Mayan Photo Tour

MayaRuins.com has a helpful layout for those who are visual learners. I like how simple the website is compared to other websites, which bombard the public with information. It organizes the different sites of the Mayans creatively, but some of the information is not very credible. It appears as though the photographers are two retired women who wanted to have an excuse to travel and have a purpose.

This website provides an interactive map of ancient Mayan civilizations (shown to the left). Each of the sites is a red link that directs the viewer to a new page. This page contains a picture of the Mayan site, description about the site, and a link called "photos." When you click on the photo link, some of the sites provide a site map with arrows pointing to certain objects on the map that you can click on to view photos of the pointed at object. If you click on the arrow highlighted with the red circle, you are directed to the picture to the right of it. This allows the public to read about the sites, see a site map with spacial relationships, then see what they currently look like. This website makes viewing different Mayan sites easily accessible through the internet. 

However, one negative aspect is that this website is made by one individual, Barbara McKenzie, along with one other photographer, which could create bias. Thus, when viewing this website, we must consider that this was her individual take on the Mayan sites. In addition, the site descriptions are inconsistent in length and content. The content differs because sometimes it is exact words from a different source, and other times she uses her own words. All the different sources and her own words do not create parallel descriptions by any means. In order to make it more credible, the website creators could hire an archaeologist with a concentration on the ancient Mayans to create the descriptions of each Mayan site.

Overall, I think this is a creative way to display archaeology to the public, but the information presented should be clearer and more consistent, giving the public main points about the Mayans once living there.

http://www.mayaruins.com/