Yaxchilan
Yaxchilan () is an ancient Maya city located on the bank of the Usumacinta River in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. In the Late Classic Period Yaxchilan was one of the most powerful Maya states along the course of the Usumacinta River, with Piedras Negras as its major rival.Sharer & Traxler 2006, p. 421 Architectural styles in subordinate sites in the Usumacinta region demonstrate clear differences that mark a clear boundary between the two kingdoms. Yaxchilan was a large center, important throughout the Classic era, and the dominant power of the Usumacinta River area. It dominated such smaller sites as Bonampak, and had a long rivalry with Piedras Negras and at least for a time with Tikal; it was a rival of Palenque, with which Yaxchilan warred in 654. The site is particularly known for its well-preserved sculptured stone lintels set above the doorways of the main structures.Sharer & Traxler 2006, p. 435 These lintels, together with the stelae erected before the major buildin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Yaxchilan Main Plaza
Yaxchilan () is an ancient Maya city located on the bank of the Usumacinta River in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. In the Late Classic Period Yaxchilan was one of the most powerful Maya states along the course of the Usumacinta River, with Piedras Negras as its major rival.Sharer & Traxler 2006, p. 421 Architectural styles in subordinate sites in the Usumacinta region demonstrate clear differences that mark a clear boundary between the two kingdoms. Yaxchilan was a large center, important throughout the Classic era, and the dominant power of the Usumacinta River area. It dominated such smaller sites as Bonampak, and had a long rivalry with Piedras Negras and at least for a time with Tikal; it was a rival of Palenque, with which Yaxchilan warred in 654. The site is particularly known for its well-preserved sculptured stone lintels set above the doorways of the main structures.Sharer & Traxler 2006, p. 435 These lintels, together with the stelae erected before the major buildings, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chiapas
Chiapas, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Chiapas, is one of the states that make up the Political divisions of Mexico, 32 federal entities of Mexico. It comprises Municipalities of Chiapas, 124 municipalities and its capital and largest city is Tuxtla Gutiérrez. Other important population centers in Chiapas include Ocosingo, Tapachula, San Cristóbal de las Casas, Comitán, and Arriaga, Chiapas, Arriaga. Chiapas is the southernmost state in Mexico, and it borders the states of Oaxaca to the west, Veracruz to the northwest, and Tabasco to the north, and the Petén Department, Petén, Quiché Department, Quiché, Huehuetenango Department, Huehuetenango, and San Marcos Department, San Marcos departments of Guatemala to the east and southeast. Chiapas has a significant coastline on the Pacific Ocean to the southwest. In general, Chiapas has a humid, tropical climate. In the northern area bordering Tabasco, near Teapa Municipality, Teapa, rainfall can average more than pe ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Piedras Negras (Maya Site)
Piedras Negras is the modern name for an ancient, ruined city of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization located on the north bank of the Usumacinta River in the Petén department of northwestern Guatemala. The Mayan name for the city was ''Yo'k'ib''' () or ''Yokib. Piedras Negras was one of the most powerful of the Usumacinta ancient Maya urban centers. Occupation at Piedras Negras is known from the Late Preclassic period onward, based on dates retrieved from epigraphic information found on multiple stelae and altars at the site. Piedras Negras is a priceless archaeological site, known for its large sculptural output when compared to other ancient Maya sites. The wealth of sculpture, in conjunction with the precise chronological information associated with the lives of the settlement's elite, has allowed archaeologists to reconstruct the political history of the city's polity and its geopolitical footprint. Location Piedras Negras is located in the Southern Lowlands of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bonampak
Bonampak (known anciently as ''Ake'' or, in its immediate area as ''Usiij Witz'', 'Vulture Hill') is an ancient Maya civilization, Maya archaeological site in the Mexico, Mexican Political divisions of Mexico, state of Chiapas. The site is approximately south of the larger site of Yaxchilan, under which Bonampak was a dependency, and the border with Guatemala. While the site is not overly spatial or abundant in architectural size, it is well known for the murals located within the three-roomed Structure 1 (''The Temple of the Murals)''. The construction of the site's structures dates to the Mesoamerican chronology, Late Classic period (c. AD 580 to 800). The Bonampak murals are noteworthy for being among the best-preserved Maya murals. The site, lying close to a tributary of the Usumacinta River, was seen by non-Mayans in 1946. Precisely who was first of the non-Mayans to see it is a matter of speculation, but it was either two American travelers, Herman Charles (Carlos) Frey and ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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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]   |
