Sacred plants of the ancient Mayans revealed

October 12th, 2009 LONDON - A Mayan elder has insisted that the year 2012 will not bring the end of the world, despite claims that a Mayan calendar shows that time will "run out" on December 21 of that year. A significant time period for the Mayans does end on the date, and enthusiasts have found a series of astronomical alignments they say coincide in 2012, including one that happens roughly only once every 25,800 years.

October 8th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new research, NASA funded scientists have determined that the ancient Mayans were themselves responsible for the demise of their civilization, by deforesting and destroying their landscape in efforts to eke out a living in hard times. For 1200 years, the Maya dominated Central America.

October 5th, 2009 SYDNEY - The discovery of a piece of fossilized amber that came from a plant living more than 300 million years ago, has led scientists to suggest that flowering plants may have started to appear a lot earlier than previously believed. It is believed that flowering plants only started to show up in the fossil record at the beginning of the Cretaceous period, around 120 million years ago.

September 23rd, 2009 LONDON - Researchers have discovered that many pyramids in Mexico were created by the ancient Mayans to create "raindrop" music to communicate with their rain god. Take for example, Mexico's El Castillo pyramid in Chichen Itza.

September 14th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A team of expert divers, a geochemist and an archaeologist is all set to become the first to explore the sacred pools of the southern Maya lowlands in rural Belize. The expedition, made possible with a grant from the National Geographic Society and led by a University of Illinois archaeologist, will investigate the cultural significance and environmental history and condition of three of the 23 pools of Cara Blanca, in central Belize.

September 4th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new research has determined that flowering plants originated not as trees, but as relatively non-woody "pre-trees" that could outcompete ancient plants like conifers, thus reinventing the concept of weediness. Flowering plants widespread and are phenomenally successful, but how did they get to be so successful and where did they come from? This question bothered Darwin and others, and a research paper published in the September issue of the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society indicates that their ability to adapt anatomically may be the answer.

August 1st, 2009 ANKARA - A team of archaeologists has discovered a castle and an ancient city thought to be almost 1,400 years old in southern Osmaniye province in Turkey. According to a report in Today's Zaman, excavations in the area, carried out by teams from Kocaeli University's archaeology department with the permission of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, first revealed the ruins in 2006.

July 31st, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new study, the outline of an ancient Roman city buried beneath cropland near Venice, Italy, has been mapped in detail for the first time with the aid of aerial photography. Until now the ancient city of Altinum, which dates back at least to the first century BC, was known only from historical records and a few minor excavations.

July 25th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new study, scientists from the University of Cincinnati (UC) have determined that the ancient Mayans practiced forest conservation about 3,000 years ago. Paleoethnobotanist David Lentz from the University of Cincinnati has concluded that not only did the Maya people practice forest management, but when they abandoned their forest conservation practices, it was to the detriment of the entire Maya culture.

July 15th, 2009 WASHINGTON - New findings from Queen's University biologists in Canada show that smaller plants have many advantages over bigger ones, as they have superior 'staying power'. "Until now most of the thinking has suggested that to be a good competitor in the forest, you have to be a big plant," said Queen's Biology professor Lonnie Aarssen.

June 25th, 2009 WASHINGTON - The CT scan of a 2,000-year-old mummy in Egypt, who was believed to be a woman, has revealed that the preserved corpse actually belongs to a man. The mummy has been kept at the Brooklyn Museum in New York.

June 23rd, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new study has determined that it apparently took a long time to get the Agricultural Revolution off the ground, with discoveries at a Jordan site indicating that ancient granaries, more than 11,000 years old, preceded the advent of modern agriculture. Excavations at Dhra' near the Dead Sea in Jordan have uncovered remnants of four sophisticated granaries built between 11,300 and 11,175 years ago, about a millennium before domesticated plants were known to have been cultivated there.

May 24th, 2009 LONDON - Studying the teeth of an ancestor of Neanderthals, known as Homo heidelbergensis, a team of Spanish researchers have come to the conclusion that "lefties" have been coping with a right-handed world for more than half a million years. Marina Mosquera, a paleoanthropologist at Universitat Rovira i Virgili in Tarragona, says that the study seems to suggest that the ancient humans were predominately right-handed.

April 21st, 2009 LONDON - America's leading Hindu scholars are urging top tattoo artists to read up on their Sanskrit after noticing inked text on singer Rihanna and soccer player David Beckham's skin is misspelled. According to the experts, Beckham's tattoo tribute to his wife Victoria is incorrect, as is one of Rihanna's new spiritual etchings, reports contactmusic.com.

April 2nd, 2009 LONDON - Archaeological excavations in the ancient region of Baktria in Afghanistan have revealed a unique marble slab with the image of Alexander the Great and a passage of an inscription. The slab represents an ancient king on a horse heading Macedonian cavalry and Macedonian phalanx at the background.