Laser-scanning technology reveals that the Cambodian lost city of Mahendraparvata, dating back to a time before Angkor Wat, was much more extensive than previously thought. The latest word about the high-tech hunt for hidden ruins came over the weekend in an on-the-scene report from Australia's Fairfax Media.

Archaeologists have known about the Hindu-Buddhist-influenced city, situated about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of the better-known Angkor Wat temple complex, for decades. Some of the ruins rank among the tourist attractions on the holy Khmer mountain known as Phnom Kulen ("Mountain of the Lychees"). However, experts weren't sure how extensive the site was ... until now.

"We're talking about a city that is more than 1,000 years old and is all underground. If you didn't know, you might think it's natural," Stephane De Greefe, the archaeological project's lead cartographer, told Cambodia Daily. 

The Khmer Archaeology Lidar Consortium set up an aerial survey of the Mahendraparvata site and its surroundings, using a technique known as lidar (short for "light detection and ranging"). The process involves flying an instrument-equipped helicopter over the area, bouncing pulses of laser light off the ground below, and then analyzing the scattered light readings to produce a 3-D map of the terrain beneath the jungle's vegetation.

Billions of data points and about 5,000 digital photographs were collected during a week's worth of aerial surveys, taking in an area amounting to 143 square miles (370 square kilometers).

'Eureka moment'
University of Sydney archaeologist Damian Evans told Fairfax Media that seeing the map displayed on a computer screen marked the "eureka moment" in a years-long search. The readings revealed dozens of temple sites, hundreds of mysterious mounds that may represent burial sites, and traces of canals and roads criss-crossing the area.

An on-the-ground expedition followed, during which the team came across two temple sites that may still be intact, and a cave with centuries-old carvings that may have been a refuge for hermits during the Angkor period.

Phnom Kulen served as a center of the Angkor civilization between the ninth and the 16th centuries. Tradition has it that Mahendraparvata was where the founder of the Khmer Empire, Jayavarman II, celebrated his people's freedom from Javanese control in the year 802. Angkor Wat was built nearby more than 300 years later.

How a city got lost
Why did Mahendraparvata fade away? "We see from the imagery that the landscape was completely devoid of vegetation" at some point during the site's history, Evans told Fairfax Media's Lindsay Murdoch. "One theory we are looking at is that the severe environmental impact of deforestation and the dependence on water management led to the demise of the civilization. ... Perhaps it became too successful to the point of becoming unmanageable."

Some reports have made it sound as if Mahendraparvata was only now being discovered, but Evans told Cambodia Daily that the real point behind the research has to do with how lidar resolved the debate over the lost city's extent. Lidar surveys are becoming a routine part of "lost city" quests — including the discovery of centuries-old ruins in Honduras that may be linked to the legendary city of Ciudad Blanca, and an extensive survey of Caracol, a Maya center in Belize.

Details about the Cambodian project are to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Update for 6:30 p.m. ET June 17: The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences just sent journalists a pre-publication draft of the paper submitted by Evans and his colleagues — suggesting that Mahendraparvata as well as Angkor Wat were part of a vast urban network.

"We identify an entire, previously undocumented, formally planned urban landscape into which the major temples such as Angkor Wat were integrated," the researchers write. "Beyond these newly identified urban landscapes, the lidar data reveal anthropogenic changes to the landscape on a vast scale, and lend further weight to an emerging consensus that infrastructural complexity, unsustainable modes of subsistence and climate variation were crucial factors in the decline of the classical Khmer civilization."

The researchers say their mapping reveals a pattern of regular "city blocks," within which mounds and ponds were built to create temple precincts. Such cityscapes existed in ancient Angkor as well as the Phnom Kulen region and another area farther northeast, known as Koh Ker.

"These 'urban temples' are not isolated; rather, they are nodes in an increasingly concentrated medieval cityscape," they said.

Evans et al. / PNAS

A map of northwest Cambodia provides an overview of the areas where lidar imagery was acquired, indicated with yellow shading. The background data is from NASA's Shuttle Radar Topography Mission.

Evans et al. / PNAS

Lidar imagery shows the central area of Angkor, with the "walled city" of Angkor Thom above Angkor Wat. Red lines indicate post-medieval features, including roads and canals. The other features are from the Angkor era.

The paper echoes Evans' comments about the potential environmental roots of the Khmer Empire's decline: "The archaeological record shows that episodes of failure were commonplace within the hydraulic infrastructure within the medieval period. ... For several centuries at Angkor, episodic renovation of the water management system offered a series of provisional solutions that were adequate for mitigating the risk of low rainfall on an annual scale. Eventually, however, the civilization was confronted with decadal-scale megadroughts in the 14th and 15th centuries."

The researchers speculate that those megadroughts triggered the doom of Cambodia's megacities. In that, they see a parallel to the classic Maya civilization, which is thought to have gone into decline due to a similar pattern of deforestation and drought. And they include a chilling observation about our own era, attributed to University of Sydney archaeologist Roland Fletcher: "If the infrastructure of low-density cities is inherently liable to be or to become a constraint on the viability of a city’s daily life, then this is an issue of some serious consequence for our engagement with a future of giant, low-density cities."

More about lost cities:

• Scientists share images of Honduran ruins
• Atlantis thought to be found off Spanish coast
• Lost pyramids spotted by space scientists
• Gallery: Seven tales of cities lost and found

The study to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is titled "Uncovering Archaeological Landscapes at Angkor Using Lidar." In addition to Evans, Fletcher and De Greef, the authors include Christophe Pottier, Jean-Baptiste Chevance, Dominique Soutif, Boun Suy Tan, Sokrithy Im, Darith Ea, Tina Tin, Samnang Kim, Christopher Cromarty, Kasper Hanus, Pierre Baty, Robert Kuszinger, Ichita Shimoda and Glenn Boornazian.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

This story was originally published on Mon Jun 17, 2013 3:45 PM EDT

Dan Balilty / AP

A damaged fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls lies in Israel's scriptural repository.

For years, fragments from the 2,000-year-old Dead Sea Scrolls have been sold quietly to evangelical Christian collectors and institutions in the United States — even though Israel regards those sales as illegal. Now the transactions, and the frictions associated with them, have come under an international spotlight.

One big reason is that the scraps are so valuable, in financial as well as archaeological terms. The reported price tags for the fragments range up to $35 million or more. All those texts could shed new light on the origins of Jewish scriptures, ranging from Genesis and other books of the Bible to the messianic rules that were laid down by the mysterious community behind the scrolls.

"They are really small pieces, but they are important because you may have two or three lines that may have not been found anywhere else. And suddenly it adds a lot to the history of the Dead Sea Scrolls. There is at least one rather amazing discovery in one of them,"  Jerry Pattengale, who oversees 12 fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the privately held Green Collection, recently told The Associated Press.

Pattengale declined to discuss the discovery further, saying that he had to wait until the finding was published.

Many of the fragments sold on the private market come from William Kando, a Palestinian Christian whose family has held onto a collection of pieces from the Dead Sea Scrolls for decades. Kando's father, Khalil Eskander Shahin, was a Bethlehem cobbler and antiquities dealer who bought and sold some of the Dead Sea Scrolls after the initial discovery by Bedouin shepherds in 1946.

During the 1967 Middle East War, Israel seized thousands of scroll fragments that were held in east Jerusalem. Under pressure from Israeli authorities, Shahin (who came to be known by his nickname, "Kando") sold the Israelis a 26.7-foot-long (8.15-meter-long) scroll of parchment that was hidden in a shoebox beneath a floor tile in his bedroom. That manuscript, which describes the construction and operation of an idealized Jewish Temple, is known worldwide as the Temple Scroll.

Dan Balilty / AP

An Israel Antiquities Authority employee works on fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Jerusalem on May 10. Written mostly on animal skin parchment about 2,000 years ago, the manuscripts are the earliest copies of the Hebrew Bible ever found, and the oldest written evidence of the roots of Judaism and Christianity in the Holy Land.

Dan Balilty / AP

Lena Libman, right, head of the Israel Antiquities Authority's Dead Sea Scrolls Conservation Lab, holds fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls in Jerusalem.

Dan Balilty / AP

Lena Libman, head of the Israel Antiquities Authority's Dead Sea Scrolls Conservation Lab, holds up fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Many of the fragments are the size of postage stamps.

Dan Balilty / AP

A worker with the Israel Antiquities Authority photographs pieces from the Dead Sea Scrolls in Jerusalem.

The Christian connection
The elder Kando had many more fragments hidden away, and those were eventually transferred to Switzerland, his son told AP. After the father's death in 1993, the sons began selling off the family collection. Through a series of sales, fragments ended up in the hands of such institutions as Azusa Pacific University, an evangelical Christian college near Los Angeles; and Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas.

Randall Price, founder and president of the Texas-based World of the Bible Ministries and a professor at Liberty University in Virginia, said he met with William Kando in 2010 and discussed the sales of the fragments. "He is very insistent that the remaining fragments go to institutions that deal with the Bible so that they can be shared with Christian believers," Price wrote afterward.

Kando told AP that he offered to sell the remaining fragments in the family's collection to institutions in Israel, including the government's antiquities authority — but that they couldn't afford to buy them.

"If anyone is interested, we are ready to sell," he said. "These are the most important things in the world."

The Genesis fragment
Israeli authorities are reportedly interested in one scrap in particular: a well-preserved, butterfly-shaped fragment of Genesis that's about the size of a cereal box. The manuscript, which was recently exhibited at the Fort Worth seminary, includes passages that tell the story of Joseph and his "coat of many colors." Price said that fragment was valued at $35 million or more, but Kando told AP that his family is not participating in any new negotiations for scroll sales. He said the Genesis fragment and the other scrolls that remain in the family's possession are currently locked away in a Swiss safe-deposit box.

The Israeli government, meanwhile, sees the scrolls and other ancient Jewish texts as cultural treasures — and in recent years, authorities have clamped down on what they regard as illegal sales. More than 10,000 fragments of the scrolls are being studied in a climate-controlled, government-operated lab in Jerusalem. The Israel Antiquities Authority wants to see Kando's fragments added to that collection — but says that his asking price is too high. It's threatening to seek the seizure of any pieces that hit the market.

"I told Kando many years ago, as far as I'm concerned, he can die with those scrolls," Amir Ganor, head of the authority's anti-looting squad, told AP. "The scrolls' only address is the State of Israel."

More about the Dead Sea Scrolls:

• Google puts Dead Sea Scrolls online
• Is mystery of scrolls' authorship solved?
• Gallery: 8 Jewish archaeological finds

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

UTL Scientific

Readings from a laser-mapping system were combined to produce a 3-D map of the Honduran rain forest, and then the vegetation was virtually lifted up from the scene to reveal the ruins of a circular structure.

A high-tech team of scientists and filmmakers shared pictures of what appears to have been a centuries-old civilization in Honduras, one year after they used laser-mapping technology to identify traces of structures in the thick jungle.

The square-shaped and rounded structures, seen in computerized elevation maps of a rugged rain forest, may have been the last vestiges of pyramids, palaces and houses in a fabled settlement known as "la Ciudad Blanca," or the White City.

