Word: maya
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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More than 1,500 years before the Maya flourished in Central America, 25 centuries before the Aztecs conquered large swaths of Mexico, the mysterious Olmec people were building the first great culture of Mesoamerica. Starting in 1200 B.C. in the steamy jungles of Mexico's southern Gulf Coast, the Olmec's influence spread as far as modern Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, Costa Rica and El Salvador. They built large settlements, established elaborate trade routes and developed religious iconography and rituals, including ceremonial ball games, blood-letting and human sacrifice, that were adapted by all the Mesoamerican civilizations to follow...
Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, designer of the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial Maya Ying Lin and medical researcher and humanitarian Harold Amos are three of this year's honorands...
...Maya Ying...
...some, age is the advent of the encores. At 70, Russian ballerina MAYA PLISETSKAYA is still dancing (she just performed in New York City; next she's off to Spain). Age has dulled the athleticism that made her one of the Bolshoi's biggest draws (she liked to tap her head with her foot in mid-leap), but she's irrepressible. Plisetskaya told the New York Times, "I still feel the magic. If I have no more interest in dancing, I'll stop...
...have been used by Egyptians in the mummification process, possibly because it is a powerful desiccant, or drying agent. It was also valued as a medicine. According to Pliny the Elder, Roman peasants used it to cure diseases of the neck and head. In the New World, the Maya burned it as incense to treat a variety of ailments...