My, oh Maya! Mimi, Papa, Christina, and Grant really get in over "skulls" in this Mexican hat dance of a mystery set in the Yucatan Peninsula. When they go to explore ancient Maya ruins, number clues seem to abound! But what is someone trying to lead them to or away from? Snakeshuman heartsa wall of skullsand a human sacrifice? How creepy can you get, the kids wonder. But in searching for clues, they encounter the wonder that is Mexico and find themselves laughing at things they never thought could be funny all along the way! Like all of Carole Marsh's Mysteries, this mystery will also incorporate history, geography, culture and cliffhanger chapters that will keep kids begging for more! This mystery will include SAT words, educational facts, fun and humor, built-in book club and activities. Below is the Reading Levels Guide for this book: Grade Levels: 3-6 Accelerated Reader Reading Level: 4.3 Accelerated Reader Points: 2 Accelerated Reader Quiz Number: 165490 Lexile Measure: 620 Fountas & Pinnell Guided Reading Level: Q Developmental Assessment Level: 40
Discover the ancient Maya civilization and one of their most popular toured ancient ruined cities of Tulum, Mexico in this detailed guidebook. Th e Ancient Maya and Th eir City of Tulum: Uncovering the Mysteries of An Ancient Civilization and Th eir City of Grandeur, is an easy to read comprehensive guide to unlocking the secrets and mysteries of the ancient Maya civilization. It answers the questions that so many people ask about one of the most interesting and amazing civilizations that existed in this world and explores in depth the biggest Maya mystery of all; Th e Maya Doomsday December 21, 2012 Prophesy. It embarks upon the secrets and mysteries surrounding their calendars, their beliefs, the way in which they lived, what happened to them, and their ancient cities in this complete comprehendible guide with photographs and illustrations.
Unlock the mysteries of the Mayan world. Deep in the rain forests of South and Central America, the Mayan culture thrived for almost 4,000 years. From the earliest Mayan farmer in 2,600 BC through the thirteenth century AD, the Maya developed an elaborate society, built great cities and temples, and created the only real system of writing native to the Americas. Although many of the intricacies of the Mayan culture remain shrouded in mystery, hundreds of new discoveries have come to light in recent years, and our body of knowledge about the Maya has grown by leaps and bounds. Now, the most fascinating new discoveries have been compiled into one volume: Secrets of the Maya, a book from the editors of Archaeology Magazine. From the discovery of ancient caves used for religious rituals—including human sacrifice—to the search for the long-lost "White City," Secrets of the Maya will take readers on an exciting and surprising archaeological journey. Featuring articles on the latest research, a comprehensive time line, and a special section on Mayan hieroglyphs, Secrets of the Maya will appeal to experts and amateurs alike.
The Maya created one of the world's most brilliant civilizations, famous for its art, astronomy, and deep fascination with the mystery of time. Despite collapse in the ninth century, Spanish invasion in the sixteenth, and civil war in the twentieth, eight million people in Guatemala, Belize, and southern Mexico speak Mayan languages and maintain their resilient culture to this day. Traveling through Central America's jungles and mountains, Ronald Wright explores the ancient roots of the Maya, their recent troubles, and prospects for survival. Embracing history, anthropology, politics, and literature, Time Among the Maya is a riveting journey through past magnificence and the study of an enduring civilization with much to teach the present. "Wright's unpretentious narrative blends anthropology, archaeology, history, and politics with his own entertaining excursions and encounters." -- The New Yorker; "Time Among the Maya shows Wright to be far more than a mere storyteller or descriptive writer. He is an historical philosopher with a profound understanding of other cultures." -- Jan Morris, The Independent (London).
The reader faces deadly dangers as a writer on assignment in Mexico to explore the ruins of the Mayan Indians and solve the mystery of why the ancient civilization collapsed.
The #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller, named one of the best books of the year by The Boston Globe and National Geographic: acclaimed journalist Douglas Preston takes readers on a true adventure deep into the Honduran rainforest in this riveting narrative about the discovery of a lost civilization -- culminating in a stunning medical mystery. Since the days of conquistador Hernán Cortés, rumors have circulated about a lost city of immense wealth hidden somewhere in the Honduran interior, called the White City or the Lost City of the Monkey God. Indigenous tribes speak of ancestors who fled there to escape the Spanish invaders, and they warn that anyone who enters this sacred city will fall ill and die. In 1940, swashbuckling journalist Theodore Morde returned from the rainforest with hundreds of artifacts and an electrifying story of having found the Lost City of the Monkey God-but then committed suicide without revealing its location. Three quarters of a century later, bestselling author Doug Preston joined a team of scientists on a groundbreaking new quest. In 2012 he climbed aboard a rickety, single-engine plane carrying the machine that would change everything: lidar, a highly advanced, classified technology that could map the terrain under the densest rainforest canopy. In an unexplored valley ringed by steep mountains, that flight revealed the unmistakable image of a sprawling metropolis, tantalizing evidence of not just an undiscovered city but an enigmatic, lost civilization. Venturing into this raw, treacherous, but breathtakingly beautiful wilderness to confirm the discovery, Preston and the team battled torrential rains, quickmud, disease-carrying insects, jaguars, and deadly snakes. But it wasn't until they returned that tragedy struck: Preston and others found they had contracted in the ruins a horrifying, sometimes lethal-and incurable-disease. Suspenseful and shocking, filled with colorful history, hair-raising adventure, and dramatic twists of fortune, THE LOST CITY OF THE MONKEY GOD is the absolutely true, eyewitness account of one of the great discoveries of the twenty-first century.
