Tikal
- UNESCO World Heritage
Interesting facts
- Tikal stood in for the rebel base on the moon Yavin 4 in the original 1977 Star Wars film.
- Hieroglyphic inscriptions name the city Yax Mutal, "First Mutal", and its emblem glyph shows a tied bundle of hair.
- With no river or springs nearby, the city survived on rainwater stored in about ten large reservoirs.
- One reservoir, Corriental, was fitted with a filter of zeolite minerals more than two thousand years ago, among the oldest known water purification systems in the Americas.
- Sediment studies found severe ancient mercury contamination at Tikal, traced to the red cinnabar pigment the Maya painted on buildings and objects.
- Population estimates for the city range from about 10,000 to as many as 90,000 people, with perhaps 120,000 in the wider area at its peak.
- In AD 562 the rival city of Caracol defeated Tikal and sacrificed its captured king, opening a long period without new dated monuments.
- In 695 Tikal struck back, beating its great rival Calakmul, which never fully recovered from the defeat.
- Tikal has nine twin-pyramid complexes, each built to mark the end of a 20-year cycle of the Maya calendar.
- The last dated monument at Tikal was raised in AD 869, as the great city was already in decline.
Why it is worth it
Tikal is the Maya city at its most theatrical: grey limestone pyramids breaking through the canopy of the Petén rainforest in northern Guatemala, with howler monkeys and ocellated turkeys for company. It was the capital of one of the most powerful Maya kingdoms, occupied from at least the 4th century BC and at its height between about AD 200 and 900, before its population drained away and the forest closed over it. The core covers more than 16 km² with around 3,000 mapped structures, and the surrounding national park, created in 1955 and inscribed by UNESCO in 1979, protects 570 km² of forest and wetland.
The heart of the site is the Great Plaza, framed by Temple I, the 47-metre funerary pyramid of the king Jasaw Chan K'awiil, and the slightly lower Temple II opposite, with the North Acropolis, a stack of royal tombs and temples built over centuries, on one side and the palace complex of the Central Acropolis on the other. Raised causeways named after early explorers lead out through the trees: west to Temple IV, the tallest structure at Tikal at about 70 metres to the top of its roof comb, and south towards Temple V at 57 metres. The Mundo Perdido, or Lost World, complex has a Preclassic pyramid more than 30 metres high with stairways on all four sides and buildings that show the influence of distant Teotihuacan, whose general Siyaj K'ak' arrived in AD 378 and installed a new dynasty.
Allow a full day; distances between the groups are long and the heat builds quickly. The site museum, completed in 1964, is useful for the stelae and tomb finds. Some of the carved wooden lintels from the temple summits were removed in the 19th century, including one now in Basel, but many stelae and altars still stand in the plazas. Wildlife is part of the visit: spider monkeys, coatis, toucans and more than 300 bird species are recorded in the park.
Getting there
Tikal lies about 64 km by road north-east of Flores and Santa Elena, the usual base. Mundo Maya International Airport (FRS), serving Flores, is about 43 km away in a straight line; shuttles and tours run from Flores to the park.
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
Tikal is the ruin of an ancient city, which was likely to have been called Yax Mutal, found in a rainforest in Guatemala. One of the largest archaeological sites and urban centers of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization, it is located in the archaeological region of the Petén Basin in what is now the Petén Department in northern Guatemala. The site is part of Guatemala's Tikal National Park, which was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979.
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