Word: maya
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Science and history have not yet succeeded in fathoming the secret of the great American civilization that vanished suddenly from Central America, and the mystery of the Mayas remains unsolved. An expedition headed by Dr. H. J. Spinden '06, of the Peabody Museum and the writer Gregory Mason, is now on its way to the Yucatan to explore territory hither to unknown in the hope of finding new clues to the archaeological riddle of the Maya civilization. In this article, reprinted from the New York Times, Mr. Mason describes the problems and hopes of the expedition...
...many Americans today do not know that the morning star and the evening star are the same heavenly creature and that her name is Venus, the reason may be that our calendar is based upon the career of a larger and more obvious body called the sun. An ancient Maya of Central America and southern Mexico had not this excuse for ignorance concerning the loveliest of the stars, because the calendar devised by his ingenious priests was a Venus calendar; any knowing citizen of that remarkable civilization was aware that five Venus years were practically equivalent to eight sun years...
...York from 1909 to 1921, and since then has been Curator of Mexican Archaeology and Ethnology at the Peabody Museum of the University. He has made 14 expeditions to Central America gathering material which has led to the recovery of much ancient history and science. His book "Maya Art" was awarded the Prix Anguand by the French government. On December 27, 1925, Harvard announced that Dr. Spinden had solved the mystery of the Venus Calendar of the Mayas by which the ancient inhabitants of Yucatan began a record of celestial events in the sixth century...
Continued explorations at Copan and Quirigua in Guatemala and Honduras show that the southern branch of the Maya civilization not only antedated the Yucatan development by more than 1,000 years, but was superior culturally and artistically...
Evidences of a highly developed state of civilization were found in the hieroglyphic system and calendar of the Maya people. Their public buildings were uniquely decorated with the heads and coiling bodies of snakes. The films, which showed principally the ruins of the ancient temples, are the property of the Mexican government and have never before been exhibited outside of Mexico...