The Quiet Ruins

Latest episodes

• Why the Maya Abandoned Their Greatest Cities?

  October 25, 2026 · 31 min

  In 1839, John Lloyd Stephens bought the Maya city of Copán for fifty dollars, sat among its ruins, and compared it to a shipwreck with no crew left to tell where it came from. For almost two centuries, that image shaped the story of a…

• Teotihuacan: Who Really Built the City of the Gods?

  October 18, 2026 · 33 min

  When the Mexica found Teotihuacan, its great temples had been in ruins for six hundred years. Nobody remembered who had built it, so they decided it was the place where the gods were born. We follow what archaeology has learned since: a…

• The Aztec Great Temple: How Many Were Really Sacrificed?

  October 11, 2026 · 37 min

  In 1487, the Mexica dedicated the Great Temple of Tenochtitlan. The chronicles say eighty thousand four hundred people were sacrificed in four days, and the friar who wrote that number down did not believe it himself. We follow the number…

• The Maya Sacred Well: Who Was Really Sacrificed?

  October 4, 2026 · 41 min

  For a century, visitors to Chichén Itzá were told that the Maya threw young women into its Sacred Cenote as brides for the rain god. This is the story of where that legend came from, and what happened when someone finally tested it. We…

Full episode archive on Apple Podcasts →