Mayan Pompeii: Remarkable Ancient Village Preserved in Ash Emerges in El Salvador

About 1,400 years ago, the Loma Caldera volcano of El Salvador erupted, covering the small Maya village of Ceren in ash and preserving it in pristine condition to the present day. Unlike at Pompeii in Italy when Mount Vesuvius blew in 79 AD and surprised and killed the residents, the villagers of Ceren were able to make it out and so apparently were not killed in the eruption.

Archaeologists, who’ve been excavating Ceren since it was discovered in 1978, have speculated that an earthquake rumbled before the volcanic eruption, giving the 200 villagers enough warning to get away in time.

Unlike some Maya villages, the society’s rulers did not lord it over the residents of Ceren, says a press release from the University of Colorado at Boulder. The journal Latin American Antiquity published an article on the 10-acre Ceren research area, which UNESCO declared a World Heritage Site in 1993.