Tikal
   HOME



picture info

Tikal
Tikal (; ''Tik'al'' in modern Mayan orthography) is the ruin of an ancient city, which was likely to have been called Yax Mutal, found in a rainforest in Guatemala. It is one of the largest archaeological sites and urban centers of the Pre-Columbian era, pre-Columbian Maya civilization. It is located in the archaeological region of the Petén Basin in what is now northern Guatemala. Situated in Petén Department, the site is part of Guatemala's Tikal National Park and in 1979 it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Tikal was the capital of a state that became one of the most powerful kingdoms of the ancient Maya. Though monumental architecture at the site dates back as far as the 4th century BC, Tikal reached its apogee during the Mesoamerican chronology, Classic Period, c. 200 to 900. During this time, the Maya city, city dominated much of the Maya region politically, economically, and militarily, while interacting with areas throughout Mesoamerica such as the great metr ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Maya Monarchs
Maya monarchs, also known as Maya kings and queens, were the centers of power for the Maya civilization. Each Mayan cities, Maya city-state was controlled by a dynasty of kings. The position of king was usually inherited by the oldest son. Symbols of power Maya kings felt the need to legitimize their claim to power. One of the ways to do this was to build a temple or Mesoamerican pyramid, pyramid. Tikal Temple I is a good example. This temple was built during the reign of Yikʼin Chan Kʼawiil. Another king named Kʼinich Janaabʼ Pakal would later carry out this same show of power when building the Temple of Inscriptions at Palenque. The Temple of Inscriptions still towers today amid the ruins of Palenque, as the supreme symbol of influence and power in Palenqusix. Succession Maya kings cultivated godlike personas. When a ruler died and left no heir to the throne, the result was usually war and bloodshed. King Pacal's precursor, Pacal I, died upon the battlefield. However, inste ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Mundo Perdido, Tikal
The Mundo Perdido (Spanish for "Lost World") is the largest ceremonial complex dating from the Preclassic period at the ancient Maya city of Tikal, in the Petén Department of northern Guatemala.Martin and Grube 2000, p.28. The complex was organised as a large E-Group astronomical complex consisting of a pyramid aligned with a platform to the east that supported three temples. The Mundo Perdido complex was rebuilt many times over the course of its history. By AD 250–300 its architectural style was influenced by the great metropolis of Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico, including the use of the '' talud-tablero'' form. During the Early Classic period (c. 250–600) the Mundo Perdido became one of the twin foci of the city, the other being the North Acropolis.Martin and Grube 2000, p.29. From AD 250 to 378 it may have served as the royal necropolis. The Mundo Perdido complex was given its name by the archaeologists of the University of Pennsylvania. The large plaza centred u ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Maya Civilization
The Maya civilization () was a Mesoamerican civilization that existed from antiquity to the early modern period. It is known by its ancient temples and glyphs (script). The Maya script is the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas. The civilization is also noted for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system. The Maya civilization developed in the Maya Region, an area that today comprises southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. It includes the northern lowlands of the Yucatán Peninsula and the Guatemalan Highlands of the Sierra Madre, the Mexican state of Chiapas, southern Guatemala, El Salvador, and the southern lowlands of the Pacific littoral plain. Today, their descendants, known collectively as the Maya, number well over 6 million individuals, speak more than twenty-eight surviving Mayan languages, and reside in nearly the s ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Dos Pilas
Dos Pilas is a Pre-Columbian site of the Maya civilization located in what is now the department of Petén, Guatemala. It dates to the Late Classic Period, and was founded by an offshoot of the dynasty of the great city of Tikal in AD 629 in order to control trade routes in the Petexbatún region, particularly the Pasión River.Salisbury, Koumenalis & Barbara Moffett 2002. In AD 648 Dos Pilas broke away from Tikal and became a vassal state of Calakmul, although the first two kings of Dos Pilas continued to use the same emblem glyph that Tikal did.Webster 2002, p. 263. It was a predator state from the beginning, conquering Itzan, Arroyo de Piedra and Tamarindito. Dos Pilas and a nearby city, Aguateca, eventually became the twin capitals of a single ruling dynasty. The kingdom as a whole has been named as the Petexbatun Kingdom, after Petexbatún Lake, a body of water draining into the Pasión River. Dos Pilas gives an important glimpse into the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Tikal Temple V
Tikal Temple V is the name given by archaeologists to one of the major pyramids at Tikal. Tikal is one of the most important archaeological sites of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization and is located in the Petén Department of northern Guatemala. Temple V stands south of the Central Acropolis and is the mortuary pyramid of an as yet unidentified ruler of the once great city. The temple stands high, making it the second tallest structure at Tikal—only Temple IV is taller. The temple has been dated to about AD 700, in the Late Classic period, via radiocarbon analysis and the dating of ceramics associated with the structure places its construction during the reign of Nun Bak Chak in the second half of the 7th century. The architectural style of the pyramid includes features that were popular during the Early Classic period, such as wide balustrades flanking the main stairway and the rounded corners of the temple. These features indicate the continued influence of earlier trad ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Tikal Temple I
Tikal Temple I is the designation given to one of the major structures at Tikal, one of the largest cities and List of Maya sites, archaeological sites of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in Mesoamerica. It is located in the Petén Basin region of northern Guatemala. It also is known as the Temple of the Great Jaguar because of a lintel that represents a king sitting upon a jaguar throne.Muñoz Cosme & Quintana Samayoa 1996, p.302. An alternative name is the Temple of Ah Cacao, after the ruler buried in the temple.''Ah Cacao'' being an earlier nickname for the Tikal ruler Jasaw Chan K'awiil I, whose tomb the temple contains. Temple I is a typically Petén-styled limestone Mesoamerican pyramids, stepped pyramid structure that is dated to approximately 732 AD. Situated at the heart of a World Heritage Site, the temple is surmounted by a characteristic roof comb, a distinctive Maya architecture, Maya architectural feature. Building Temple I on the eastern side of the Great Plaza ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Tikal Temple IV