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Lintel
A lintel or lintol is a type of beam (a horizontal structural element) that spans openings such as portals, doors, windows and fireplaces. It can be a decorative architectural element, or a combined ornamented/structural item. In the case of windows, the bottom span is referred to as a sill, but, unlike a lintel, does not serve to bear a load to ensure the integrity of the wall. Modern-day lintels may be made using prestressed concrete and are also referred to as beams in beam-and-block slabs or as ribs in rib-and-block slabs. These prestressed concrete lintels and blocks can serve as components that are packed together and propped to form a suspended-floor concrete slab. An arch functions as a curved lintel. Structural uses In worldwide architecture of different eras and many cultures, a lintel has been an element of post and lintel construction. Many different building materials have been used for lintels. In classical Western architecture and construction methods ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Désiré Charnay
Claude-Joseph Désiré Charnay (2 May 182824 October 1915) was a French traveller and archaeologist notable both for his explorations of Mexico and Central America, and for the pioneering use of photography to document his discoveries. Biography Désiré Charnay was born in Fleurie, and studied at the Lycée Charlemagne. In 1850, he became a teacher in New Orleans, Louisiana, a partly French-speaking community, and there became acquainted with John Lloyd Stephens's books of travel in Yucatan. He travelled in Mexico, by commission from the French ministry of education, during 1857–1861. In Madagascar during 1863, he visited many parts of the island and also spent time in the Comoros. He was present there in 1863 when the French government made a deputation to Queen Jumbe-Souli and photographed the event. He returned to Mexico in 1864, with the French troops of Emperor Maximilian, in South America, particularly Chile and Argentina, in 1875; and in Java and Australia during 1 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lacanha
Lacanha or Lacanja (also known as Lacanjá-Kuná) is Maya archaeological site located on the bank of the Lacanjá river inside the Lacandon Jungle of Chiapas, Mexico. It was an important Mayan city from the classic period with its own emblem glyph. The site has had very few archeological investigations, the most notable buildings include temples, pyramids and a plaza covered in thick jungle. The rest of the site includes a big acropolis buried in the jungle. It is commonly referred to as "The lost city of Lacanja" due to its remote and hard to reach location in the middle of the jungle. The temples of Lacanha are used by the Lacandon people as a ceremonial site. History Lacanha developed itself in the early classic period to the late classic along other sites from the Usumacinta Basin like Bonampak. This region was the scene of great wars and conquests by states of greater power, in particular, Lacanha was conquered by the city of Yaxchilan Yaxchilan () is an ancient Maya ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Zapote Bobal
Zapote Bobal is the modern name for a pre-Columbian Maya archaeological site located south of the San Pedro Martir river in the Petén department of Guatemala. The name ''Zapote Bobal'' was coined by archaeologist Ian Graham, who discovered the site in the 1970s. It refers to the large number of Zapote Bobo (''Pachira aquatica'') trees, which grow near abundant sources of water in the Petén Basin. The site languished in archaeological obscurity until 2003, when epigrapher David Stuart connected the archaeological site of Zapote Bobal with a name repeatedly mentioned in the inscriptions of sites like Piedras Negras and Yaxchilan. That name was the toponym ''Hix Witz'', or "Jaguar Hill"Stuart (2003). Scholars had recognized this name for over 20 years, and its connection to a real place prompted the creation of an archaeological project at Zapote Bobal in 2003, the Proyecto Peten Noroccident(PNO).It is currently directed by James Fitzsimmons (Middlebury College) and Laura Gamez ( ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Usumacinta River
The Usumacinta River (; named after the howler monkey) is a river in southeastern Mexico and northwestern Guatemala. It is formed by the junction of the Pasión River, which arises in the Sierra de Santa Cruz (in Guatemala) and the Salinas River, also known as the Rio Chixoy, or the Rio Negro, which descends from the Sierra Madre de Guatemala. It defines part of the border between Guatemala and the Mexican state of Chiapas, then continues its northwesterly course, meandering through the Mexican state of Tabasco to the Gulf of Mexico. The Usumacinta River enters Mexican territory in the state of Tabasco and across the Cañón del Usumacinta (Usumacinta Canyon) ecological reserve, forming impressive canyons along its route. Passing the canyon called ''"Boca del Cerro",'' Tenosique, the Usumacinta goes into the plain of Tabasco. Two distributaries, the Palizada River and San Pedro y San Pablo River, branch from the main stem of the Usumacinta and empty north and east in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |