Alexis Okeowo in México City
for National Geographic News
August 22, 2008



excerpts
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/08/080822-maya-maze.html

"A labyrinth filled with stone temples and pyramids in 14 caves—some underwater—have been uncovered on Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, archaeologists announced last week.

The discovery has experts wondering whether Maya legend inspired the construction of the underground complex—or vice versa."


Underworld Entrances

"Saturno said the discovery of the temples underwater indicates the significant effort the Maya put into creating these portals.

In addition to plunging deep into the forest to reach the cave openings, Maya builders would have had to hold their breath and dive underwater to build some of the shrines and pyramids.

Other Maya underworld entrances have been discovered in jungles and aboveground caves in northern Guatemala Belize."

"They believed in a reality with many layers," Saturno said of the Maya. "The portal between life and where the dead go was important to them."

RELATED

* Earliest Maya Writing Found in Guatemala, Researchers Say (January 5, 2006)
* The Rise and Fall of the Maya in Geographic Magazine (August 2007)
* Ancient Maya Tomb Yields "Amazing" Fabrics (April 25, 2008
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https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/




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Star Portrait Reveals "Family Tree"

August 22, 2008—Several generations of stars "pose" for a family portrait amid curtains of clouds in the star-forming region called W5, about 6,500 light-years away.

The composite image was released today to mark the upcoming five-year anniversary of the Spitzer Space Telescope, which lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on August 25, 2003.

Since its launch, Spitzer's infrared images have been helping astronomers peer through gases and dust that can block visible light, revealing distant cosmic objects in high detail.

The latest image of W5 uncovered a stellar family tree that offers scientists new evidence for the theory of triggered star formation. This is when powerful winds from massive stars carve out cavities inside nebulae, compressing gases along the rims of the cavities and spawning new stars.

Using Spitzer data, a team led by Xavier Koenig at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics found that cavities in W5 do contain ladder-like progressions of stellar generations, with older stars (blue dots) inside the hollows and younger stars (pink and white dots) around the rims.
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