In Campeche, a Maya city resurfaces: 13-metre pyramid and 14 altars and stelae

In the Calakmul nature reserve, in the Mexican state of Campeche, a collaboration between Mexican and Slovenian researchers has identified a Maya settlement that had remained under thick vegetation for centuries. The site includes a pyramid about 13 metres high, in Río Bec style, and 14 carved altars and stelae. Scholars have named it Minanbé, a Maya expression translatable as “there is no road,” a reference to its remote location. The discovery is the outcome of thirty years of exploration conducted in the central Maya lowlands by archaeologist Ivan Šprajc, as reported by Artribune.

The news currently comes from a single source (the announcement by the Mexican-Slovenian archaeological mission led by Ivan Šprajc); no independent confirmation is available.

What is there and what is missing

It is worth distinguishing between what the announcement describes and what it documents. The account is precise on the architectural level — the height of the main structure, the building style, the number of carved monuments — and vague on everything else: no dating of the settlement, no extent of the area, no reference to instrumental surveys or to scientific publications already released appear in the available material. The Río Bec style indicates a recognisable architectural tradition, not a certified chronology.

The name chosen for the site, “there is no road,” is a choice made by the scholars and not a documented ancient toponym: it describes the difficulty of access, not the historical identity of the place. Until the excavation or survey data are published, the discovery remains a mission announcement — a category that in Mesoamerican archaeology produces a considerable number of headlines every summer, and a smaller number of journal articles.

Venice loses European funding

The procedure concerning the accounts of the Venice Biennale, however, closed in July. The withdrawal process for European funding, launched in April 2026 following the announcement of the reopening of the Russian Pavilion — closed in the 2022 and 2024 editions, after the invasion of Ukraine — concluded with the formalisation of the suspension by the EACEA, the European agency for education and culture, on the legal recommendation of the European Commission. The withdrawn funding concerned the 2025-2028 three-year period. The president of the Biennale, Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, noted that those resources were specifically intended for the Biennale Cinema. This is reported by Sky TG24 on the basis of the Biennale’s press conference and the European agency’s decision.

On this matter too, the news currently comes from a single source (the Biennale’s press conference with the EACEA decision reported by Sky TG24); no independent confirmation is available, and the withdrawn amount does not appear in the material at hand.

The two facts stand at opposite ends of the cultural chain: one concerns what a scientific mission finds on the ground, the other what a cultural institution loses in its budget due to a political decision on the scope of Russian participation. In both cases, the document that would allow the scale to be measured — the excavation report on one hand, the withdrawal act with the figure on the other — is not yet public.