Buried beneath it, he says, is a pyramid. In 700-800 C.E., the ancient Maya would ascend a stairway to a temple at the pyramid’s top to offer gifts and sacrifices to the kingdom’s patron deity.

In the ancient Maya kingdom of K’anwitznal—a lowland city located in present-day Guatemala—dead royals weren’t always treated with reverence, archaeologists say. New research, published ...

but that the Maya kingdom of K'anwitznal grew in political power beginning with the reign of a new leader, Papmalil, who may have been a foreigner. "Much epigraphic and archaeological research in ...