The NY Times has a story about the discovery about 2,500 year old Mayan ruins. The ruins were found just three years ago near Chiapas, Mexico in a pasture. The researchers, Dr. Charles Golden and Andrew Scherer have been collaborating in the remote areas of historical Mesoamerica since the late 1990's. They worked together on the systems of fortifications at the Late Classic Maya sites of Tecolote, in 2003, and Oso Negro, in 2005, both in Guatemala.
CHIAPAS, Mexico — On a bright, buggy morning in early summer, Charles Golden, an anthropologist at Brandeis University, slashed through the knee-high grass of a cattle ranch deep in the Valle de Santo Domingo, a sparsely populated region of thick brush and almost impenetrable jungle. Only the raucous half-roar, half-bark of howler monkeys pierced the ceaseless mating call of cicadas. “We’re coming to what’s left of the Sak Tz’i’ dynasty,” Dr. Golden said.
Dr. Golden approached a barbed wire fence enclosing a pasture, then limboed under it and surveyed the vista beyond: the crumbling ruins of Sak Tz’i’, a Maya settlement at least 2,500 years old. Spread across 100 acres of tangled vines and lumpy earth were reminders of lost grandeur: giant heaps of rock and rubble that had once been temples, plazas, reception halls and a towering, terraced palace.
Directly ahead were the remains of a complex of platforms that had formed the acropolis. In its prime, it was dominated by a 45-foot-high pyramid in which members of the royal family might have been entombed. Where the pyramid and several elite residences once stood were toppled walls of cut stone. Dr. Golden noted that the entrance to the pyramid had probably featured a line of free-standing relief sculptures, called stelae, most of which were now buried in the debris or had been hacked off and carried away by thieves.