Tales of Ciudad Blanca have circulated since at least 1526, when the Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortez told King Charles V about a mysterious province called Xucutaco that "must exceed Mexico in riches and equal it in the great size of the towns, the multitude of people and the government thereof." Many explorers have gone in search of the vanished city, driving deep into some of Honduras' roughest and most inaccessible rain forests. Neither riches nor ruins were found.

Nevertheless, the sagas inspired documentary filmmaker Steve Elkins to mount yet another search, this time using an aerial mapping technology known as light detection and ranging, or lidar.

How lidar works
An airplane equipped with the lidar mapping apparatus can bounce laser light off the terrain below, and then gather millions of the reflected readings. Those readings can be interpreted by high-powered software that can produce 3-D maps with an elevation resolution of less than 4 inches (10 centimeters). Such maps can even be "filtered" to peel back the dense vegetation and see the contours of the land below. Using lidar, archaeologists can conduct land surveys that might have required months or years to do on the ground.

"We use lidar to pinpoint where human structures are by looking for linear shapes and rectangles. Nature doesn't work in straight lines," Colorado State University's Stephen Leisz, a member of UTL Scientific's archaeological team, said in a statement from the American Geophysical Union.

UTL / Colorado State University

The left image shows a map derived from lidar readings of rainforest terrain. The readings associated with vegetation have been removed to create the right image, which shows the outlines of a square structure.

UTL Scientific

This lidar focuses on a formation in Honduras' Mosquitia rain forest known as "Structure B."

Archaeologists once thought the rain forests of Central and South America were too rugged to allow for large, highly organized communities like the one described by Cortez. But over the past decade or so, researchers have found evidence to argue that the forests were once much more highly managed by native populations. The idea that the ancient peoples of the Americas created complex cities and roadways in what are now wild forests no longer seems as radical as it once did. That's what inspired Elkins and his colleagues to go ahead with their search.

An 'easy' discovery
A year ago, the team mapped about 60 square miles (160 square kilometers) of Honduras' Mosquitia rain forest, and sent the data back to University of Houston engineer Bill Carter. Carter, who works with the National Science Foundation's National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping, identified the regular outlines of artificial structures after just a few minutes of analysis.

"It was kind of surprising how easy it was to find them," Carter told The New Yorker.

It took months more to map hundreds of ruins at several sites in the target area. On Wednesday, Elkins and his team shared some their images to fellow researchers during a session at a geophysical science conference in Cancun, Mexico, organized by the AGU. The laser images unveiled this week illustrate how structures could be identified beneath the vegetation, but do not show the settlements in a wider context.

"We can't show the overall place because we'd like to protect the site" from treasure hunters and looters, Elkins explained in the AGU's news release.

He said that the UTL Scientific team plans to explore the structures on the ground later this year. (UTL stands for "Under the Lidar".) Eventually, Elkins and fellow filmmaker Bill Benenson, who is underwriting the expedition, plan to produce a documentary about the latest search for Ciudad Blanca.

More about lost cities:

• How lasers helped spot lost city in Honduras
• Lost city of Atlantis may lie off Spain's coast
• Gallery: Seven tales of cities lost and found

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the NBC News Science Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with NBCNews.com's stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Experts have provided the grisly goods to back up 17th-century accounts of cannibalism during the Jamestown colony's "starving time" — including a skull that shows signs of being chopped at and pried apart.

"Our team has discovered partial human remains before, but the location of the discovery, visible damage to the skull and marks on the bones immediately made us realize this finding was unusual," Bill Kelso, chief archaeologist of the Jamestown Rediscovery Project in Virginia, said in a news release issued Wednesday. Specimens from the Jamestown site were laid out during a Washington news conference.

Written accounts described acts of cannibalism during the winter of 1609-1610, when sickness, starvation and attacks from native tribes in the area put the two-year-old Virginia settlement to its sternest test. Scores of the colonists who crowded inside James Fort died that winter. One of the accounts described a husband who killed his pregnant wife and salted her flesh for storage and consumption. (The husband was executed for the crime.)

There was no reason to doubt the accounts, but in the course of their decades-long excavation, archaeologists were on the lookout for remains that might tell more of the story behind Jamestown's hardships. They found the evidence in the form of a partial human skull and other bones lying in a 17th-century trash deposit. Kelso enlisted the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History to sort out the clues. Colonial Williamsburg and Preservation Virginia helped provide historical context.

'Jane of Jamestown'
Based on an analysis of the bones — including the skull and its teeth, as well as the size of a tibia and bone growth in a knee joint — experts determined that the remains came from a 14-year-old female, nicknamed "Jane." The isotopic distribution of elements in the bones suggested that she consumed a European diet of wheat and meat.

Carolyn Kaster / AP

Doug Owsley, division head for physical anthropology at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History, displays the skull and a facial reconstruction for "Jane of Jamestown" during a news conference at the museum in Washington on Wednesday.

Carolyn Kaster / AP

Strike marks are seen on the skull of "Jane of Jamestown" at the National Museum of Natural History.

The grisliest findings were reflected in the wounds to the head: The chief of the museum's division of physical anthropology, Douglas Owsley, identified chops to the forehead and the back of the cranium to open the head. Knife cuts on the jaw and the cheekbone could have been made during removal of the flesh. Other markings suggest that the head's left side was punctured and pried apart.

The scientists' conclusion: Jane was butchered for her meat.

"She was almost certainly dead when she was cannibalized," Jim Horn, Colonial Williamsburg's vice president of research and historical interpretation, told NBC News. "The way the cuts are configured on the skull points to the fact that she was dead. if she was not, there would have been more signs of a struggle, and the marks would have been more irregular."

