Cayo Scoop! The Ecology of Cayo Culture

Some Sunday humor.  The title alone makes this archaeological entry worth reading.  

"So why am I here with archaeologists daring the snakes of Belize?  Why did I help excavate human remains this year from ruins, and hang from vines, roots and branches off the side of a giant stone pyramid last year?  We're hunting clues to a longstanding mystery - the collapse of the ancient Maya empire.  The ancient Maya civilization encompassed an area twice the size of Germany, occupying what is now southern Mexico and northern Central America, including Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.  At the height of the Maya empire, known as the Classic period, which stretched from roughly 250 AD to at least 900 AD, perhaps as many as 25 million people lived there, achieving a population density greater than that of medieval Europe.  For uncertain reasons, the ancient Maya civilization apparently collapsed more than a thousand years ago, with its population declining catastrophically to a fraction of its former size. Researchers want to find out why."

Great article on Caracol!  About the husband wife team that has been working there for almost 30 years.  "In more than 25 years of research, the Chases, husband-and-wife anthropologists at the University of Central Florida, have pieced together what Diane describes as “a much more complete story about Caracol,” one of the largest Maya cities. Through stable isotope analysis they can tell you what Caracol’s residents ate -- which residents had a high-maize, high-protein diet, and which didn’t -- and they can also tell you how the relatively uniform distribution of pottery suggests a strong sense of shared identity across social classes."