TIKAL, PETEN (North Guatemala)
Tikal means “Place of Voices”. It is nowadays, the biggest Mayan City known and studied. The park has an extension of 358 square miles (576 Kms.) It was declared Human Heritage patrimony, by UNESCO in 1979. Among its main temples and plazas is recommended to visit:
Major Plaza: It is the Archeological Park of Tikal, surrounded by impressionist buildings as the Temples I and II, the North and Central Acropolis, as well as a big range of altars that took part of the dynastic history of the Mayan Civilization in Tikal.
Temple I: Known also as Big Jaguar Temple, it was built around the 700 year of our era. Its crest reaches 27 miles high (45 Mts).
Temple II: It is known also as “Temple of Masks”. The temple was built by the governor Ah Cacao around the 700 AD.
North Acropolis: It is a religious complex in Tikal. It is the most complete individual construction until now excavated in the Mayan area.
Temple IV: It has 43 miles high (70 Mts.), it is the highest structure in Tikal and is called “Two-headed Snake Temple”. Visitants are able to climb up to the crest base. The most beautiful sight of Tikal in the tropical forest can be watched from here.
There also other important temples as Temple III, Temple V, Inscription Temple, Big Pyramid Plaza or Lost Word, Palacio de las Ventanas (Window Palace).
YAXHA, PETEN
It is located 18 milles (30 km.) from Tikal. It’s name means “Green Water”, it is a city constructed on small islands connected to land by pathways and waterducts, where Yaxha lake is located. It has plazas and acropolis that are connected by “sacbes” (waterducts or canals).
The hieroglyphic inscription indicates that it was inhabited during the early and late classic period. It is a post-classic city founded in “Topoxte” a smal island in Yaxhá. Its buildings are similar to those Tulum in Yucatán, México.
UAXACTUN
Uaxactún is a Pre-Columbian archeological Mayan site, located 15 miles (25Km.) to the North of Tikal, Petén, Guatemala.
It was called Siaan Ka’an, which means “Born from Heaven”. This city was inhabited from the Middle Pre-classic to (900 B.C.) and the whole Classic period.
This indicates that it was the city longer inhabited in Peten, and before considered as the oldest. This had changed with the discovery of Nakbé and El Mirador sites, now considered the oldest of the Mayan World.
EL MIRADOR, PETEN
Richard Hansen, the director of “El Mirador Basin Project”, presents to the world the architectural wonders of the Mayan civilization. He discovered a 1500 BC to 300 AD city, The Mirador Basin has a cultural treasure, the world’s largest pyramid by volume, La Danta, even larger than the pyramid keops in Egypt.
It has also found a wall sculpture that has the image down to the underworld with the main characters in their sacred book “Popol Vuh”, below this sculpture is another even bigger in where only the jewel of the mask is 1.5 Ms. x 1.5 Mt. (4.9 feet x 4.9 feet)
QUIRIGUA, IZABAL
Is an ancient Mayan archaeological site in the department of Izabal, ;Guatemala. It is a medium-sized site covering approximately 1.2 sq. miles, (3 Km.2) along Motagua River, with a ceremonial center about 0.6 miles (1 km.) from the north bank.
During the Maya Classic Period (AD 200–900), Quiriguá was in the juncture of several important trade routes. Quiriguá shares its architectural and sculptural styles with the nearby famous city of Copán in Honduras.
The ceremonial architecture in Quiriguá is quite modest, but its importance is the wealth of sculptured Stelae, including the tallest stone monumental sculpture ever erected in the New World.
