Guiding Concepts for the development of these Web Pages:

This Maya Archaeology Web site is dedicated to the utilization of advances in digital photography and scanning to provide information on pre-Hispanic civilizations of the Americas. The potential of the Virtual Museum format opens all kinds of possibility for distance learning, instruction over the Internet, and thereby enhancing public knowledge about our neighbors in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras.

It is a challenge to make the fabulous color photographs from the FLAAR Photo Archive available over the Internet, CD-ROM , or DVD. Better cable delivery systems of the future will soon make it possible to let students, scholars, and interested lay people see these large-format photographs in their original quality. New software such as FlashPix (Live Picture) should help immensely. In the meantime we do our best to make the images accessible for people to see and learn about the history of Mexico and Central America.

Dr. Nicholas Hellmuth just came back from six months working in Central America, assisted by several students from the University of Hamburg (Germany). They did extensive photography in museums to bring you outstanding color images of Pre-Columbian art and Archaeology. If you would like to volunteer to help on projects in Guatemala, and can cover your own expenses, contact us. It helps if you can speak both German and English; Spanish is not required because you can quickly learn that in Central America.

We have selected museums as a means of providing an organized view into the pre-Columbian past, to learn about life before the discovery of the Americas by Columbus.

To provide a focus, www.Maya-archaeology.org/ currently features three institutions: a museum of Olmec and Maya art in Tabasco, Mexico (Museo Carlos Pellicer), a museum of Maya ceramic art in Guatemala City (Museo Popol Vuh), and the Copan Museums on Honduras.

We also have abundant photographs of two of the best museums of Honduras, the new sculpture museum at the site of Copan and the general archaeology museum in the village of Copan Ruinas. As funds become available we will include these additional museums. Donations of equipment (from corporations) and funds (from interested people) are appreciated. Big thanks to all our Sponsors

To protect the rights of each museum, every photograph is digitally watermarked. This is invisible to your eye, but the watermark can be detected by our watermark security software, no matter where the picture turns up on the Web. Furthermore, each photograph is copyrighted. Any reproduction of these images requires the specific written permission from the museum. The copyright includes any derivative use, such as drawings which may be rendered from the rollouts, for example. The museums are considerate in allowing use of these images, but it is necessary to request permission, render the appropriate acknowledgments and the traditional compensation, and in general to abide by international copyright laws. The source of the images should also be cited in any reproduction.

QuickTime VR movies