Word: mayan
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Belize has rain forest, jaguars, waterfalls, toucans and, after Australia's, the largest coral barrier reef in the world. It was also one of the great centers of Mayan civilization. Ruins -- still largely unrestored, insufficiently studied and besieged by tomb robbers -- dot the lowland forests: the pyramids of Xunantunich and Altun Ha and the vast complex of Caracol, which in the 6th to 7th centuries was the rival of Tikal, across the Guatemalan border...
History shows that such environmental destruction can have far-reaching consequences. The salinization of irrigated land led to the fall of Mesopotamia and Babylon, and perhaps even the Mayan civilization of Central America. Similar pressures are at work today. Sandra Postel of Worldwatch Institute estimates that 60 million hectares (nearly 150 million acres) of irrigated land worldwide have been damaged by salt buildup...
...shell collectors, tourists, construction and pollution were endangering the reef's fragile ecosystem. Today, thanks to a two-year-long campaign headed by Janet Patricia Gibson, 37, a Belizean botanist and zoologist, 13 sq. km (5 sq. mi.) of the reef have been set aside as the Hol Chan (Mayan for little channel) Marine Reserve...
...tried to work with the teponaxtli, an old South American--I forget if it is Mayan or Aztec--log with an 'H' cut out of it with two tongues in the middle," he says. "I trained groups of people to play those, and we had performances at the Museum of Modern Art--I think that with my work the repertoire of percussion instruments jumped from about three or four to about...
...travels in Central America, which she explores in the tradition of truth through squalor, using a Mexican slum as a base camp. Despite occasional lapses into over- studied eloquence, she is a fascinating guide, with an eye for the brutal, the garish, the silly and bizarre. At a Mayan market in the Yucatan, Morris is tempted by giant beetles being sold as pets. "They were dressed as cowboys with small hats, boots on their legs, soldiers in camouflage, and women of the night, with long eyelashes and pink satiny skirts . . . I had no idea what I'd do with...