2026-08-26
39 分钟This is The Guardian.
Hi, my name's David Wolfe and I'm the editor of The Guardian Long Read.
This summer we're bringing you a few of our favourite audio long reads of the year so far.
Today I've chosen a piece by Marcus Haraldson called Apocalypse No,
How Almost Everything We Thought We Knew About the Maya Is Wrong.
So this is one of a number of stories we've run over recent
years about what I think is one of the most fascinating and under-remarked things going on in the world right now.
As the author of the article writes, thanks to new technologies,
we have entered a new age of discovery in the field of ancient history.
Thanks to things like improved DNA analysis and laser mapping technology,
every month we're making astounding new discoveries about the past,
which are often overturning decades or even centuries of settled understanding.
In this particular story, Marcus Haroldson unfolds
how archaeologists are revising our understanding of the ancient Maya.
For a long time, the story about the Maya has focused on the question of how and why their society collapsed.
But this new research is shifting the focus to the ways in which the society managed
to thrive for so long in such a difficult environment.
One of the things I really like about the piece is how skillfully it weaves together
this new scholarly research with reporting from Guatemala on the ground about the political situation of the Maya today.
It's particularly striking how the same techniques that archaeologists have used to investigate