SLAIN ROYALS UNEARTHED
IN GUATEMALA
Copyright 2005 www.tombraiderchronicles.com
[ November 27th 2005 ]
Archaeologists
excavating deep in Guatemala's Peten rain forest
have unearthed evidence of the ancient slaying
of the King and Queen of Cancuen, who - along
with over 30 nobles and pregnant women - were
overwhelmed by their attackers and murdered with
spears and axes around AD 800, according to Agence
France Presse.
"The
king and queen and their nobles apparently were
gathered together and slain en masse, many by
lance thrusts to the neck or head," said Arthur
Demarest, one of the lead archaeologists of the
team that excavated the grim site in Guatemala
and its long hidden story.
"In the
years preceding the royal massacre, warfare had
spread across this western region of the ancient
Maya world. It seems to have suddenly reached
Cancuen at about AD 800," Demarest, Ingram Professor
of Anthropology at America's Vanderbilt University,
said.
The Maya
civilization is a historical Mesoamerican civilization,
which extended throughout the northern Central
American region which includes the present-day
states of Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras
and parts of El Salvador, as well as the southern
Mexican states of Chiapas, Tabasco and the entirety
of the Yucatán peninsula.
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