Based on the bone analysis and the disposition of the remains at the site, researchers believe Jane arrived in Jamestown in August 1609, just months before the crisis. She might have been a maidservant, or the daughter of a colonist. Chances are that she died in January or February of 1610, from either sickness or starvation, Horn said.

"The 'starving time' was brought about by a trifecta of disasters: disease, a serious shortage of provisions, and a full-scale siege by the Powhatans that cut off Jamestown from outside relief," he said in Wednesday's news release. "Survival cannibalism was a last resort; a desperate means of prolonging life at a time when the settlement teetered on the brink of extinction."

When Lord De La Warr and his relief party arrived in Jamestown in the spring of 1610, he ordered the "cleansing" of the ruined settlement. "It must have looked like a charnel house when he arrived," Horn said. That's probably how Jane's remains came to be deposited amid a trash heap in an abandoned cellar, he said.

Jane's legacy
Jamestown went on to become the Virginia Colony's capital from 1619 to 1699. In the late 17th century, the settlement was devastated by a series of fires. At the dawn of the 18th century, Virginia's capital was moved to Williamsburg, and old Jamestown faded away. Decades later, the descendants of Jamestown's settlers played their part in the creation of the United States of America.

Researchers have not matched up Jane's bones with a specific member of the Jamestown colony, and although DNA samples have been saved for future analysis, they say there's little hope of identifying modern relatives for comparative genetic testing. But the excavation continues, and Jane's remains provide graphic evidence of Jamestown's desperation.

Horn acknowledges that the story of Jane has a grisly fascination to it, but he says there's a broader significance as well. "It revolves around what it took to successfully establish European colonies in the New World," he told NBC News. "In the early phase of European colonization of the Americas, most colonies actually failed. They failed for the kinds of reasons that we discovered at Jamestown. ... Most colonies lasted no more than six to 12 months. What we're looking in the case of Jamestown is a remarkable story of survival and endurance."

More about Jamestown:

• 400-year-old seeds found in Jamestown
• 'New World' shows off a new Jamestown
• Colonial armor found in Jamestown pit

An exhibition that tells the story of Jane and the survival of Jamestown, England's first permanent settlement in America, is due to open May 3 at Historic Jamestowne in Virginia. Jane's bones will be put on exhibit temporarily, and eventually they will be "respectfully reinterred," Horn said. The facility has also produced a book and DVD on the subject, titled "Jane." However, details of the discovery have not yet been published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Takeshi Inomata

Workers stand on Platform A-24 at the Ceibal archaeological site in Guatemala. Archaeologists say the dig revealed the oldest monumental construction in the Maya lowlands.

Archaeologists say that ceremonial structures unearthed in Guatemala are centuries older than they expected — and that the findings point to new theories for the rise of Maya culture.

"The origin of Maya civilization was more complex than previously thought," the University of Arizona's Takeshi Inomata, lead researcher for a study appearing in this week's issue of the journal Science, told reporters on Thursday. Even though all this happened 3,000 years ago, the findings could provide fresh insights about social change in general, he said.

The Maya had their heyday in Mexico and Central America between the year 250 and 900, but the roots of their culture go much farther back. There are several schools of thought about how their distinctive culture arose: Some archaeologists say the central features of Maya cultural life, including grand ceremonies centered on broad plazas and pyramids, were borrowed from Mexico's older Olmec civilization. Others say those features arose internally, without much outside influence.

Inomata said the excavations at Ceibal, in Guatemala's Maya lowlands, suggest a more complicated scenario. Over the course of seven years, he and his colleagues dug down more than 50 feet, analyzed the layers of sediment, and did scores of radiocarbon-dating tests to trace the evolution of Ceibal's structures. They concluded that Ceibal's Maya rulers started building ceremonial plazas and platforms around 1000 B.C., and had turned those structures into a central pyramid and plaza by 800 B.C. 

That would mean Ceibal's residents were developing the architectural and religious hallmarks of Maya society before the first appearance of those hallmarks in Olmec society, at La Venta, hundreds of miles away on Mexico's Gulf Coast. La Venta's ceremonial structures have been dated to about 800 B.C.

Science / AAAS

Ceibal lies in Guatemala's Maya lowlands. The Olmec centers of San Lorenzo and La Venta were hundreds of miles away, in Mexico. Researchers say Ceibal also was influenced by other communities in central Chiapas and along the Pacific coast.

Other Maya settlements were building such structures around that same time, although they weren't as developed as Ceibal's. A wide spectrum of Mesoamerican communities — for example, settlements in central Chiapas and those on the southern Pacific coast — may have had a lot of important interactions with Ceibal and other communities in the Maya lowland during this period, Inomata said.

He stressed that the Olmec almost certainly influenced Maya culture during the centuries that predated Ceibal's rise. For example, there's evidence that an Olmec center near San Lorenzo was dominant well before Ceibal's residents began building their ritual structurs. However, Inomata said, "San Lorenzo didn't have the kind of ceremonial complexes that we're talking about."

The period from 1000 and 800 B.C. appears to have been a key turning point for Maya culture. There may have been a "power vacuum" between the fall of San Lorenzo and the rise of La Venta that gave early Maya communities the opportunity to experiment and develop cultural innovations, Inomata said. "We are looking at major change in this period, and that happened really in the absence of a very strong Olmec center," he told reporters.

The construction of Ceibal's ceremonial complexes would have required the participation of the whole community, said the University of Arizona's Daniela Triadan, who is a co-author of the Science paper as well as Inomata's wife. "Some people might already have had a special position in the community, and they were most certainly people with specialized ritual knowledge. This indicates that the transition from a mobile hunter-gatherer and horticultural lifestyle to permanently settled agriculturalists was rapid," she said.

