Remember the Golden Age of Egyptian archaeology?  Before everything came stamped with the face of Zahi Hawass?  If you do, you might be aware that today is the anniversary of the opening of Tutankhamen's tomb.

On Feb. 16, 1923, the burial chamber of King Tutankhamen’s recently unearthed tomb was unsealed in Egypt. The New York Times called it “perhaps, the most extraordinary day in the whole history of Egyptian excavation.”

King Tutankhamen’s tomb is situated in the Valley of the Kings, east of the Nile River in Egypt. In 1907, the English archaeologist Edward Russell Ayrton uncovered a pit in the area containing pots, dishes and other objects belonging to Tutankhamun, then a relatively unknown 14th-century B.C. pharaoh. Mr. Ayrton’s sponsor, the American Theodore M. Davis, proclaimed that he had discovered Tutankhamun’s tomb and donated some of the objects to New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. After years of study, Herbert Winlock, a curator at the Met, determined that the objects were left over from the embalming process and funeral, and that the pit was not actually Tutankhamun’s tomb.

Mr. Winlock theorized that Tutankhamun was likely buried nearby. The English archaeologist Howard Carter corresponded with Mr. Winlock and decided to search for the tomb. Funded by Lord Carnarvon, he began excavating the area in 1914 and found nothing for seven years. Lord Carnarvon considered giving up.

On Nov. 4, 1922, Mr. Carter finally uncovered the door of Tutankhamun’s tomb. After three weeks of removing stone and rubble from a corridor behind the door, Mr. Carter reached a second sealed door. With Lord Carnarvon watching, Mr. Carter opened the door slightly and held up a candle that revealed gold statues, beds and hundreds of other objects in the room behind the door.

Mr. Carter and his team spent nearly three months cataloging and removing objects from the tomb before he was able to reach the burial tomb. On Feb. 16, he began taking down the door to the burial tomb. “It finally ended in a wonderful revelation,” The Times wrote, “for before the spectators was the resplendent mausoleum of the king, a spacious and beautifully decorated chamber completely occupied by an immense shrine covered with gold inlaid with brilliant blue faience. This beautiful wooden construction towers nearly to the ceiling and fills the great sepulchral hall within a short span of its four walls. Its sides are adorned with magnificent religious texts and fearful symbols of the dead.”

Tutankhamun’s tomb was and remains the best preserved royal tomb ever discovered. Mr. Carter spent the next eight years removing objects from the tomb, most of which are now held at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo or displayed on tours. He opened Tutankhamun’s sarcophagus in February 1924, revealing the pharaoh’s mummy for the first time. His mummy remained in the tomb until 2007, when it was removed from the sarcophagus, placed in a climate-controlled box and displayed at a museum in Luxor, Egypt. The mummy has since been returned to the tomb, where it is displayed on tours.

Straight from the Bill:

FRPAA would mandate that each Federal agency with extramural research expenditures of over $100,000,000 shall develop a Federal research public access policy that is consistent with and advances purposes of the Federal agency.

In layman's terms, each year, the federal government funds billions of dollars in basic and applied research. Most of this funding is concentrated within 11 departments/agencies. The research results typically are reported in articles published in a wide variety of academic journals. FRPAA proposes to make manuscripts reporting on federally funded research publicly available within 6 months of publication in a journal.

You should be anxious to support this bill if you believe that you as a taxpayer are entitled to open access to peer-reviewed scientific articles on research funded by the U.S. Government.  It is no secret that widespread public access to the information contained in these articles is an essential component of our nation's investment in science.  This and other scientific information should be shared in cost-effective ways that take advantage of the Internet, stimulate further discovery and innovation, and advance the translation of this knowledge into public benefits.  Passage of this bill would result in enhanced access to information by millions of scientists, professionals, and individuals, and will deliver an accelerated return on the taxpayers' investment.

So far, there has been an incredible roll out of support for this bill by individuals across the country.  In our own archaeoblogosphere, there has been excellent commentary on Doug's Archaeology, Savage Minds, and John Hawks blog.  But would you believe the American Anthropology Association this week took a public stand on open access?  Yup, it seems AAA is in full support of the initiative to stop taxpayers from viewing what they paid for.  Fortunately, members aren't happy.  In fact, several members have quit over AAA's announcement.

