Mexico

The Mayas remain the great archeological enigma of Mexico and Central America. Now we know they erected not dozens, but thousands of cities. Dazzling new finds are revealing their civilization as more ancient than we'd supposed.

The "painted books" that told their story were burned by the Catholic Church as "works of the devil" in 1562. We have only theory on their fall, and it veers ever closer to ecological calamity.

The ruins of Mayadom form a 2,400-kilometre Ruta Maya through Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras and El Salvador.

The best known are in Mexico, notably Chichen Itza and Uxmal in the Yucatan Peninsula. But the most elegant, Mayaphiles will tell you, is Palenque in the southern state of Chiapas.

If Guatemala's Tikal is the Manhattan of Mayadom, Palenque is its San Francisco: compact, vital, exquisite. Its golden age lasted from 600 to 800 AD. Club-footed King Pacal ruled for 68 years and built the Pyramid of Inscriptions, Palenque's architectural jewel, as his own tomb, a rare practice in Maya culture. His bejewelled bones, face concealed behind a jade death mask, were unearthed in 1952.

With only 34 of its 500 buildings excavated, Palenque represents small-is-beautiful Mayadom.

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