What drove that rapid change? The research team is still looking into potential environmental factors, but Inomata speculated that the cultivation of maize — that is, corn — may have been decisive. "There may have been a major increase in maize production, which may have been a threshold in terms of the development of cultural elements," he said.

"This is not just a study about this specific civilization," Inomata told reporters. "We also want to think about how human societies change, and how human civilization developed. What we are seeing here is that major renovation and change can happen through the interaction of various groups. It doesn't have to come from powerful, major political centers. That's one important implication that we are getting."

More about the Olmec and the Maya:

• Olmec influence stretched hundreds of miles
• Maya doom teaches climate lesson
• Cosmic Log archive on Maya culture

In addition to Inomata and Triadan, the authors of "Early Ceremonial Constructions at Ceibal, Guatemala, and the Origins of Lowland Maya Civilization" include Kazuo Aoyama, Victor Castillo and Hitoshi Yonenobu.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

A diminutive robot helped researchers make a substantial discovery during preliminary tests conducted in a tunnel running under the Temple of Quetzalcoatl at the archaeological site of Teotihuacan, the team said Monday.

The team expected to find only one chamber in the last section of the tunnel — but instead, they found three, team leader Sergio Gomez said in a report published by the Mexican newspaper El Universal. The chambers are thought to have been used by Teotihuacan's rulers roughly 2,000 years ago for royal ceremonies or burials, but they're so choked with mud and rubble that they haven't been explored in modern times.

Henry Romero / Reuters

A worker from the National Institute of Anthropology and History walks next to a robot used to explore ruins at the entrance of a tunnel in the archaeological area of the Quetzalcoatl Temple, near the Pyramid of the Sun at the Teotihuacan archaeological site.

That's where the 3-foot-long (1-meter-long) robot known as Tlaloc II-TC comes in: The robot is designed to drive through the tight spaces leading to the back of the tunnel beneath the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, also known as the Temple of the Feathered Serpent. It's equipped with a video camera as well as mechanical arms to clear obstacles.

The current project follows up on an earlier round of robotic exploration by Tlaloc II-TC's predecessor, Tlaloc I, in 2010. (Tlaloc was the Aztec god of rain.)

In 2010, Gomez said there was a "high possibility that in this place, in the central chamber, we can find the remains of those who ruled Teotihuacan." The city was once an influential center of Mesoamerican culture, but little is known about its rulers. Archaeologists have not yet found any depictions of a ruler, or any tomb of a monarch.

El Universal quoted Gomez as saying that the configuration of the space beneath the temple appears to be similar to that of the tunnel running beneath Teotihuacan's Pyramid of the Sun, where four chambers were explored in the 1970s. About 76 meters (250 feet) of the Quetzalcoatl tunnel have already been uncovered, leaving 30 meters (100 feet) or so in the last section. After a round of robotic reconnaissance, archaeologists intend to clear out that section for exploration.

Henry Romero / Reuters

Visitors look on at the archaeological area of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl, near the Pyramid of the Sun at the Teotihuacan archaeological site, about 60 kilometesr (37 miles) north of Mexico City.

Henry Romero / Reuters

Archaeologist Sergio Gomez from the National Institute of Anthropology and History speaks to the media during a news conference in the archaeological area of the Temple of Quetzalcoatl on Monday. A remote-controlled robot has relayed back video images of what appears to be three ancient chambers beneath the temple.

More about Mexican archaeology:

• Google maps ancient Mexican ruins
• Ancient Mexico's dead were given makeovers
• All about Teotihuacan on NBCNews.com

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Egypt SCA via AP

This hieroglyphic papyrus was among scores of ancient documents found at Wadi al-Jarf in Egypt.

Archaeologists have stumbled upon what is thought to be the most ancient harbor ever found in Egypt, along with the country's oldest collection of papyrus documents, Egyptian authorities say.

The harbor goes back 4,500 years, to the days of the Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops) in the Fourth Dynasty, the Egypt State Information Service reported on Friday. The Great Pyramid of Giza serves as the tomb of Khufu, who died around 2566 B.C.

The harbor was built on the Red Sea shore in the Wadi al-Jarf area, 112 miles (180 kilometers) south of Suez. The find was made by a French-Egyptian mission from the French Institute for Archaeological Studies, according to Friday's dispatch. Discovery News quoted the mission's director, Pierre Tallet of the University of Paris-Sorbonne, as saying that the site "predates by more than 1,000 years any other port structure known in the world." 

The harbor is considered one of the most important commercial ports of ancient Egypt, where trips to export copper and other minerals from the Sinai Peninsula were launched. Egyptian authorities said the archaeologists found a variety of docks, as well as a collection of carved stone anchors.

The team also unearthed a collection of 40 papyri that detailed the daily lives of ancient Egyptians during the 27th year of Khufu's reign, said Egypt's antiquities minister, Mohamed Ibrahim. "These are the oldest papyri ever found in Egypt," he said. Among the subjects reportedly covered were the arrangements for getting bread and beer to the workers heading out from the port.

One papyrus is said to detail the daily activities of an official named Merrer, who was involved in building the Great Pyramid.

"He mainly reported about his many trips to the Turah limestone quarry to fetch block for the building of the pyramid," Tallet told Discovery News. "Although we will not learn anything new about the construction of the Cheops monument, this diary provides for the first time an insight on this matter."

Egypt SCA via AP

Fragments of papyri from Wadi al-Jarf shed light on life in ancient Egypt.