Tikal Temple IV is a Mesoamerican pyramid in the ruins of the ancient Maya city of Tikal in modern Guatemala. It was one of the tallest and most voluminous buildings in the Maya world.Morales et al 2008, p.421. The pyramid was built around 741 AD. Temple IV is located at the western edge of the site core. Two causeways meet at the temple; the Tozzer Causeway runs east to the Great Plaza, while the Maudslay Causeway runs northeast to the Northern Zone. Temple IV is the second tallest pre-Columbian structure still standing in the New World, just after the Great Pyramid of Toniná in Chiapas, Mexico, although Teotihuacan's Pyramid of the Sun may once have been taller. The pyramid was built to mark the reign of the 27th king of the Tikal dynasty, Yikʼin Chan Kʼawiil, although it may have been built after his death as his funerary temple. Archaeologists believe that Yik'in Chan K'awiil's tomb lies undiscovered somewhere underneath the temple. The summit shrine faces eastward to the ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Tikal National Park
Tikal National Park is a national park located in Guatemala, in the northern region of the Petén Department. Stretching across 57,600 hectares (220 sq mi), it contains the ancient Mayan city of Tikal and the surrounding tropical forests, savannas, and wetlands. In 1979, Tikal National Park was declared as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, because of the outstanding Mesoamerican ruins at Tikal and the unique ecology of the surrounding landscape. History "Project Tikal", as it was named at the time, was first proposed by the University of Pennsylvania in 1949. Founded on May 26, 1955, Tikal National Park was established under government decree by the Ministry of Education, via the Instituto de Antropología e Historia, advised by Dr. Adolfo Molina Orantes and under the government of Carlos Castillo Armas. Once established, the University of Pennsylvania played a role in the park's cleaning, maintenance, excavation and restoration of the site from 1956 to 1969. Today, Tikal Nation ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Tikal Temple 33
Tikal Temple 33 (referred to in archaeological reports as 5D-33) was a ancient Maya funerary pyramid located in the North Acropolis of the great Maya city of Tikal. The pyramid was centrally situated in the front row of structures facing onto the Great Plaza, between Temples 32 and 34 and in front of the Northern Platform. Temple 33 is one of the most thoroughly explored temples in the entire Maya area. The earliest version was a low funerary shrine over the tomb of king Siyaj Chan K'awiil II, which was sealed in AD 457. Temple 33 underwent three consecutive phases of construction, during which the king's funerary shrine was remodelled and one of his stelae A stele ( ) or stela ( )The plural in English is sometimes stelai ( ) based on direct transliteration of the Greek, sometimes stelae or stelæ ( ) based on the inflection of Greek nouns in Latin, and sometimes anglicized to steles ( ) or stela ... was interred above his tomb. In the mid-1960s, archaeologists comple ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Tikal Temple II
Tikal Temple II (or the Temple of the Masks, alternatively labelled by archaeologists as Tikal Structure 5D-2) is a Mesoamerican pyramid at the Maya archaeological site of Tikal in the Petén Department of northern Guatemala. The temple was built in the Late Classic Period in a style reminiscent of the Early Classic. Temple II is located on the west side of the Great Plaza, opposite Temple I. Temple II was built by the king Jasaw Chan Kʼawiil I in honour of his wife, Lady Lahan Unen Moʼ. Temple II had a single wooden sculpted lintel that bears the portrait of a royal woman who may have been the wife of Jasaw Chan K'awiil I, who was entombed beneath Temple I. Lady Lahan Unen Moʼ, whose name means "Twelve Macaw Tails", was also important for being the mother of Jasaw Chan Kʼawill I's heir. In fact her son Yikʼin Chan Kʼawiil oversaw the completion of Temple II when he became king. Temple II was visited by Modesto Méndez, the governor of Petén, in 1848 on the first expedi ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Mesoamerica
Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area that begins in the southern part of North America and extends to the Pacific coast of Central America, thus comprising the lands of central and southern Mexico, all of Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, and parts of Honduras, Nicaragua and northwestern part of Costa Rica. As a cultural area, Mesoamerica is defined by a mosaic of cultural traits developed and shared by its indigenous cultures. In the pre-Columbian era, many Indigenous peoples of the Americas, indigenous societies flourished in Mesoamerica for more than 3,000 years before the Spanish colonization of the Americas began on Hispaniola in 1493. In world history, Mesoamerica was the site of two historical transformations: (i) primary urban generation, and (ii) the formation of New World cultures from the mixtures of the indigenous Mesoamerican peoples with the European, African, and Asian peoples who were introduced by the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Mesoameri ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


List Of Lords Of Tikal
This is a list of rulers of Tikal, a major Maya city-state during the Classic period. Located in the Maya Lowlands, Tikal is known to have had at least 33 rulers from the 1st through 9th centuries AD. Twenty-seven of these have been identified, as of 2008. Background The monarchy of Tikal is the oldest yet known in the Maya Lowlands, having been founded at the turn of the 1st century AD. The dynasty is last attested in the late 9th century, after a span of some 800 years and 33 rulers. Thorough excavations, first begun by the University of Pennsylvania, and later by the Guatemalan Institute of Archaeology, have uncovered troves of epigraphic data which Mayanists have employed to reconstruct Tikal's dynastic lineage. As of 2008, 27 rulers have been identified, including at least one woman. List The following is an annotated, chronological list of lords of Tikal. A tabular list is provided in the following section. Late Preclassic * Yax Ehb Xook – r. c. AD 60 or c. ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]