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Apocalypse No, how almost everything we thought we knew about the Maya is wrong

by Marcus Horrodson, read by Diana Bermudez.

As a seven-year-old, Francisco Estrada Belli was afraid all of history would have been discovered by the time he was old enough to contribute.

The year was 1970, and he and his parents had come from Rome to visit relatives in the Central American country of Guatemala. On the trip, they visited the ancient Maya ruins at Tikal. I was completely

mesmerized, Estrada Belli told me recently. It was jungle everywhere. There were animals and then these

enormous majestic temples. I asked questions but felt the answers were not good enough. I decided

there and then that I wanted to be answering them. Fifty-five years later, Estrada Belli is now one of the archaeologists helping to rewrite the history

of the Maya peoples who built Tikal.

Thanks to technological advances, we are entering a new age of discovery in the field of ancient

history.

Improved DNA analysis, advances in plant and climate

science, soil and isotope chemistry, linguistics and other techniques such as a laser mapping

technology called LIDA are overturning long-held beliefs. Nowhere is this more true than when it comes to Maya archaeology.

Last year, Estrada Belli's team, including his Tulane University colleague Marcello A. Canuto,

published a study with a central finding that would have seemed just a few years ago

like an outrageously speculative

overestimate. When Estrada Belli first came to Tikal as a child, the best estimate for the

classic era, AD 600 to 900, population, of the surrounding Maya Loland's, encompassing present-day

southern Mexico, Belize and northern Guatemala,

...