Ancient Maya quiz: What do you know about the civilization that built pyramids across Mesoamerica?
The ancient Maya civilization stretched throughout Central America and lasted for nearly three millennia. Although never unified into one massive empire, the Maya controlled dozens of city-states, also known as "polities," which arose when people settled in permanent villages and began to cultivate maize. The ancient Maya are well known for their pyramids and for their series of calendars — one of which convinced many people that the world would end in an apocalypse on Dec. 21, 2012. While the ancient political system collapsed between A.D. 800 and 1000, the society did not. Today, more than 7 million Maya live in their original homelands and beyond.
Are you up to date on recent research on the ancient Maya? Take our quiz to find out.
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Horse racing depends on immigrants who are suddenly working in fear
The modern backbone of an ancient sport quivers and quakes amid a relentless fear hovering at the barns of American horse tracks. The fear, almost like some smothering yet invisible blanket, howls at wake-up, lingers through the rigors in the stables and harasses eyelids at bedtime. The backbone, the laborers from Mexico and Guatemala and other lands who feed, water, walk, wash, massage, sustain, coddle and converse with the racehorses, finds the fear even in periphery: 'Like if you [dropped] something over there' and it made a noise, one laborer said through an interpreter while pointing across a room, 'you're scared of what you might see [next].'
