Best preserved Maya village provides amazing insight into daily life

Posted On: Dec 21st, 2015 at 23:10

El Salvador
I really don’t like clichéd titles but it’s not surprising this place has been labelled the “Pompeii of the New World”. Despite the lack of frozen in time dead bodies the similarities are all to apparent.
That means, of course, an archaeologists dream – a site frozen in time and providing an insight into daily life which, as far as I am concerned, is the jewel in any archaeological site. All too often we hear of kings, queens and palaces, but very little about the people who struggled day to day. In fact, we see our world in a rather strange way – we often remember and give credence to kings who were, most of the time, nothing more than barbaric bullying criminal murderers, and that’s being polite. And, let’s face it, things haven’t changed very much.
Take Alexander the Great, for example. What a fantastic name for a genocidal maniac. He conquered the whole of Asia Minor and got as far as India in a very rapid time. Finally the Indians repelled his advance and he turned back towards the Middle East, not before murdering hundreds of women and children after he promised their safety. Funny how that’s been kept out of the record books in the West. Okay, I’ve gone off on a rant again…
So… sites like this one in Cerén – the best preserved Maya village in the whole of Central America – are very valuable indeed.
Cerén was covered in a blanket of ash in 660 AD when the nearby Loma Caldera volcano erupted.
Discovered in 1978, the site still contains many unexcavated buildings and work will continue years into the future.
This article is well worth a read…

http://www.archaeology.wiki/blog/2015/11/06/el-salvador-buried-ash/