More about Egyptian finds:

• Bones, jars found in 3,000-year-old tombs
• Egyptian temple holds ancient shoes
• Cosmic Log archive on Egypt

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

The fight over the final disposition of King Richard III's 528-year-old remains has escalated to the point that people are sending hate mail to York's cathedral, the police are being called in to investigate, and a member of Parliament is pleading with the rivals to avoid sparking another "War of the Roses."

On strictly legal grounds, the matter was resolved even before the remains were unearthed in a parking lot near Leicester Cathedral last year. Britain's Justice Ministry granted researchers from the University of Leicester a license to conduct the excavation there and to determine the disposition of any human remains found there.

Last month, the researchers announced that a skeleton found at the site belonged to Richard III, based on DNA tests. The discovery resolved a longstanding mystery over what happened to Richard's remains after his death in the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. That battle marked a turning point in the Wars of the Roses, a decades-long contest between the houses of Lancaster and York for the English throne. 

Richard III has gotten a bad rap through the centuries — in part because William Shakespeare's play about the monarch cast him as a hunchbacked villain. But historians say he wasn't that terrible of a guy, and since last month's announcement, Richard III's fans have been arguing over whether he should be reburied in Leicester, where he was found; in York, where he had family ties; or in London's Westminster Abbey, the resting place for many of England's kings.

The University of Leicester is already working to arrange a burial at Leicester Cathedral next year, but some of the opponents of that plan — including nine descendants of Richard III's siblings — have taken up York's case. The arguments are apparently getting uglier: Hugh Bayley, a member of Parliament representing York Central, said that York Minster's dean, Vivienne Faull, has received some letters "so extreme that she has referred the correspondence to the police."

Faull was dean of Leicester Cathedral before coming to York, and she has shied away from contesting Leicester's claim to the remains. "It has been suggested that opponents have accused her of bias because of her previous links to Leicester Cathedral," The Telegraph reported.

The Yorkshire Post quoted a spokesman for the Dean and Chapter of York as confirming that "a small number" of the letters relating to the fuss over Richard III's remains have been abusive. "These have been passed to the Minster Police, and they continue to monitor the situation closely," the spokesman was quoted as saying.

The British government's current view is that Richard III's final disposition is up to the University of Leicester, but during Tuesday's speech in the House of Commons, Bayley urged the government to establish an independent commission to decide the matter. In the meantime, he called for what Shakespeare might have termed "some little pause" in the battle. 

“I would say to everybody — calm down," Bayley said. "Let us all respect the memory of a former king of our country, and let us discuss, in a dignified and sober way, where his remains should finally be put to rest. We do not want to reignite the Wars of the Roses.”

More about Richard III:

• Study suggests Richard III spoke with a lilt
• King Richard III's face revealed after 500 years
• Richard III's 'discovery' was reported in 1935, too

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Egypt Ministry of Antiquities

A worker studies one of the funerary jars found inside a recently discovered burial chamber in Luxor.

Archaeologists say they have discovered a string of 3,000-year-old rock tombs in the Egyptian city of Luxor, containing the remains of wooden coffins, skeletons, furniture and canopic jars.

The tombs were dug within the funerary temple of Pharaoh Amenhotep II, who reigned from 1427 to 1401 B.C. during Egypt's 18th Dynasty. However, the newfound tombs appear to be part of a more recent cemetery. In Thursday's announcement of the discovery, Egyptian Antiquities Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said they date back to the beginning of a transitional period that lasted from 1075 to 664 B.C.

Ibrahim said a team led by Italian archaeologist Angelo Sesana made the discovery while cleaning up the site in the course of an excavation at Amenhotep II's temple, on the west bank of the Nile River.

"When we began digging, the area was only a mound of debris. We were in no way certain of what we would find." Sesana told the Italian news service ANSA.

Sesana, who has led excavations within the temple's ruins for 15 years, voiced excitement over the find: "It moves you like little else to bring back to life someone who sought immortality 4,000 years ago."

Each of the tombs consists of a pit that leads to a burial chamber. The wooden coffins found within the chambers bore decorations in red and black ink, and contained the remains of skeletons, Ibrahim said. Mansour Barek, the antiquities supervisor at Luxor, said the archaeologists found 12 canopic jars — some made of limestone, and others made of fired clay. Such jars were used in ancient Egypt to preserve the internal organs of the dead.

Barek said the lids of the jars were in the shape of the four sons of the Egyptian god Horus: Imsety, with a human head, the spirit who protects the liver; Hapi, a baboon-headed spirit responsible for the lungs; the jackal-headed Duamutef, who guards the stomach; and falcon-headed Qebehsenuef, who guards the intestines.

The discovery demonstrates that Amenhotep II's temple continued to be seen as an important site many years after the pharaoh's death, Ibrahim told Egypt's Ahram Online. Sesana said some of the canopic jars came from the tomb of an unidentified woman — and Egyptologist Wafaa El Saddik told the BBC that the jars were of good quality, suggesting that the tombs belonged to wealthy people. 

The antiquities ministry said the artifacts were transferred to storage in Luxor for maintenance and restoration, in preparation for museum display.

Egypt Ministry of Antiquities

Four canopic jars are sculpted to represent spirits who guard the internal organs of the dead.

More about Egyptian archaeology:

• Egypt's oldest carvings of pharaoh found
• Egypt's largest sarcophagus is fit for a king
• 16 severed hands found in Egypt — all rights

NBC News' Taha Belal contributed to this report from Cairo.

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Long-ago lore still has the power to ignite modern-day controversies: Witness the tempests that were stirred up this year over the Maya calendar, the purported "Gospel of Jesus' Wife," a bone box linked to early Christians, a disputed dinosaur skeleton and the plan to clone a woolly mammoth.

