Hundreds of years ago, during the height of the Mayans’ rule in Guatemala, someone was buried in a huge tomb filled with “extraordinary” and “rare” offerings. The Mayan burial tomb barely survived an aggressive looting campaign that allowed robbers to unearth ancient artifacts left by the Mayans. It stayed hidden by the jungle for nearly 1,700 years. That is until now, according to archaeologists from Tulane University in New Orleans.
From an article in The Bellingham Herald by Moira Ritter.
The team of experts, led by Francisco Estrada-Belli, found the burial in 2022, the university said in a Jan. 29 news release. They used lidar technology — “which shoots laser beams from an airplane through dense jungle foliage to map what’s on the ground.”
“It’s like taking X-rays of the jungle floor,” Estrada-Belli said in the release.
The lidar scans revealed the looters’ underground tunnels. About 6 feet from where they had stopped digging, the archaeologists spotted something in the ground.
It was the tomb.
Because the looters stopped short of the actual burial, they only caused damage to the exterior of the stone tomb, according to Estrada-Belli.
“That was the first amazing thing about it,” he said. “It was very lucky.”
When researchers looked inside the tomb, they were even more shocked to find an assortment of “extraordinary funeral offerings, including a mosaic jade mask, rare mollusk shells and writings carved in human femur bones,” the university said.
For the complete article on the Mayan burial tomb CLICK HERE.
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