Archaeologists working in the Mayan city of Uxul have found two giant resevoirs which were capabale of holding the water of 10 Olympic-sized swimming pools.

An analysis of the so-called “aguadas” revealed the ancient Mayans lined these huge reservoirs of drinking water with ceramic shards, similar to outdoor pools today.

The lakes would have held enough water to support a population of 2,000 living in the Mayan city of Uxul during the three-month dry season, the researchers say.

“We found that the bottom, which is at a depth of 2 meters [6.6 feet], was covered with ceramic shards — probably from plates — practically without any gaps,” said Nicolaus Seefeld, a member of the German-Mexican archaeological team that made the discovery.

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The Maya who lived in the city of Kiuic fled the city in a hurry, leaving behind half-constructed walls. But why?

“Why did they leave? That’s the question,” says archaeologist George Bey of Millsaps College in Jackson, Miss. The ancient Maya fled Kiuic, nestled in the Puuc (pook) foothills of the Yucatan, around 880. “Things were going full-bore, construction was underway. And things stopped,” Bey says.

Archaeologists have explored Kiuic’s ruins for more than a century, but working since 2000, Bey and colleagues are now reporting the first evidence of this rapid abandonment. USA TODAY was invited to the site to see what has been uncovered in the latest excavations.

The “classic” Maya peopled the lowland forests of Central America during Europe’s Dark Ages, building a civilization of pyramids, palaces and slash-and-burn “milpa” farms made by burning trees and planting seeds in the ash. Maya rulers oversaw city-states that warred with one another, created elaborate calendars and lasted centuries. The abandonment of those monument-strewn centers stands as one of archaeology’s most-debated mysteries. The “collapse” was underway in modern-day Guatemala by 800, but didn’t take place at Kiuic until almost a century later.

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The 1,600-year-old tomb of a Mayan king has been found in Guatemala.

The 1,600-year-old tomb was discovered on May 29 beneath the El Diablo pyramid in the city of El Zotz. It is packed with of carvings, ceramics, textiles, and the bones of six children, who might have been sacrificed at the time of the king’s death.

However, much more work is needed before the scientists can piece together all the clues about the tomb’s owner.

“We still have a great deal of work to do,” said Stephen Houston an archaeologist at Brown University in Rhode Island. “We’ve only been out of the field for a few weeks, and we’re still catching our breath after a very difficult, technical excavation. Royal tombs are hugely dense with information and require years of study to understand.”

Before making the actual discovery, Houston said the team thought “something odd” was happening in the deposit where they were digging. They knew a small temple had been built in front of a sprawling structure dedicated to the sun god, an emblem of Maya rulership.

“When we sunk a pit into the small chamber of the temple, we hit almost immediately a series of ‘caches’ — blood-red bowls containing human fingers and teeth, all wrapped in some kind of organic substance that left an impression in the plaster. We then dug through layer after layer of flat stones, alternating with mud, which probably is what kept the tomb so intact and airtight.”

Eventually the scientists unearthed the final layer to reveal a small hole.

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Divers exploring a sacred Mayan pool in Belize have found the country’s first fossilized remains.

Scientists discovered several fossil beds around 60-to-90 feet below the surface, including femur bones the size of a bowling ball. They also found tusks and pelvic bones. These are the first recorded fossils ever found in Belize.

Lisa Lucero, Archaeologist, Project Leader: “We left those in place. We only removed a few small fossils so we can determine, are they fossilized? Or bone? They are definitely fossilized, so we know they have to be of a certain age. But were they here , were these megafauna present during occupation by humans 20,000, 15,000 years ago? Or are they much older?”

The dives were made in several pools in central Belize earlier this year in an area known as Cara Blanca. The researchers found evidence that the eight pools of the 25 they studied are likely connected through underground passages.

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The Mayans who lived in the ancient city of Palenque knew the land they lived on used to be underwater due to fossils found in the region.

Fossils found at the ancient city of Palenque, Chiapas shows Maya people conceived their beliefs of the underworld from them, associating the beliefs with water. To the Palenque, these fossils were convincing proof that the land was covered by the sea a long time ago, and from this they created their ideas on the origin of the world.

A three-year study by archaeologist Martha Cuevas and geologist Jesus Alvarado, was aimed at connecting the symbolism made by ancient Mayans to remains from Prehistoric times.

The interdisciplinary investigation, by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) and the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), concentrates on 31 specimens found at the Palenque Archaeological Zone which they believe are vital to the study of Maya cosmogony.

The 31 fossils discovered so far are from different periods, with the oldest from the Paleocene Era, nearly 63 million years ago.  The fossils, from different marine animals and shark teeth and stingray spines, were used in ritual context during the Late Classic Period (600-850AD).  Most often they are discovered in a funerary context: as part of funerary offerings, used by the Mayans as tombstones or offered to deities.

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