Maya ruins are big business – a fact not lost on the Honduran tourist industry (Image: David Hiser/Getty)
Editorial: "Playing make-believe with history is a risky business"
High politics meet big money and national pride on the Caribbean island of Roatán, where tourists flock to amazing Mayan ruins that no Maya ever saw
THE collection of more than 150 bowls, plates and jars turned up in a closet at the University of South Florida in 2003. It had been gathering dust since 1990, when a family from Honduras had donated them to the anthropology department.
Since the boxes were labelled "Maya", Christian Wells, an archaeologist at the university who had worked on a number of Maya sites in Central America, decided to take a look. What he saw took him by surprise.
The ceramics were known to have originated from Roatán, an island off the north coast ...
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