Copán — archaeological site
Image by u_ow29dhemkn from Pixabay

Copán

  • 1 min read
  • 14.838° N 89.142° W
  • UNESCO World Heritage

Interesting facts

  • The American explorer John Lloyd Stephens bought the ruins of Copán for 50 dollars, dreaming of floating them downriver to museums in the United States.
  • Analysis of the founder K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo's bones showed he was not from Copán, while the woman thought to be his wife was local.
  • The Copán River once ate into the Acropolis, exposing a cross-section of buildings 37 m high and 300 m long, until the river was diverted in the 1930s.
  • The final ballcourt was dedicated to the great macaw deity, with 16 mosaic sculptures of scarlet macaws along the playing area.
  • Rosalila was the last building at Copán decorated with elaborate stucco, as deforestation made the firewood needed to burn lime scarce.
  • The first written mention after the conquest is a letter of 8 March 1576 from Diego García de Palacio to King Philip II of Spain.
  • The tomb of King Smoke Imix held 44 ceramic vessels, jaguar pelts, spondylus shells, paint pots and one or more hieroglyphic books.
  • Smoke Imix died in 695 aged 79, an age so distinguished that Altar Q identifies him by it instead of his name.
  • When the temple façade collapsed, the blocks of the Hieroglyphic Stairway tumbled down and scrambled the order of its text.
  • A burial excavated in 2012 with writing tools revealed a class of literate scribes outside the royal family.

Why it is worth it

Copán, in western Honduras close to the border with Guatemala, is the Maya city that carved its history more richly than any other. It flourished between the fifth and ninth centuries AD under a dynasty founded in 426 by K'inich Yax K'uk' Mo', a ruler whose installation seems to have been backed by the great city of Tikal. Sixteen kings of that line are portrayed on Altar Q, a square stone dedicated in 776 by the sixteenth ruler, which shows the founder handing power down through the generations.

The city's golden age came under its thirteenth king, Uaxaclajuun Ub'aah K'awiil, often called 18 Rabbit, who reigned from 695 to 738 and filled the Great Plaza with his stelae, tall carved portraits of the king. His reign ended in catastrophe: in 738 he was captured by the ruler of the smaller city of Quiriguá and beheaded, and for seventeen years no new monument was raised. The Hieroglyphic Stairway, begun to restore the dynasty's prestige, is the longest known Maya text, around 2,200 glyphs on 62 steps about ten metres wide.

Tunnels driven into the Acropolis revealed earlier buildings layered inside later ones, including the almost intact Rosalila temple, decorated with elaborately painted stucco images from Maya mythology, which was buried whole rather than demolished. Copán became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1980, and recent laser surveys have mapped thousands of previously unknown structures in the valley around it.

Getting there

The ruins are about 1.6 km from the town of Copán Ruinas; Cucuyagua is about 36 km away as the crow flies. The practical international gateway is Ramón Villeda Morales International Airport (SAP) at San Pedro Sula, about 148 km away.

On these lists

The Most Remarkable UNESCO-Listed Archaeological Sites 114The Greatest UNESCO-Listed Archaeological Wonders 149The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites 193The Greatest Archaeological Wonders 306The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites 557

From the encyclopaedia

Copán is an archaeological site of the Maya civilization in the Copán Department of western Honduras, not far from the border with Guatemala. It is one of the most important sites of the Maya civilization, which was not excavated until the 19th century. The ruined citadel and imposing public squares reveal the three main stages of development before the city was abandoned in the early 10th century.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

14.83796, -89.14244per Wikidata