A manâ??s skeleton found atop a stone slab at Copán, which was the capital of an ancient Maya state, contains clues to a colonial expansion that occurred more than 1,000 years before Spanish explorers reached the Americas.
The bones come from Kâ??inich Yax Kâ??ukâ?? Moâ??, or KYKM for short, the researchers report in an upcoming Journal of Anthropological Archaeology. KYKM was the first of 16 kings who ruled Copán and surrounding highlands of what is today northern Honduras for about 400 years, from 426 to 820, say archaeologist T. Douglas Price of the University of Wisconsinâ??Madison and his colleagues. KYKMâ??s bone chemistry indicates that he grew up in the central Maya lowlands, which are several hundred kilometers northwest of Copán.