Mayan Mansion.

Last summer, an archaeologist (scientist who studies remains from past human life), Arthur Demarest, was hacking his way through a tangled jungle in Guatemala. Then the forest floor caved in beneath him. Demarest's plunge left him chest-high in a pit of hissing snakes--and directly on top of one of the largest ancient Mayan palaces ever discovered. "No one has ever found a palace this well preserved in a century," he says.

The royal residence covers an area greater than four football fields and consists of 170 high-ceilinged rooms and 11 spectacular courtyards. The virtually intact palace is part of the city of Cancuen (kahn-KWEN)--Mayan for "place of serpents."

The extraordinary ruin could overturn current theories about Mayan civilization, which dominated parts of Central America from 250 A.D. to 900 A.D.: Absent from the buried city are the trademark Mayan pyramids thought to have religious and military significance.

Unlike other Mayan cities, researchers now think Cancuen may have prospered without warfare or religion. Instead, the site teems with signs of wealth and commerce. Demarest's group has unearthed Mayan luxury goods like pyrite (fool's gold), obsidian (volcanic glass rock), and jade, a green mineral--all used to make jewelry. One female skeleton was even found in her grave with jade-filed teeth!

Demarest estimates it will take another decade to completely excavate (dig up) and partly restore the palace.

For more amazing ruins, see "Buried Cities" on p. 13.