a year. Palenque is a medium-sized site, smaller than Tikal, Chichen Itza, or Copán, but it contains some of the finest architecture, sculpture, roof comb and bas-relief carvings that the Mayas produced. Much of the history of Palenque has been reconstructed from reading the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the many monuments; historians now have a long sequence of the ruling dyn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Copán
Copán is an archaeological site of the Maya civilization in the Copán Department of western Honduras, not far from the border with Guatemala. It is one of the most important sites of the Maya civilization, which was not excavated until the 19th century. The ruined citadel and imposing public squares reveal the three main stages of development before the city was abandoned in the early 10th century. This ancient Maya city mirrors the beauty of the physical landscapes in which it flourished—a fertile, well-watered mountain valley in western Honduras at an elevation of 600 meters (1,970 feet) above Sea level, mean sea level. It was the capital city of a major Mesoamerican chronology, Classic period kingdom from the 5th to 9th centuries AD. The city was in the extreme southeast of the Mesoamerican cultural region, on the frontier with the Isthmo-Colombian cultural region, and was almost surrounded by non-Maya peoples.. Copán was occupied for more than two thousand year ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Classic Maya Language
Classic Maya (or properly Classical Chʼoltiʼ) is the oldest historically attested member of the Mayan language family. It is the main language documented in the pre-Columbian inscriptions of the classical period of the Maya civilization. It is also the common ancestor of the Cholan branch of the Mayan language family. Contemporary descendants of classical Maya include Chʼol and Chʼortiʼ. Speakers of these languages can understand many Classic Mayan words. Classic Maya is quite a morphologically binding language, and most words in the language consist of multiple morphemes with relatively little irregularity. It shows some regional and temporal variations, which is completely normal considering the long period of use of the language. Even so, the texts make it clear that it is a single, uniform language. Classical Maya shows ergative alignment in its morphology, as well as syntactically in focus constructs. Although the descendant Cholan languages limit this pattern of e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maya Script
Maya script, also known as Maya glyphs, is historically the native writing system of the Maya civilization of Mesoamerica and is the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered. The earliest inscriptions found which are identifiably Maya date to the 3rd century BCE in San Bartolo, Guatemala. Maya writing was in continuous use throughout Mesoamerica until the Spanish conquest of the Maya in the 16th and 17th centuries. Though modern Mayan languages are almost entirely written using the Latin alphabet rather than Maya script, there have been recent developments encouraging a revival of the Maya glyph system. Maya writing used logograms complemented with a set of syllabic glyphs, somewhat similar in function to modern Japanese writing. Maya writing was called "hieroglyphics" or hieroglyphs by early European explorers of the 18th and 19th centuries who found its general appearance reminiscent of Egyptian hieroglyphs, although the two systems are unre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
