Scientists studied the genetic makeup of seven Maya individuals—including one who was the victim of human sacrifice.

Every little piece we can obtain from the excavations is fundamental, like a piece of the larger puzzle we are putting ...

The textbook timeline of the Maya civilization goes like this: The culture reached its height, known as the Classic period, between A.D. 200 and 900. Over the next century, urban centers fell apart.

Then, in 964, the Itzás, a Maya-speaking people from the Petén rain forest around Tikal, moved into the city. Archeologists have fully explored only about 20 or 30 of several hundred buildings ...

While DNA has been recovered from other Maya sites before, this is the most detailed genetic snapshot ever taken of individuals who lived in one of the civilization’s most iconic cities.

Scientists say this extensive road-and-city network, along with sophisticated ceremonial complexes, hydraulic systems and agricultural infrastructure, suggests that the ancient Maya civilization ...

On the eve of the rise of the Maya civilization, people living in what’s now Belize turned a whole wetland into a giant network of fish traps big enough to feed thousands of people. We already ...

A new study uses genome analysis to show the decline, not erasure, of the ancient Maya civilization. Researchers compared the genomes of seven skeletons to previously sequenced sets from across ...