This is one of Andante’s most enthralling tours, starting with superb museums of Mexico City, then via the delightful uplands of Chiapas, with their pines trees and clear air, down into the jungle and the great river Usumacinta before driving up the Yucatan peninsula to see some of the greatest of the Maya cities.
Ongoing decipherment of Maya script and advances in archaeological practice have led to major breakthroughs in our understanding. An older, romanticised view of a unique society of benevolent and scholarly priest-kings, artists and farmers who lived in peace with each other has been replaced by a vivid and very different picture of competitive city states headed by aggressive dynasts regularly at war and for whom the centre-piece of religious observance was blood-letting and human sacrifice. Rarely has the perceived character of a whole civilisation been so comprehensively turned upside down.
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