Jaguars, narcos, illegal loggers: One man's battle to save a jungle and Maya ruins
(Feature article)
The side of a pyramid surrounded by jungle greenery
Scientists, activists and government officials are debating how to preserve archaeological sites like this pyramid in El Mirador, Guatemala.(Rosendo Morales)
BY ALEJANDRO MACIEL, J. JESÚS LEMUS
EL MIRADOR, Guatemala — The heat was unbearable and the trees seemed to reach endlessly skyward. Suddenly, from out of the vegetation, the Jaguar Paw pyramid appeared.
Archaeologist Richard Hansen knelt and removed a tarp covering the structure’s nearly intact stucco masks, then enthusiastically explained the meaning of the inscriptions dating back at least 200 years before Christ.
We were in the Mirador Basin, a subtropical rainforest of about 2,700 square miles in the heart of Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve. Here, hundreds of Maya structures have been discovered, making it one of the most important archaeological sites in the world.
For four decades Hansen and a group of more than 40 archaeologists and specialists have worked at El Mirador to preserve the enormous cultural wealth of the Maya empire, which dominated a region that encompasses swaths of Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador.
There’s a lot at stake. One of the researchers’ goals is to rigorously test their theory that this perilous and isolated region — and not tourist-mobbed, heavily monetized sites like Chichen Itza in Mexico and Tikal in Guatemala — was the cradle of Maya civilization. Hansen believes that wastefulness and despoilment sped the collapse of the vast city-states likely controlled by El Mirador.
More:
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2023-03-01/guatemala-maya-environment-drug-cartels-climate-change
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Older link:
Dr. Richard Hansen: El Mirador, The Birth of Maya Pyramid Culture
Broadcast in History 6 years ago
Noted as the foremost authority on the rise of Maya culture, Richard Hansen has spent the better part of twenty years, excavating, securing and protecting the massive El Mirador complex in Guatemala.
Built more than 2,000+ years ago—long before archaeologists believed such a place could exist at that era in Maya history—El Mirador was a busy metropolis covering six square miles, home to tens of thousands of people, and filled with grand buildings, pyramids and plazas. It’s now thought to be the cradle of Maya civilization.
At the heart of El Mirador is the grand plaza with the massive La Danta pyramid complex. At 230 feet, it is not as tall as the great pyramid at Giza, but, according to Hansen, it is more massive, containing some 99 million cubic feet of rock and fill.
In this program, we’ll discover the importance of this very old Maya city, what new carbon dating reveals about its true age, and the possibility of culture exchange among other groups,
Dr. Richard D. Hansen, an archaeologist specializing in the early Maya, is Director of the Mirador Basin Project and Adjunct Professor of Anthropology at the University of Utah. He has written extensively on his work and been featured in many documentaries on the Maya.
https://www.blogtalkradio.com/earthancients/2017/03/04/dr-richard-hansen-el-mirador-the-birth-of-maya-pyramid-culture
