Tikal is perhaps one the best representations of Mayan culture and architecture: a labyrinthine metropolis where buildings still stand today as they do hundreds of years ago.
The Maya still exist though none live in their ancestors’ creations. The majority reside in Guatemala, which happens to be the home of Tikal.
Historians believe the Maya lived in the city as far back as 1,000 BC, with archaeologists having previously come across evidence of agricultural activity there from that time and ceramics from 700 BC.
More recently, researchers working in the former metropolis used “groundbreaking technology” to discover a side to the city hidden for thousands of years.
Their find was explored during the Smithsonian Channel’s documentary, Sacred Sites: Maya.
In 2017, remote sensing equipment showed how the buildings on show were only a snippet of the actual size of Tikal, and that the city once spread out across a vast area within the dense jungle.
Between 600 and 900 AD, Tikal was the centre of the region’s Maya empire and a bustling hub of trade and industry.
Over 100,000 people lived there, each skilled in specific trades like labour, service, architecture, and trade.
Tikal would have had its own King or Queen who would have communed with the gods on behalf of the people and ensured society ran smoothly.
Great temples were built, each seen as a way to communicate with the gods. Tikal Temple I, the grandest of them all, is an exemplary piece of Mayan architecture.
But, with a city so big more than just one temple was needed to connect with the gods: the city itself had to be sacred.
Professor Liwy Grazioso, an archaeologist at the University of San Carlos, Guatemala, said: “All cities show you cosmogony in the way they are laid out.
“For them, pyramids were the sacred mountains to be closer to the gods in the skies. They were therefore very particular in deciding which temple would be facing the other.”
After discovering the true extent of Tikal, researchers came across schools, libraries, and a hospital.
Though it once flourished, by the year 900, people began to leave the city and the jungle soon swallowed the urban area.
It would be just another 50 years before the entire Mayan civilisation began to crumble, and soon, the society was gone as quickly as it had risen to great power.
Researchers are at odds over why the Maya fell. However, scholars have suggested several factors that contributed to their disappearance, from overpopulation, environmental degradation, warfare, shifting trade routes and extended drought.
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