Why did Maya writing remain undecipherable for so long and how was it finally cracked? Find out how this long enigmatic script was finally deciphered and how centuries of recorded Maya history were ...

The mysterious collapse of the Maya civilization may not have been driven solely by drought after all. New evidence from lake sediments in Guatemala reveals that one key city, Itzan, enjoyed a stable ...

The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya David Stuart Princeton Univ. Press (2026) Before the 1970s, ancient Maya history was impenetrable. The civilization’s grand ceremonial buildings and ...

As the son of archaeologists, National Geographic Explorer David Stuart spent his childhood wandering ancient Maya ruins—and helped shape what we know about the civilization today. The ruins of the ...

Finding the oldest Maya site ever documented was only the beginning of archaeologist Takeshi Inomata’s discoveries. After locating the Aguada Fénix site buried in the jungle of southern Mexico in 2017 ...

On this day in 1822, an ”over-the-top, histrionic, melodramatic figure,” Jean-François Champollion, announced his decipherment of the Rosetta Stone, a stele from Ptolemaic Egypt inscribed with a ...

The Maya hieroglyphs and the Maya script have been a mystery for centuries. Scholars from all over the world tried to crack the `Mayan Code' since the early 1830s. But it took many decades until ...

Around 900 years ago, a Maya scribe made Códice Maya de México, a sacred book that tracked and predicted the movements of the planet Venus. Today it is the oldest book of the Americas, one of only ...

A sprawling Maya city with palaces and pyramids was discovered in a dense Mexican jungle by a doctoral student who unknowingly drove past the site years ago on a visit to Mexico. Tulane University ...

“Saturday Night Live” returned for its 50th season over the weekend, bringing back some “SNL” vets during its premiere. Jean Smart made her hosting debut on the late night sketch comedy show during ...

Mindlessly scroll through TikTok long enough and you’re bound to stumble on one: An older person, possibly a boomer, gesturing blithely at something—maybe it’s a B&B, maybe it’s a set of blinds—and ...

The NPR Network will be reporting live from Chicago throughout the week bringing you the latest on the Democratic National Convention. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris often speaks of ...