Open access needs the support of sexy archaeologists across the US.  You can help promote FRPAA by taking these steps:

1) Contact Congress now to express your support for public access to taxpayer-funded research and for this bill.

2) Issue a public statement of support from your organization and share it widely with members, colleagues, and the media.

3) Join the Alliance for Taxpayer Access to support the continued advancement of public access to research in the U.S. Institutional.  Membership is FREE.

4) Spread the word on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.  Use creative hashtags like #PassFRPAA, #SupportOpenAccess or #AAAFail .

Or take it a step further by following in the footsteps of Jeremy Trombley who announced on his blog this week he is willing to put his career on the line in support of this bill by only publishing in open access journals.  Whatever you do, don't stand idly by when science needs you.

The following was posted on the Time Team Facebook page tonight.  Seeing as I hate leaving things unsorted, or loose ends blowing in the wind, I figured I'd post Prof. Mick's words.  If you've been following any of this, it is important you read:

A Statement by Professor Mick Aston. (13 Feb 2012)

As a result of my interview in British Archaeology there have been many comments and articles which misinterpret completely the points I was trying to make, which were about aspects of the television production side.

There is nothing that I have said in the interview with Mike Pitts that is in anyway to do with the archaeological side of Time Team.

Nobody should draw any conclusion from what I have been quoted as saying that I am at all unhappy with the standard of archaeological work that has been carried out over the last few series including last year.

I think the archaeology that was done this year, including the sites I was not on, was really, really good and this has been the case for several years now. 

I have complete confidence in colleagues like Francis, John, Jacqui, and the digging team.  People like Jim in development and Tim Taylor, as well as the post excavation work done by Wessex Archaeology, and these people will make sure that the archaeology is done properly, whatever happens on the TV production side.

--

I don't think there has ever been a doubt that the archaeological work (the science and proceedure) performed on this series is anything less than exemplary.  Again, I think a lot of people have been up in arms about the way the program has been structured as of late and the very forboading words that network wants to "cut down the informative stuff about the archaeology."  While I certainly think that Prof. Mick's words offer a degree of clarification and take him out of the fray, I feel an aura of uncertainity still hangs about the show.

So if that's settled, then the ball is in the series court now.  If quality televisions continues to flow from Channel 4, this will be nothing more than a footnote in the legacy of a legendary series.  But if the viewership continues to vent qualms about the current and future incarnation, this could be apex of a mighty terrible bell curve.

Time will tell.

This is not DNA.  This was not painted by technologically advanced Neanderthals, ancient aliens, Lumerians, or the ghost of Whitney Houston (too soon?).

I'm explaining this because a vast majority of the individuals who see this photo may be inclined to draw connections between it and the double helix of deoxyribonucleic acid.

What scientists believe this to be is the oldest cave paintings yet found.  On top of that, it was most likely created by Neanderthals.  Scientists believe the above image (seen in full here) depicts local seals that the Neanderthal's in that area likely hunted.  This beautiful painting has been radiocarbon dated to between 43,500 and 42,300 years old.

So if you see this image popping up on conspiracy theory websites (not that you'd ever check those), please keep a logical mind about you.

Twenty-one German soldiers entombed in a perfectly preserved World War One shelter have been discovered 94 years after they were killed.

The men were part of a larger group of 34 who were buried alive when an Allied shell exploded above the tunnel in 1918 causing it to cave in.

In a few weeks, a group of British researchers will enter the labyrinthine store of London's Natural History Museum and remove several dark-coloured pieces of primate skull and jawbone from a small metal cabinet. After a brief inspection, the team will wrap the items in protective foam and transport them to a number of laboratories across England. There the bones and teeth, which have rested in the museum for most of the last century, will be put through a sequence of highly sensitive tests using infra-red scanners, lasers and powerful spectroscopes to reveal each relic's precise chemical make-up.

The aim of the study, which will take weeks to complete, is simple. It has been set up to solve a mystery that has baffled researchers for 100 years: the identities of the perpetrators of the world's greatest scientific fraud, the Piltdown Hoax. Unearthed in a gravel pit at Piltdown in East Sussex and revealed to the outside world exactly a century ago, those shards of skull were part of a scientific scam that completely fooled leading palaeontologists. For decades they believed they were the remains of a million-year-old apeman, an individual who possessed a large brain but primitive jawbone and teeth.

