Thursday, September 14, 2017

Tomb of early classic Maya ruler found in Guatemala

6:59 AM    
"The Classic Maya revered their divine rulers and

treated them as living souls after death," said research co-director David Freidel, professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
"This king's tomb helped to make the royal palace acropolis holy ground, a place of majesty, early in the history of the Wak—centipede—dynasty. It's like the ancient Saxon kings England buried in Old Minister, the original church underneath Winchester Cathedral."
The tomb, discovered by Guatemalan archaeologists of the U.S.-Guatemalan El Perú-Waka' Archaeological Project (Proyecto Arqueológico Waka', or PAW), has been provisionally dated by ceramic analysis to 300-350 A.D., making it the earliest known royal tomb in the northwestern Petén region of Guatemala.
Previous research at the site has revealed six royal  and sacrificial offering burials dating to the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries A.D.
El Perú-Waka' is about 40 miles west of the famous Maya site of Tikal near the San Pedro Martir River in Laguna del Tigre National Park. In the Classic period, this royal city commanded major trade routes running north to south and east to west.