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I don't know anything about this team, but the ideal procedure would be minimal disturbance of this site, with minimal removal of artifacts from the site. Organic material for carbon dating, great.

There are several principles that one mist follow. Archeology is a destructive science: you can't dig the same pit twice, you can't remove artifacts a second time. So the first principle is: document everything, and destroy as little as you can. The second principle is that you must proceed with respect for the living Maya, who may well regard this adventure as a violation of a holy site of their ancestors.

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In the slideshow in the article, it says this:

> The local Maya still revere the caves, and shamans make special offerings to the spirit guardians of Balamku and ask for the protection of the scientists who are exploring it.

Seems they're respecting and coordinating with the local living Maya.

thank you for pointing that out to me. I did not look through slides.

My undergraduate education was in archeology at UCLA. I did an honors thesis analyzing Classic Period Mayan burial remains. I've also excavated Mayan sites in Belize. I stand by what I said, despite perverse HN downvotes.

It's good that you have knowledge to contribute here. And I understand how provocative downvotes can be. Nevertheless, please follow the site guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html). That's actually just why we have that guideline.

Well put, I second this!

Do you own your ancestors?

Clarify what you mean and I might answer the question.

Your previous answer seems to presume that there are groups of people to whom other groups of people are ancestors, and the first have special rights over anything that happens to the artifacts/remains of the second, I was trying to break down how you think about that. Eg. how do you identify the first and second groups unambiguously, and what sort of rights and limits apply.

What’s so puzzling? It’s a Mayan site so it belongs to the Mayans. They have full rights, even if that means preventing the study of it to non-Mayan archeologists. Simple.

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