In the middle of the Campeche jungle, at the base of the Yucatan Peninsula, lies the largest protected forest reserve in Mexico and one of the country's most underrated attractions: the ancient Mayan ...

Deep in the heart of the Mexican jungle lies Calakmul, once a dominant superpower and the seat of the formidable "Snake Dynasty." This video takes you on an immersive journey through the Yucatán ...

"Just so you know up front, I'm not climbing all the way to the top." It was late on a warm, humid Yucatan day, and I'd pretty well drained my tank scaling a cute little number named Structure XIII on ...

The site is located in the central/southern portion of the Yucatán Peninsula, in southern Mexico and includes the remains of the important Maya city Calakmul, set deep in the tropical forest of the ...

Beekeepers near the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve are working with conservationists to provide water troughs for wild animals in an effort to reduce conflicts with farmers and livestock. More than 70 ...

Thanks to the power of remote sensing lasers, scientists in Mexico have achieved vivid new insights into how people lived during the ancient Mayan empire’s powerful Kanu’l or Snake dynasty, from about ...

An unprecedented light detection and ranging (LiDAR) survey of 650 square miles across northern Guatemala’s Mirador-Calakmul Karst Basin (MCKB) has discovered 964 previously unknown ancient Maya ...

are about 35 miles south of the main road (Hwy. 186) deep in the forest. The only others visitors while I was there were the father-daughter hitchhikers from Fairbanks, Alaska, that I picked up. They ...

Clearly the Maya had smaller feet than my size 13 clodhoppers. Climbing to the top of the temples at Calakmul requires a lot of sidestepping and deep breathing, but it’s definitely worth the effort.

This story appears in the September 2016 issue of National Geographic magazine. Your National Geographic Society membership helped fund recent excavations at Holmul and La Corona, Guatemala. The ...