The news of the Piltdown find, first released in late 1912, caused a sensation. The first Englishman had been uncovered and not only was he brainy, he was sporty. A sculpted elephant bone, found near the skull pieces and interpreted by scientists as being a ceremonial artefact, was jokingly claimed by many commentators to be an early cricket bat. The first Englishman with his own cricket bat – if nothing else it was one in the eye for French and German archaeologists whose discoveries of Cro-Magnons, Neanderthals and other early humans had been making headlines for several decades. Now England had a real fossil rival.

It was too good to be true. As decades passed, scientists in other countries uncovered more and more fossils of early apemen that differed markedly from Piltdown Man. "These had small skulls but relatively humanlike teeth – the opposite of Piltdown," says Professor Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum, who is leading the new study. "But many British scientists did not take them seriously because of Piltdown. They dismissed these discoveries which we now know are genuine and important. It really damaged British science."

In the end, the Piltdown Man began to look so out of kilter with other fossil discoveries that a team led by geologist Kenneth Oakley, anatomist Wilfrid Le Gros Clark and anthropologist Joseph Weiner took a closer look and in 1953 announced that Piltdown's big braincase belonged to a modern human being while the jawbone came from an orangutan or chimpanzee. Each piece had been stained to look as if they were from the same skull while the teeth had been flattened with a metal file and the "cricket bat" carved with a knife. As Bournemouth University archaeologist Miles Russell puts it: "The earliest Englishman was nothing more than a cheap fraud." It had taken almost 40 years to find that out, however.

Since then, more than 30 individuals have been accused of being Piltdown hoaxers. Charles Dawson, the archaeological enthusiast who found the first pieces, was almost certainly involved. But many scientists still suspect he had the backing of experts who were the true guilty parties. Candidates include Arthur Conan Doyle, who played golf at Piltdown and had a grievance against scientists because of his spiritual beliefs; the Jesuit philosopher, palaeontologist and alleged practical joker Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, who lived in Sussex at the time and who actually helped Dawson dig at Piltdown; Arthur Smith Woodward, the Natural History Museum scientist, who accepted Dawson's finds as genuine and argued they belonged to a new species of early human; the anatomist Arthur Keith, who also passionately endorsed the discovery; and Martin Hinton, another museum scientist, whose initials were found, in the mid-70s, 10 years after his death, on an old canvas travelling trunk, hidden in a museum loft, that contained mammal teeth and bones stained and carved in the manner of the Piltdown fossils. When it comes to suspects, the Piltdown Hoax makes Midsomer Murders look restrained.

"The trouble is that after 100 years we still do not know the identities or motives of those responsible," says Justin Dix, the Southampton University geochemist who will carry out much of the chemical analysis. "It is time we did." Hence the new project, which aims to uncover the identities of the hoaxers. And key to that will be the uncovering of the exact chemical make-up of the forged mat- erial – and the precise sequence of events that led to their discovery.

On the morning of 15 February 1912, Arthur Smith Woodward, keeper of geology at the Natural History Museum, sat down at his desk to open his mail, which included a letter from his friend Charles Dawson, a lawyer and amateur antiquarian. Dawson began with gossip about their mutual acquaintance Arthur Conan Doyle, who was completing his latest novel, the prehistoric adventure The Lost World. Then he dropped his bombshell. He had stumbled on a very old layer of gravel, near a village called Piltdown, where he had found some iron-stained flints and "a portion of a human skull". This was the first mention, made to the outside world, of the fossil that was to be known as Piltdown Man.

During subsequent correspondence, Dawson – known as the Wizard of Sussex because of his skill at finding archaeological treasures round the county – revealed that during a dinner at Barkham Manor in Piltdown he had gone for a stroll and noted flints strewn around the grounds, the leftovers from gravel excavations used for local road building. Dawson asked the labourers to bring him any interesting finds and was rewarded when one presented him with "a portion of human cranium… of immense thickness". The lawyer then found another piece of skull – though no specific dates were provided by him. Nor was the labourer ever identified.

In May, Smith Woodward took charge of the first pieces of Piltdown skull and concluded they belonged to a previously unknown early human named Eoanthropus dawsoni – Dawson's dawn-man. Excavations continued at Barkham Manor and a series of flint tools were uncovered along with more bone pieces and animal remains, including the teeth of hippopotami that used to wallow around English waterholes in ancient times. On 21 November 1912 the Manchester Guardian broke the story. Under the headline "The Earliest Man: Remarkable Discovery in Sussex", the paper revealed details of the skull, whose estimated age, between 500,000 and 1,000,000 years, made it "by far the earliest trace of mankind that has yet been found in England".

