Chocolate: Did you mean...?

As the Stone Age covers around 99% of our human technological history, it would seem there is a lot to talk about when looking at the development of tools in this period. Despite our reliance on the sometimes scarce archaeological record...

The Aztecs didn't call him Montezuma. Nor Moctezuma. They didn't call chocolate "chocolate". Heck, they didn't even call themselves Aztec! Though they were an oral culture, we have an idea of what their language really sounded like. Here's...

This spouted vessel is one of the most elegantly sculpted stone containers in the corpus of Maya art. Its form with the vertical spout parallel to the central axis of the main chamber is known from the late 1st millennium B.C. and is especially...

Ancient Mexico was a hotbed of language mixing. Aztecs and Maya spoke completely unrelated languages, but a Mesoamerican linguistic mindmeld tied them together in surprising ways. Here's the grammar. I'll start with the things that stood...

June 4, 2011, The Getty Villa Clip 1: A Fermented Mixed Drink with the "Midas Touch" In three highlight clips from this public lecture, Patrick McGovern, scientific director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory at the University...

June 4, 2011, The Getty Villa Clip 2: The World's Earliest Alcoholic Beverage from Jiahu, China In three highlight clips from this public lecture, Patrick McGovern, scientific director of the Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory at the...

Learn the basics for how to read ancient Maya, and learn to read the glyph for chocolate: cacao!