It turned out that there was much more to each of these cases than met the eye. Or sometimes much less. Either way, we'll be hearing more about ancient mysteries in the year to come. Here's a status report on six of 2012's most controversial mysteries (and missteps) in the realms of archaeology, anthropology and paleontology.

Gospel of Jesus' Wife: Harvard historian Karen King stirred up a sensation in September with the unveiling of a papyrus that apparently quotes Jesus talking about "my wife." The claims quickly sparked questions about the murky origins of the papyrus, and the Vatican suggested that the controversial text was faked. Most other experts on textual analysis were similarly skeptical.

The Harvard Theological Review withdrew plans to publish a scholarly article about the papyrus in its January issue, and this month a spokesman for the journal said tests to authenticate the document were not yet complete. The Smithsonian Channel has delayed broadcasting a documentary on the find, pending further testing. Status: In limbo.

The Jonah box: In February, researchers announced that they used a camera-equipped robotic arm to study an ossuary, or funerary bone box, within a sealed underground tomb in Jerusalem. They said the box was engraved with a picture of a fish, as well as allusions to "Jonah" and resurrection. Their conclusion was that the inscriptions served as evidence that early Christians were buried in the tomb — but skeptics disputed that interpretation. Did the picture really show a fish, or was it an upside-down tower, or an urn? The controversy was stoked by the fact that the "Jonah box" team was also behind the even more hotly debated "Jesus Tomb" project a couple of years earlier.

Months later, the findings are still in dispute. One of the researchers behind the find is James Tabor, a religious studies professor at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.  He says some experts have told him privately that they agree with his interpretation, but they're reluctant to speak out because of the acrimony surrounding the original reports. One expert who has voiced cautious support for the "Jonah and the fish" interpretation is Princeton Theological Seminary's James Charlesworth. (That support, too, has come under criticism.) Tabor acknowledges that more evidence is needed. "What we really need to do is enter the tomb and bring those ossuaries out. ... But that would have to be maybe next year," he said today. Status: In limbo.

Maya calendar: 2012's most publicized ancient mystery has to do with the Maya calendar, and the fact that Dec. 21 apparently marked the end of a series of cycles — including the 394-year baktun cycle as well as the 5,126-year "cycle of creation." Somehow, those calendrical cycles got mixed up with worries about the end of the world. Did the ancient Maya really think the cosmos would blink out of existence when the calendar ended? And if they did, why should we believe them?

Nothing happened on Dec. 21, other than some New Age-style celebrations of the new age. But the controversy did attract some extra attention for archaeological finds — including the discovery of a calendar workshop that clearly referred to dates beyond 2012, and an inscription that refers to the end of a calendar cycle in 2012, but not the end of the world. Status: Case closed.

Heritage Auctions via Reuters

An 8-foot-tall dinosaur skeleton is tied up in federal court proceedings.

Disputed dinosaur: You could argue that the world's hottest dinosaur fossil is currently in federal custody in New York. The 24-foot-long skeleton, nicknamed Ty, was said to come from a tyrannosaur-like species known as Tarbosaurus bataar. Fossil dealer Eric Prokopi sold it for more than $1 million in May, but experts claimed that the bones must have been smuggled out of Mongolia years earlier. Federal authorities seized the skeleton and filed criminal charges against Prokopi.

The civil and criminal proceedings yielded some surprises: Prokopi's lawyers said the skeleton was assembled from bones that were gathered up from various sources, leading to a new nickname: "Franken-saurus." Government prosecutors, meanwhile, said they have photos and forms to back up their claims that the dealer was "a participant in the black market" in Mongolia. Just today, Prokopi pleaded guilty to the smuggling charges and agreed to give up the dinosaur skeleton. That means Ty will eventually be sent back to Mongolia. Prokopi could be sentenced to up to 17 years in prison, but today's plea may win him leniency from the court. Status: Case essentially closed.

Pyramids on Google Earth: Researcher Angela Micol made a splash in August with claims that Google Earth imagery appeared to show pyramid-type structures in the Egyptian desert. She suggested that these were previously unknown sites — but it turns out that archaeologists have known about them for decades, and have studied them up close. The most intriguing formations are natural mounds, topped by structures that may have served as watchtowers and/or wells, said Italian Egyptologist Paola Davoli.

Another formation that Micol saw in the imagery is thought to be an oddly shaped natural butte. Micol told me in September that she was working with contacts in Egypt to get a closer look, but there haven't been any new revelations lately. Status: Case close to being closed.

Cloning a woolly mammoth: Is it really possible to bring the woolly mammoth back to life, tens of thousands of years after the species went extinct? It's highly doubtful, but Korean and Russian researchers are still trying. The project, unveiled in March, would involve recovering viable cells from a mammoth specimen pulled from the Siberian permafrost, implanting the cells' genetic material into an elephant egg, creating a cloned embryo, then transferring the embryo to an elephant womb for gestation. Each of those steps is fraught with difficulty — and the South Korea scientist in charge of the project is none other than Hwang Woo-Suk, who was disgraced several years ago in a scandal surrounding faked cloning results.

Last month, The Siberian Times reported that samples of mammoth bone marrow, hair, muscles and fat tissue were taken from Yakutsk to Seoul, to find out whether living cells could be extracted. Sources at the lab in Seoul did not respond to phone or email inquiries this week, but even if the cells turn out to be viable, don't expect to see a mammoth resurrection anytime soon. Russian researcher Semyon Grigoriev said it would be "years before we learn to choose the suitable cells or to re-create an extinct DNA molecule." Status: Case not yet closed. Or should that be, "not yet cloned"?