A few weeks later, at the Geological Society, Smith Woodward outlined further details to general scientific approval. Only one scientist, anatomist David Waterson, voiced doubts. The cranium looked human while the jawbone resembled that of a chimpanzee, he noted. No one else appears to have agreed – for a very straightforward reason. Palaeontology in Britain was going through a lean time and its practitioners desperately wanted to believe that fossil gold had been struck. Digs in France, at Cro-Magnon, and in Germany, at Neanderthal and Heidelberg, had produced startling finds of early humans. Britain had nothing. One French palaeontologist had even dismissed his English counterparts as mere chasseurs de cailloux – pebble hunters.

The jibe hurt. Hence English researchers' willingness to accept the Piltdown finds. They may have been crudely made but the finds gave scientists what they wanted: evidence that England had been an important crucible in the forging of our species. "No one did any scientific tests," says Russell. "If they had, they would have noticed the chemical staining and filed-down teeth very quickly. This was clearly not a genuine artefact. The scientific establishment accepted it because they wanted it so much."

There was more to this uncritical acceptance than mere jingoism, however. Piltdown also seemed to support the theory, then firmly upheld by English palaeontologists, that growing brainpower had driven human evolution. Our intelligence, above all, separated us from the animal kingdom. Thus our brains would have expanded early in our evolution and evidence for that should be seen in fossil skulls – like the one at Piltdown. It had a huge braincase but primitive teeth, suggesting – wrongly – that our cranial enlargement had happened early in our evolution. In fact, brains came late to humanity (see box below).

Excavations at Piltdown continued. In August 1913, Father Teilhard de Chardin, who went on to be one of the 20th century's most influential Jesuit scholars and philosophers and who was then living in Sussex, joined in and found a canine tooth supposed to have come from the apeman – a discovery that has linked him ever since with Piltdown conspiracy theories. Finally came the discovery of the cricket bat. The Piltdown hoax was complete.

By 1915, Dawson's dawn-man had become established scientific fact. The painting,A Discussion of the Piltdown Skull, by John Cooke, presents its discoverers in an almost holy atmosphere. Keith is seated while Smith Woodward stands behind him in front of a table with pieces of skull on it. Also standing, with a picture of Charles Darwin behind him, is the benign figure of Charles Dawson. "The way the painting is structured suggests Darwin is passing on his mantle to Dawson," says Russell. "The former had the theory, the latter had provided it, it is being suggested."

Certainly, the Wizard of Sussex had come far. He was now feted as one of the world's greatest archaeologists and would have been knighted, as were Keith and Smith Woodward, had he not died of septicaemia in 1916. Kindly and rotund, the figure of Dawson looks the acme of Edwardian rectitude, a successful solicitor and expert antiquarian. But he had secrets that only came to light decades after his death. In fact most of his "wizard" finds turned out to be frauds, recent investigations have revealed. He was, quite simply, a serial forger, says Russell. "I have counted 38 hoaxes or dodgy finds made by him before Piltdown," Russell states. He forged axes, statuettes, ancient hammers, Roman tiles and a host of other artefacts – trickery that earned fellowships of both the Geological Society and the Society of Antiquaries. "Piltdown was not a one-off. It was the culmination of a life's work," says Russell in his book Piltdown Man: The Secret Life of Charles Dawson.

And that looks pretty conclusive. The man had more form than Professor Moriarty. There would be no need to look any further, were it not for some nagging doubts – including one of Chris Stringer's. It's the cricket bat that gets him. "It was huge but apparently everyone missed it until the end of the dig. Until then everything had been carefully engineered: the skull fragments and artefacts, all made to look alike. And then the cricket bat turns up. It is bizarre and only makes sense if you conclude someone wanted to alert the authorities that fraud was going on, but did not want to do so publicly, perhaps to avoid bringing disgrace to the museum. So they planted something so ridiculous that everyone would surely realise it was a fake, a laugh. Unfortunately, everyone took it seriously."

And the second hoaxer? Who better than Martin Hinton, the Natural History Museum scientist who possessed that bag, discovered after his death, containing incriminating dyes and chemicals, and who worked with Keith and Smith Woodward? Thus there may have been two hoaxers working independently: Dawson and Hinton.

