Calakmul
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- The name Calakmul was coined from Maya words meaning roughly city of two adjacent pyramids; in antiquity the core was called Ox Te' Tuun, Place of Three Stones.
- The Snake dynasty did not begin here: its earliest texts come from Dzibanche in Quintana Roo, and it moved to Calakmul in the 7th century.
- Thirteen reservoirs held over 200 million litres of water, enough for 50,000 to 100,000 people; the largest measures about 242 by 212 m.
- Some 6,750 ancient structures have been identified across about 20 square kilometres, roughly 1,000 of them in the core.
- In August 695 King Yuknoom Yich'aak K'ak' suffered a catastrophic defeat against Jasaw Chan K'awiil I of Tikal.
- King Yuknoom Ch'een II commissioned 18 stelae and probably built the city's palace complexes.
- The kingdom covered around 13,000 square kilometres and included about 20 secondary centres such as Naachtun, Oxpemul and Uxul.
Why it is worth it
Calakmul lies so deep in the forest of southern Campeche that it was only spotted from the air, in December 1931, by the biologist Cyrus Lundell while he was surveying for a chicle company. What he had found turned out to be one of the two great powers of the Classic Maya world. From here the Kaan, or Snake, dynasty built a web of vassal cities that for much of the sixth and seventh centuries hemmed in and defeated its rival Tikal; its emblem glyph turns up in more inscriptions, and further afield, than that of any other Maya city. At its height the city is thought to have held around 50,000 people, and the kingdom it ruled perhaps more than a million and a half.
The core stands on a limestone rise that the Maya levelled, above a vast seasonal swamp, the El Laberinto bajo, which they tied into a system of canals and reservoirs. Structure 2 dominates it: a pyramid with a base about 120 metres square and more than 45 metres high, grown in stages around a Preclassic triadic temple. Its neighbour, Structure 1, rises to about 50 metres and, standing on a low hill, looks the taller of the two. From the summits the view is of unbroken canopy in every direction, with raised causeways, or sacbeob, running out through it towards cities such as El Mirador. Calakmul also has more stelae than any other Maya site, 117 of them, mostly paired portraits of rulers and their wives, though the soft limestone has worn many of them almost blank.
Excavations since 1982 have found murals in the Chiik Naab group that, unusually, show ordinary people trading food and goods, and a royal tomb in Structure 2 with a jade mosaic mask. The ruins sit inside the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, the largest tropical forest in North America; UNESCO inscribed the city in 2002 and extended the listing in 2014 to cover the forest as well, making it one of Mexico's few mixed cultural and natural World Heritage Sites.
Getting there
Calakmul is about 113 km from Escárcega and about 35 km north of the Guatemalan border. The nearest airport by distance, Mundo Maya International (FRS) at Flores, is 132 km away but across the border in Guatemala; on the Mexican side Chetumal International Airport (CTM) is about 163 km away. Visitors drive Highway 186 between Escárcega and Chetumal and turn south near Conhuás, around kilometre 95, onto a paved road of roughly 60 km through the reserve to the site.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Calakmul is a Maya archaeological site in the Mexican state of Campeche, deep in the jungles of the greater Petén Basin region. It is 35 kilometres (22 mi) from the Guatemalan border. Calakmul was one of the largest and most powerful Mayan cities.
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