When John [Lloyd] Stephens came here about 160 years ago, he speculated that the inscriptions contained royal history, that it was history written in stone. It turned out he was absolutely right. He ...

Discovered in 1570 by Diego García de Palacio, the ruins of Copán, one of the most important sites of the Mayan civilization, were not excavated until the 19th century. The ruined citadel and imposing ...

In Copán – a major transit point for cocaine – drug trafficking groups collaborate with local authorities to smuggle narcotics over the department’s porous western border with Guatemala. Despite a ...

In its heyday from about A.D. 300 to 900, the Maya civilization boasted hundreds of cities across a vast swath of Central America. Now archeological sites, these once-flourishing cities extended from ...

In the jungles of Copán we still find ancient Maya ruins overcome by nature and long forgotten. Stephens and Catherwood rediscovered this abandoned city and documented their experiences. Since ...

Skeletons buried near the ancient Maya city of Copán have revealed new clues about the collapse, but not total decimation, of the Maya civilization. A study of the genomes of seven people from the ...

John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood's first journey together was in 1839-1840. Departing New York on 3 October 1839, the men reached Belize on 30 October 1939. Stephens had planned to fulfull ...

The overgrown jungle of Copán is the backdrop for a formidable stone statue erected in the early eighth century. Standing more than three meters high, the figure on the stele wears a net skirt, beaded ...