Photo: Bolonchen Regional Archaeological Project
Archaeologists have found new clues from the Maya ruins of Kiuic in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula that may shed light on the collapse of the Maya civilization ten centuries ago:
... The latest discoveries from the site may capture the moment of departure.
"The people just walked away and left everything in place," says archaeologist George Bey of Millsaps College in Jackson Miss., co-director of the Labna-Kiuic Regional Archaeological Project. "Until now, we had little evidence from the actual moment of abandonment, it's a frozen moment in time." [..]
When the team started exploring the hilltop palaces, five vaulted homes to the south of the hilltop plaza and four to the north, the archaeologists found tools, stone knives and axes, corn-grinder stones called metates (muh-TAH-taze) and pots still sitting in place. "It was completely unexpected," Bey says. "It looks like they just turned the metates on their sides and left things waiting for them to come back."
Let's tell the archaeologists to hurry up. 2012 is just around the corner ...Here's an interesting article by Dan Vergano for USA Today: Link