Honduras Copan Archeology Trip - Jim Rogers Around the World

Jim Rogers is the author of best sellers, Investment Biker, Hot Commodities, Adventure Capitalist and A Bull In China. Jim Rogers was named by John Train as one of the most successful money managers of all time. In 1999 and 2000 Jim and his wife Paige traveled around the world. Their adventure is documented here in The Millennium Adventure.

The Pre-Columbian city today known as Copán is a locale in western Honduras, in the Copán Department, near to the Guatemalan border. It is the site of a major Maya kingdom of the Classic era (5th through 9th Centuries).

The kingdom, anciently named Xukpi (Corner-Bundle), flourished from the 5th century AD to the early 9th century, with antecedents going back to at least the 2nd century AD. Its name is an apparent reference to the fact that it was situated at the far southern and eastern end of Maya territory. The nearby modern village of Copán Ruinas itself may have anciently been known as Oxwitik.

The site in Copan is known for producing a remarkable series of portrait stelae, most of which were placed along processional ways in the central plaza of the city and the adjoining "acropolis" (a large complex of overlapping step-pyramids, plazas, and palaces). The stelae and sculptured decorations of the buildings of Copán are some of the very finest surviving art of ancient Mesoamerica.

Many structures are elaborately decorated with stone sculptures, usually constructed from a mosaic of carved stones of a size that one person could carry.

The site also has a large court for playing the Mesoamerican ballgame. At its height in the late classic period Copán seems to have had an unusually prosperous class of minor nobility, scribes, and artisans, some of whom had homes of cut stone built for themselves (in most sites a privilege reserved for the rulers and high priests), some of which have carved hieroglyphic texts.

The buildings suffered significantly from forces of nature in the centuries between the site's abandonment and the rediscovery of the ruins. There have been numerous earthquakes -- none of the roofs of the stone buildings were intact when the site was rediscovered, and the hieroglyphic stairway had collapsed. The Copán river changed course and meandered, destroying part of the acropolis (revealing in the process its archaeological stratigraphy in a large vertical cut) and apparently wiping out various subsidiary architectural groups in the region. In the long period when the site was overgrown the buildings and sculptures suffered from the invasive thick jungle vegetation and periodic forest fires.

Archeologists have consolidated and restored many structures at the site.

Copyright Jim Rogers - provided as a special contribution to The Fenton Report

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• honduras
• latin
• America
• archeology
• ruins
• copan
• jim
• rogers
• american
• spanish
• jobs
• history
• business
• economic
• countries
• honduran
• presna
• city
• map
• vacation
• day
• guide
• tour
• international
• world
• airline
• itinerary
• ideas
• tips
• company
• resorts
• holiday
• discovery
• hotel
• trip
• advisor
• best
• time
• agent
• agencies
• travels
• resort
• channel
• adventure
• adventures
• vacations

[PeterSilseth]

Good video, great explanation of everything at Copan.

[msbrando]

I love Jim Rogers. I am from Honduras. I know some people from Copan that talked with Jim Rogers and they said the guy is very nice and very simple guy. Also he is kind of entertaining person

[sunnymars11]

guy at 6:57 is possessed !

[RossRoss12345]

Hahahahahaha what homo!!!

[Honduras760]

viva honduras