Remains of 3,000-Year-Old Maya City Discovered in Guatemala

Archaeologists have unearthed the stays of a Maya town just about 3,000 years outdated in northern Guatemala, with pyramids and monuments that time to its importance as a very powerful ceremonial web site, the Central American nation’s tradition ministry mentioned Thursday.

The Maya civilization arose round 2000 BCE, attaining its top between 400 and 900 CE in what’s present-day southern Mexico and Guatemala, in addition to portions of Belize, El Salvador and Honduras.

The town named “Los Abuelos,” Spanish for “The Grandparents,” as soon as stood some 21 kilometers (13 miles) from the necessary archaeological web site of Uaxactun, in Guatemala’s northern Peten division, the ministry mentioned in a commentary.

It is dated to what’s referred to as the “Middle Preclassic” duration from about 800 to 500 BCE, and is assumed to were “one of the most ancient and important ceremonial centers” of the Maya civilization within the jungle space of Peten close to the Mexican border, it added.

“The site presents remarkable architectural planning” with pyramids and monuments “sculpted with unique iconography from the region,” mentioned the ministry.

The town takes its title from two human-like sculptures of an “ancestral couple” discovered on the web site.

The figures, dated to between 500 and 300 BCE, “could be linked to ancient ritual practices of ancestor worship,” mentioned the ministry.

‘Unique canal gadget’

The town, which covers a space of about 16 sq. kilometers (six sq. miles) was once found out via Guatemalan and Slovak archaeologists in up to now little-explored spaces of the Uaxactun park.

Nearby, in addition they discovered a pyramid status 33 meters (108 toes) top with work of art from the Preclassic duration and “a unique canal system,” in keeping with the commentary.

“The set of these three sites forms a previously unknown urban triangle… These findings allow us to rethink the understanding of the ceremonial and socio-political organization of pre-Hispanic Peten,” mentioned the ministry.

In April, scientists found out a 1,000-year-old altar from Mexico’s historic Teotihuacan tradition at Tikal, in different places within the Peten division.

That to find was once interpreted as evidence of ties between the 2 pre-Hispanic cultures, which lived about 1,300 km aside.

Tikal, about 23 km from Uaxcatun, is the primary archaeological web site in Guatemala and one in all its largest vacationer sights.

© Agence France-Presse