Petexbatún is a small lake formed by a river of the same name, which is a tributary of the

Pasión River The Pasión River (, ) is a river located in the northern lowlands region of Guatemala. The river is fed by a number of upstream tributaries whose sources lie in the hills of Alta Verapaz. These flow in a general northerly direction to form the Pa ...

. It is near

Sayaxché Sayaxché () is a municipality in the El Petén department of Guatemala, on the Río La Pasión River. It covers an area of , and had 55,578 inhabitants at the 2002 Census; the latest official estimate (as at mid-2012) was 114,781 inhabitants. T ...

, located in the southern area of the

Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...

n department of Petén. LagunaPetexbatun

In winter, as the La Pasión River rises, the direction of the Petexbatún River is reversed. It moves south with the current of the La Pasión River and the water level of the Petexbatún Lake increases.The Petexbatún eco-system
(in Spanish) Retrieved 30 January 2021. Archaeologists gave the name of ''Petexbatún State'' to a group of cities during the Classic period of the

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 writin ...

that include Seibal,

Itzan Itzan is a Maya archaeological site located in the municipality of La Libertad in the Petén Department of Guatemala.Ponciano 1991, p.232. Various small structures at the site were destroyed in the 1980s during oil exploration activities by Sonpe ...

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 6 ...

Aguateca Aguateca is a Maya site located in northern Guatemala's Petexbatun Basin, in the department of Petén. The first settlements at Aguateca date to the Late Preclassic period (300 BC - AD 350). The center was occupied from about 200 B.C. unti ...

Tamarindito Tamarindito is an archaeological site of the Maya civilization located along an escarpment in the Petén Department, Petén Departments of Guatemala, department of Guatemala. The city was the capital of the Petexbatún region of the southwestern P ...

Punta de Chimino Punta de Chimino is a Maya archaeological site in the Petexbatún region of the department of Petén in Guatemala. Occupation at the site dates to the Preclassic and Classic periods of Mesoamerican chronology.Demarest 2006, p.124. Punta de Chimi ...

, Nacimiento, and others. This State was the first to be abandoned in the Late Classic, when the Maya collapse occurred in a south to north pattern, although Seibal, may have been reoccupied by a foreign group, possibly the Putún Maya, according to the style of the

stele 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 ...

in this period. The archaeological findings here have given a lot of information about the collapse of the Classic Maya civilization.

Notes

References

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External links

Aguateca and the Petexbatún State, History and Galleries
{{DEFAULTSORT:Petexbatun Lakes of Guatemala Geography of the Petén Department Geography of Mesoamerica Archaeological sites in Guatemala Maya Classic Period Usumacinta River