Maya kingdom unearthed in a Mexico backyard

[Still Waters]

Associate professor of anthropology Charles Golden and his colleagues have found the long-lost capital of an ancient Maya kingdom in the backyard of a Mexican cattle rancher.

Golden, in collaboration with Brown University bioarchaeologist Andrew Scherer and a team of researchers from Mexico, Canada and the United States, began excavating the site in June 2018.

Among their findings is a trove of Maya monuments, one of which has an important inscription describing rituals, battles, a mythical water serpent and the dance of a rain god. They've also found remnants of pyramids, a royal palace and ball court.

Golden and his fellow researchers believe the archaeological site, named Lacanja Tzeltal for the nearby modern community, was the capital of the Sak Tz'i' kingdom, located in what is today the state of Chiapas in southeastern Mexico. It was likely first settled by 750 B.C.E. and then occupied for over 1,000 years.

https://phys.org/news/2020-03-ancient-maya-kingdom-unearthed-backyard.html

[Piney]

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 Why it was called Sak Tz'i', which means white dog, is unknown.

White dogs are sacred in many Native cultures for many reasons. The people of the kingdom might of bred them, held some sort of ceremony with them or it could of been the name of a prominent clan or gens.

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A 2- by 4-foot tablet, its inscriptions tell stories about a mythical water serpent, described in poetic couplets as "shiny sky, shiny earth," and several elderly, stony gods whose names aren't given. There are also accounts of the lives of dynastic rulers.

 I think the water serpent myths found in most Native cultures date to the Clovis. when catastrophic flooding was a constant threat as far South as Texas.

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Another inscription tells of a mythic flood,

See above.

   Just think of the big glacial washout that created the Mississippi. It must of been a marvelous and terrifying sight. While tracing the remains of a 130 million year old monster called the Great Pennsauken and looking at the 2 leftover pieces of it, the Long Island Sound and the Lower Delaware River, I can visualize what it looked like.

[Tatetopa]

On this side of the country we had the Missoula floods several times as glacial dams broke and let Lake Missoula discharge rapidly.  It carved out the Colombia gorge and in eastern Washington, in the Palouse country  and Western Montana, the large ripple marks go on for miles.

 

[Piney]

1 hour ago, Tatetopa said:

On this side of the country we had the Missoula floods several times as glacial dams broke and let Lake Missoula discharge rapidly.  It carved out the Colombia gorge and in eastern Washington, in the Palouse country  and Western Montana, the large ripple marks go on for miles.

They were probably the Algic "Great Flood" and I did field work in the Channeled Scablands. 

Edited March 12, 2020 by Piney
**** Atlantis

[Tatetopa]

2 hours ago, Piney said:

They were probably the Algic "Great Flood" and I did field work in the Channeled Scablands. 

If you are at a viewpoint and scan out across the landscape, they look like ripples on a beach.  Then you realize they are 5-10 feet tall.    

[MissJatti]

Just how big is his back yard