Ancient YucatÃ¡n Soils Point to Maya Market, and Market Economy
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New findings are some of the first strong evidence that the ancient Maya civilization had a market economy similar in some respects to societies today.
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Who says food fads can't last? Thousands of years before the advent of Tex-Mex, ancient Americans were spicing up stew with red hot chili peppers. New fossil evidence shows prehistoric people from southern Peru up to the Bahamas were cultivating varieties of chilies millennia before Columbus' arrival brought the spice to world cuisine.
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There is sweet renewal on the old cacao plantations that just five years ago lay fallow on these lush mountain slopes along the Caribbean coast. Its mother is a lucrative niche market: organic chocolate.
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The oldest solar observatory in the Americas has been discovered pointing to the existence of ancient Sun cults, scientists report.
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COYO, Chile  - Deep within the wind-swept Atacama desert in northern Chile, the remnants of a forgotten civilization rise from the sand.
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By John Noble Wilford Early people in Peru, like others in antiquity, went to great lengths to track the rising and setting of the Sun through the seasons as a guide for agriculture, an object of worship and a mystical demonstration of a ruler's power.
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CUATRO CI&#xC9;NEGAS, Mexico -- Dairy farming is endangering an ancient oasis in the Great Chihuahuan Desert that scientists say can help them understand earth's beginnings, global warming, and the chances of life on Mars.
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Ancient Americans were making elaborate meals with chilis thousands of years ago&#8212;sometimes even before the development of pottery&#8212;scientists say.
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Researchers said Thursday they have unearthed what may be one of the earliest calendar entries in Meso-America, massive stone sculpture that suggests women held important status roles in pre-Hispanic culture.
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Here's a hot, new discovery: archaeologists have traced what they believe is evidence of the first home-grown chili peppers, used in South America 6,100 years ago.
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Archaeologists have discovered a cache of artifacts near South Padre Island that they say could be up to 5,000 years old, potentially providing new clues about early peoples of the Texas coast.
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Izidio Orlando de Brito used to walk for hours down a jungle path hauling his manioc, beans, corn and rice to market, thinking how much easier life would be if there was a road to his village.
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In one of the earliest hints of "modern" living, humans 164,000 years ago put on primitive makeup and hit the seashore for steaming mussels, new archaeological finds show.
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Researchers have found evidence of a population of chimps that shares plant foods.
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Archaeologists in Ecuador find that chillies were used in cooking more than 6,000 years ago.
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The drought in southern Florida has led to a major archaeological find on the bottom of Lake Okeechobee -- pieces of pottery, conch jewelry and human bone.
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A new archaeological discovery suggests humans migrated to the hemisphere far earlier than previously thought.