Dinosaurs ... and more: Science writer Brian Switek (a.k.a. @Laelaps) rounded up the year's top stories in paleontology at his "Dinosaur Tracking" blog, just before shifting over to Phenomena, National Geographic's new online science salon. In an email, he highlighted a few of his favorite stories:

"I was particularly interested by Nyasasaurus (confirming an earlier origin for dinosaurs), Yutyrannus (showing that feathers were not just for small dinosaurs) and mammal bones adding new evidence that dinosaurs may have been endothermic," he told me. "In other fossil news, the two that jump to mind are: fossil turtles caught in the act of mating; and a new fossil shark species which shows that Carcharocles megalodon was not a giant ancestor of today's white shark, but a member of a different lineage altogether."

I've included the fossil turtle-sex tale in our annual roundup for the Weird Science Awards, but here are 30 more ancient mysteries that should keep you clicking into the new year:

Ten top paleontology tales from Cosmic Log and NBC News:

• Earliest-known dinosaur to walk the earth identified
• Four-winged flying dinosaur sported glossy black feathers
• Paleontologists find the king of the feathered dinosaurs
• Researchers re-create the love song of the Jurassic katydid
• This mammal-like predator reigned long before the dinosaurs
• Methane-emitting dinosaurs could have warmed the earth
• World's oldest panda fossils found, and not in China
• Researchers decide to downsize the dinosaurs
• Scientists say dinosaurs' feathers were meant for mating
• Ancient lizard that died with the dinos is named after Obama

Ten top anthropology tales from Cosmic Log and NBC News:

• New technique clears up Denisovan DNA mysteries
• Australopithecus sediba: This pre-human ate like a chimp
• Cave art is so old the Neanderthals could have done it
• Hunter-gatherers were 'friending' long before Facebook
• Ancient Lucy's kin could have swung from the trees
• Researchers reconstruct the real-life face of a 'Hobbit'
• Foot bones could help reveal origins of upright walking
• Tools suggest early humans were smarter than we thought
• New flat-faced human species possibly discovered
• China's Red Deer Cave People may have been different species

Top 10 discoveries from Archaeology magazine:

• Maya sun god masks (more from Brown University)
• Neanderthal medicine chest (more from Cosmic Log)
• First use of poison (more from LiveScience on NBC News)
• Aztec ritual burial (more from Discovery News)
• Caesar's Gallic outpost (more from LiveScience on NBC News)
• Europe's oldest engraving (more from Discovery News on NBC News)
• First pots in China (more from Harvard University)
• Scottish 'Frankenstein' mummies (more from LiveScience on NBC News)
• 2,000-year-old stash in Israel (more from LiveScience on NBC News)
• Oldest Egyptian funerary boat (more from Ahram Online)

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.

Baz Ratner / Reuters

An employee of the Israeli Antiquities Authority displays figurines at Tel Motza archaeological site on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

Archaeologists have uncovered a 2,750-year-old temple near Jerusalem, along with pottery and clay figurines that suggest the site was the home base for a ritual cult, the Israeli Antiquities Authority said Wednesday.

The discovery was made during excavations at the Tel Motza archaeological site, about 3 miles (5 kilometers) west of Jerusalem, during preparations for work on a new section of Israeli's Highway 1, the agency said in a statement.

"The ritual building at Tel Motza is an unusual and striking find, in light of the fact that there are hardly any remains of ritual buildings of the period in Judaea at the time of the First Temple," excavation directors Anna Eirikh, Hamoudi Khalaily and Shua Kisilevitz were quoted as saying in the statement.

The Bible says the First Temple was built in Jerusalem by Solomon, son of King David, and archaeologists estimate that construction was undertaken in the 10th century B.C. The excavation's directors say the Tel Motza temple must have been active in an era "prior to the religious reforms throughout the kingdom at the end of the monarchic period (at the time of Hezekiah and Isaiah), which abolished all ritual sites, concentrating ritual practices solely at the Temple in Jerusalem."

Tel Motza was thought to be associated with the ancient settlement called "Mozah" in the Book of Joshua. During previous work, archaeologists uncovered a large structure with storehouses and a number of silos. They said that structure might have served as a storage facility for Jerusalem's grain supplies.

Baz Ratner / Reuters

Archaeologist Anna Eirikh displays a horse figurine at Tel Motza archaeological site on the outskirts of Jerusalem.

Skyview / IAA

An overhead view shows the Tel Motza archaeological site.

The newly discovered structure has massive walls and a wide, east-facing entrance, conforming to the tradition of temple construction at the time, the site directors said. "The rays of the sun rising in the east would have illuminated the object placed inside the temple first, symbolizing the divine presence within," they said.

Inside the temple, archaeologists found what appeared to be a square altar, with a cache of ritual items nearby. Those items included fragments of pottery chalices, decorated ritual pedestals and two types of pottery figurines. Some of the figurines represented animals — mainly horses in harnesses— while others were humanlike heads with curling hair and flat headdresses. Such figurines hint at the influence of Philistine coastal culture.

"The find of the sacred structure, together with the accompanying cache of sacred vessels, and especially the significant coastal influence evident in the anthropomorphic figurines, still require extensive research," the directors said.

More about Jewish archaeology:

• 9,000-year-old charms found in Israel
• Artifacts reveal history behind David and Goliath
• In Israel, diggers unearth the Bible's bad guys
• Professor hunts for 'Lost Ark of the Covenant'
• Gallery: Eight Jewish archaeological discoveries
• Cosmic Log archive on archaeology

Alan Boyle is NBCNews.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.