Mayan History Making sense of our universe...It's an age-old practice that transcends cultures and generations. From our vantage point, the larger than life Maya civilization grappled with the urge in a grand scale. Join us as we take a voyage to understand the ways of the Maya. Inside you will read about... - Who Made Contact? Early Explorers and their Impact - How the Maya Wanted to Be Represented - History Written by the Victors - Different Periods of Maya History - Larger Than Life - New Findings We'll learn what they held as sacred, how the sacred manifested itself in their lives, and about efforts to accurately portray them, despite romanticized versions. This eBook provides a deeper look at their pre-Columbian battling dynasties and their highly-structured approach to religion, science and society, as we explore their glories and misfortunes.
The acclaimed chronicle of the discovery of the legendary lost civilization of the Maya. Includes the history of the major Maya sites, including Palenque, Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Tuloom, Copan, and more. NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Illustrated with a map and more than 100 images. In 1839, rumors of extraordinary yet baffling stone ruins buried within the unmapped jungles of Central America reached two of the world’s most intrepid travelers. Seized by the reports, American diplomat John Lloyd Stephens and British artist Frederick Catherwood—both already celebrated for their adventures in Egypt, the Holy Land, Greece, and Rome—sailed together out of New York Harbor on an expedition into the forbidding rainforests of present-day Honduras, Guatemala, and Mexico. What they found would upend the West’s understanding of human history. In the tradition of Lost City of Z and In the Kingdom of Ice, former San Francisco Chronicle journalist and Pulitzer Prize finalist William Carlsen reveals the remarkable story of the discovery of the ancient Maya. Enduring disease, war, and the torments of nature and terrain, Stephens and Catherwood meticulously uncovered and documented the remains of an astonishing civilization that had flourished in the Americas at the same time as classic Greece and Rome—and had been its rival in art, architecture, and power. Their masterful book about the experience, written by Stephens and illustrated by Catherwood, became a sensation, hailed by Edgar Allan Poe as “perhaps the most interesting book of travel ever published” and recognized today as the birth of American archaeology. Most important, Stephens and Catherwood were the first to grasp the significance of the Maya remains, understanding that their antiquity and sophistication overturned the West’s assumptions about the development of civilization. By the time of the flowering of classical Greece (400 b.c.), the Maya were already constructing pyramids and temples around central plazas. Within a few hundred years the structures took on a monumental scale that required millions of man-hours of labor, and technical and organizational expertise. Over the next millennium, dozens of city-states evolved, each governed by powerful lords, some with populations larger than any city in Europe at the time, and connected by road-like causeways of crushed stone. The Maya developed a cohesive, unified cosmology, an array of common gods, a creation story, and a shared artistic and architectural vision. They created stucco and stone monuments and bas reliefs, sculpting figures and hieroglyphs with refined artistic skill. At their peak, an estimated ten million people occupied the Maya’s heartland on the Yucatan Peninsula, a region where only half a million now live. And yet by the time the Spanish reached the “New World,” the Maya had all but disappeared; they would remain a mystery for the next three hundred years. Today, the tables are turned: the Maya are justly famous, if sometimes misunderstood, while Stephens and Catherwood have been nearly forgotten. Based on Carlsen’s rigorous research and his own 1,500-mile journey throughout the Yucatan and Central America, Jungle of Stone is equally a thrilling adventure narrative and a revelatory work of history that corrects our understanding of Stephens, Catherwood, and the Maya themselves.
"An ideal guidebook to facing the inevitable." Foreword Reviews After her brother died unexpectedly and her mother moved into a dementia-care facility, spiritual travel writer and Episcopal deacon Lori Erickson felt called to a new quest: to face death head on, with the eye of a tourist and the heart of a pastor. Blending memoir, spirituality, and travel, Near the Exit examines how cultures confront and have confronted death, from Egypt's Valley of the Kings and Mayan temples, to a Colorado cremation pyre and Day of the Dead celebrations, to Maori settlements and tourist-destination graveyards. Erickson reflects on mortalityâ€"the ways we avoid it, the ways we cope with it, and the ways life is made more precious by accepting itâ€"in places as far away as New Zealand and as close as the nursing home up the street. Throughout her personal journey and her travels, Erickson  helps us to see that one of the most life-affirming things we can do is to invite death along for the ride.