Or consider Teilhard de Chardin, a religious philosopher and expert on human evolution, who was involved in making finds at Piltdown. His guilt has been forcefully advocated by the late Harvard palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould and more recently by the South African palaeontologist Francis Thackeray. "I think Teilhard did it as a joke," says Thackeray. "Just after Piltdown's first announcement, he wrote to a colleague to say he thought palaeontology deserved to be the subject of jokes. He was also known to be a joker." Teilhard probably expected the prank to be spotted straightaway, but was horrified to discover it had taken root in scientific thought. So he stayed silent.

And then there is Conan Doyle. A former doctor and fossil collector, he had the expertise to create forged skull fragments. One of his characters, in The Lost World, published in 1912, even states: "If you are clever and know your business you can fake a bone as easily as you can a photograph." He also had the opportunity. He played golf at Piltdown, after all. As to motive, his spiritual beliefs had brought him into conflict with science and he may have wanted to humiliate its practitioners. "But if that is the case," says Stringer, "why didn't he announce his triumph after so convincingly fooling the world of science? That doesn't make sense."

As for Smith Woodward and Keith, both were keen advocates of the theory that humans had big brains early in their evolution and could have procured these bits of skull – using Dawson to deposit their handiwork – because they were convinced they represented the truth. But if Dawson was just a stooge in this business, why did the uncovering of finds at Piltdown stop immediately after his death? People went on looking for years, but never found a thing after 1916.

It is a perplexing mix of suspects, which the new research hopes to unravel by studying and measuring the skull carefully and by analysing every chemical present in the stains and chemicals used in the different pieces. Do the dyes match those in Hinton's trunk? Does the canine found by Teilhard contain chemicals not found in the other pieces? Or is its staining unique? "We are going to fingerprint all the material found at Piltdown and unravel how many patterns of interference have occurred – and how many individuals were involved," says Stringer. "We might get our hoaxer or hoaxers that way."

As for Piltdown, there are few signs left around the village today to show this was once thought to be one of the most important sites in human evolutionary history. The Manor is locked and gated and the plinth that marked where the first find was uncovered is out of sight of passers-by. Even the local pub, which until last year revelled in the name of the Piltdown Man, has now changed its name to the Lamb. As Joseph Weiner, who helped reveal the hoax, once noted: "Piltdown Man has lost his place in polite society."

The Daily Mail said good morning with a rather harsh article about yet another Time Team shake-up:

While not quite as exciting as excavating buried treasure, the boffins of Channel 4’s archaeological show Time Team have managed to dig themselves into an extraordinary hole.

For just a day after it emerged that Bristol’s emeritus professor of archaeology Michael Aston had quit the programme, I learn that his much younger, attractive co-host has also walked out.

Cambridge beauty Mary-Ann Ochota, 30, a former model, has told Time Team fans she is leaving her post and will not be in the next series.

‘I always loved Time Team, and was very excited to be working with Mick — he wasn’t so keen!’ she revealed yesterday. 

‘The series didn’t work out quite how I wanted it to either — needless to say I’m not coming back for the next series either!’ 

Mary-Ann, who holds a master’s degree in archaeology and anthropology from Cambridge, also mounts a robust defence of her position on the show amid continuing speculation that she and Prof Aston did not get on. 

‘I was brought in to be a co-presenter, not an archaeologist, so I could ask the questions viewers might be asking,’ she writes on Time Team’s Facebook page.

But within minutes, the site was abuzz with comments from viewers. One said: ‘You really have to establish your archaeological credentials first on the show [or] it looks like the programme producers have employed you purely for the “totty factor” despite having the appropriate academic qualifications.'

The walkouts were apparently triggered after producers decided to reformat the show, which is hosted by Blackadder star Tony Robinson, after 19 series.

Part of the reshuffle included recruiting Miss Ochota — married to children’s author Joe Craig — and archaeologist Alex Langlands this year.

According to programme  sources, Miss Ochota appeared to have a happy working relationship with most of the Time Team crew on set. 

A Channel 4 spokeswoman says: ‘Mary-Ann will not be returning for the next series of Time Team, which will be aired in 2013.’

