Subject: Spectacular Belize Vacation Packages for All-Budgets

From: "Belize Vacations" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 16 Jul 2015 09:11:30 -0700

Are You Thinking About a Tropical, Gorgeous and Quite Affordable

Vacation? Belize is the Newest Hotspot in Tropical Getaways...

Whether you are looking to participate in activities like scuba diving,

or you are simply just looking to relax, Belize really has it all!

There are many options from remote beach-towns to all-inclusive

resort deals, all keeping a budget in mind.

Go Here to See These Ads for Terrific Belize Vacation Packages

built a "concrete ranch house" with a water view for $125,000, including the lot. "The house was finished in 2007," Walter reports. "Last year we sold our house in the States, got off the corporate treadmill, and moved here. I drove down in my truck on my own, and Terri???and five cats???flew down. We're completely happy, though it???s tough being this far from family." A former educator, Audrey Shabbas, 68, moved to Corozal from Berkeley, California, with two of her four children three years ago. "We looked at Nicaragua, but Belize had what we wanted???water all around," she says. "We bought a home with one-third of what we got for our Berkeley house???and it???s three times as wonderful. I'm very blessed to be here." The ancient Mayan civilization collapsed due to a century-long drought, new research suggests. Minerals taken from Belize's famous underwater cave, known as the Blue Hole, as well as lagoons nearby, show that an extreme drought occurred between A.D. 800 and A.D. 90
0, right when the Mayan civilization disintegrated. After the rains returned, the Mayans moved north ??? but they disappeared again a few centuries later, and that disappearance occurred at the same time as another dry spell, the sediments reveal. Although the findings aren't the first to tie a drought to the Mayan culture's demise, the new results strengthen the case that dry periods were indeed the culprit. That's because the data come from several spots in a region central to the Mayan heartland, said study co-author Andr?? Droxler, an Earth scientist at Rice University. Rise and decline From A.D. 300 to A.D. 700, the Mayan civilization flourished in the Yucatan peninsula. These ancient Mesoamericans built stunning pyramids, mastered astronomy, and developed both a hieroglyphic writing system and a calendar system, which is famous for allegedly predicting that the world would end in 2012. But in the centuries after A.D. 700, the civilization's building activities slowed and th
e culture descended into warfare and anarchy. Historians have speculatively linked that decline with everything from the ancient society's fear of malevolent spirits to deforestation completed to make way for cropland to the loss of favored foods, such as the Tikal deer. The evidence for a drought has been growing in recent years: Since at least 1995, scientists have been looking more closely at the effects of drought. A 2012 study in the journal Science analyzed a 2,000-year-old stalagmite from a cave in southern Belize and found that sharp decreases in rainfall coincided with periods of decline in the culture. But that data came from just one cave, which meant it was difficult to make predictions for the area as a whole, Droxler said. The main driver of this drought is thought to have been a shift in the intertropical convergence zone (ITCZ), a weather system that generally dumps water on tropical regions of the world while drying out the subtropics. During summers, the ITCZ pelts
the Yucatan peninsula with rain, but the system travels farther south in the winter. Many scientists have suggested that during the Mayan decline, this monsoon system may have missed the Yucatan peninsula altogether. Deep history To look for signs of drought, the team drilled cores from the sediments in the Blue Hole of Lighthouse lagoon, as well one in the Rhomboid reef. The lagoons surrounded on all sides by thick walls of coral reef. During storms or wetter periods, excess water runs off from rivers and streams, overtops the retaining walls, and is deposited in a thin layer at the top of the lagoon. From there, all the sediments from these streams settle to the bottom of the lagoon, piling on top of each other and leaving a chronological record of the historical climate. "It's like a big bucket. It's a sediment trap," Droxler told Live Science. Droxler and his colleagues analyzed the chemical composition of the cores, in particular the ratio of titanium to aluminum. When the rai
ns fall, it eats away at the volcanic rocks of the region, which contain titanium. The free titanium then sweeps into streams that reach the ocean. So relatively low ratios of titanium to aluminum correspond to periods with less rainfall, Droxler said. The team found that during the period between A.D. 800 and A.D. 1000, when the Maya civilization collapsed, there were just one or two tropical cyclones every two decades, as opposed to the usual five or six. After that, the Maya moved north, building at sites such as Chichen Itza, in what is now Mexico. But the new results also found that between A.D. 1000 and A.D. 1100, during the height of the Little Ice Age, another major drought struck. This period coincides with the fall of Chichen Itza. The findings strengthen the case that drought helped usher in the long decline of the Mayan culture. "When you have major droughts, you start to get famines and unrest," Droxler said. Geographical Location The Belize Barrier Reef platform lies
on the Atlantic-Caribbean coast of Belize, and extends 260 kilometers (km) from the border with Mexico to the north, to near the Guatemalan border to the south. The nominated World Heritage Site includes the following