--

The Daily Mail article sort of glazes over two important points, which I'd like to briefly address.  The first being the Miss Ochota does tout the necessary credentials (a Master’s Degree in Archaeology and Anthropology from Cambridge University) to be involved with the series.  Everyone is hot to mention she modeled for Special K cereal or something, but glazes over the fact that she is an academic.  The second, and more severe tidbit that the media should be highlighting is that the network wants to "cut down the informative stuff about the archaeology."  Therein lies the true crime.  "Informative stuff?"  I thought pissing on science education was limited to the US Department of Education.

Mick Aston, the archaeologist, has quit Time Team after producers hired a former model as the programme’s co-presenter.

The year 2012 is a significant one in the Maya calendar.

The ancient long count calendar of the Maya, a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished across Mexico and Central America from 2000 BC to the time of the Spanish Conquistadores, states that on the 12th December, 2012, the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in approximately 26,000 years.

And 21 December, 2012, is said to mark the end of the 13th Maya Calendar, a 144,000-day cycle or "b'ak'tun" since the mythical Maya day of creation 5,200 years ago.

Though popularly interpreted as signifying the "end of the world as we know it," scholars stress that the end of the "b'ak'tun" does not mean apocalypse.

While few Maya people still follow the long count calendar, the Global Heritage Fund is celebrating the event by naming 2012 "The Year of the Maya," with members of the Fund greeting the winter solstice on top of La Danta pyramid at the El Mirador site in Guatemala.

"Experiencing the Winter Solstice on the summit of La Danta is thought to be one of the greatest opportunities to experience the end of the 13th Maya calendar and dawn of a new age," said Jeff Morgan, Executive Director of the Global Heritage Fund.

But their celebrations have a serious side: the Global Heritage Fund is highlighting the dangers to Mayan sites such as El Mirador, which are threatened by looting and deforestation, and hoping to secure the investment to turn these neglected spots into thriving and sustainable tourist destinations.

"Tikal National Park (in Guatemala) has proven that major Maya archaeological sites are economically sustainable through visitation and with appropriate investment, can generate hundreds of millions of dollars for conservation and maintenance of both the cultural and natural heritage," said Morgan.

CNN's World's Treasures asked Morgan to compile a list of key Maya sites across LatinAmerica for Maya-enthusiasts keen to ring in the dawn of a new era sitting on the monumental steps of a temple or at the summit of an ancient pyramid.

Chichen Itza

The site of Chichen Itza is a key sacred spot in Mexico's southern Yucatan peninsula -- the settlement is believed to date back to the 5th century AD.

Its architecture is a blend of Maya and Toltec styles. It was the Toltec -- warrior peoples from the Mexican plateau -- who imposed the practice of ritual sacrifice at the site.

Covering a huge surface area, this UNESCO World Heritage Site is rich in monuments, chief of which is the stepped pyramid temple of Kukulkan, as well as a Great Ball Court, where visitors can picture deadly ball games taking place.

Tulum

Though not extensive, this clifftop site in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula is certainly picturesque, overlooking the turquoise waters of the Caribbean Sea.

A photo-friendly beauty spot, Tulum is a relaxed pit-stop on the itinerary. A dip in the sea should revive any temple-weary travelers.

Palenque

Also a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Palenque, in Chiapas, Mexico, is nestled deep in the jungle, the tops of its many temples often wreathed in mist.

The site boasts stepped pyramids, including the impressive Temple of Inscriptions, carved stone walls and even the burial site of Pakal the Great, Palenque's 7th-century ruler.

Tikal

Tikal is set in an ecological reserve in Guatemala -- its ruins are believed to date from as far back as 600 BC, and at one point the city was thought to be inhabited by 90, 000 people.

Temples, palaces, and public squares abound: If you want to go off the main tourist beat, you can explore the many ruins lying seemingly half-forgotten in the surrounding jungle.

Not just a historical treasure, the land on which Tikal rests is a natural beauty spot, home to numerous protected species of flora and fauna.

Copan

The Maya civilization spanned much of Central America and this site in Honduras is thought to have been inhabited as far back as 2000 BC.

Abandoned for centuries, it was rediscovered in 1570 by a Spanish explorer named Diego Garcia de Palacio.

The site is another maze of temples, plazas, altar complexes and ball courts, and of particular note is the Hieroglyphic Stairway Plaza, a monumental 100-meter-wide stairway bearing a long Mayan inscription composed of numerous glyphs.