Free Republic

The 16th of January 378 C.E. marked a turning point in ancient Maya history. On that day, foreigners arrived in the Maya city of Tikal—in what is now northern Guatemala—and Tikal's king died. Shortly thereafter, the son of the conquering king became Tikal's new ruler.Many archaeologists think these invaders came from Teotihuacan, a metropolis 1000 kilometers away, near what is now Mexico City, famed for its imposing pyramids and sweeping central avenue. But a new discovery in Tikal reveals Teotihuacan may have had an outpost in the Maya city long before possibly conquering it. That bolsters the idea that Teotihuacan’s...

The great Maya city of Tikal transported zeolites for water filtration thousands of years before other cultures learned or adopted the idea, archaeologists have found. The filtration was probably much better than anything known to the Europeans who conquered the area 1,500 years later. The Corriental reservoir was one of Tikal’s sources of drinking water. Dr Kenneth Tankersley of the University of Cincinnati found crystalline quartz and zeolite when digging at the reservoir. Neither are local to the area and would have had to be brought a long way by the standards of a people who had no beasts of...

Reservoirs in the heart of an ancient Maya city were so polluted with mercury and algae that the water likely was undrinkable. Researchers from the University of Cincinnati found toxic levels of pollution in two central reservoirs in Tikal, an ancient Maya city that dates back to the third century B.C. in what is now northern Guatemala. UC's findings suggest droughts in the ninth century likely contributed to the depopulation and eventual abandonment of the city. "The conversion of Tikal's central reservoirs from life-sustaining to sickness-inducing places would have both practically and symbolically helped to bring about the abandonment of...

Potters at Maya cities on the Caribbean side of Central America fused volcanic ash with local limestone to form household and ceremonial pottery, because the ash made their ceramics easier to fire. The distinctive recipe was a hallmark of the Late Classic Period from A.D. 600 to 900, Ford said. With thousands of people living in cities such as El Pilar and Tikal, the Mayan potters burned through several tons of volcanic ash every year, Ford has estimated. But no one can figure out where the ash came from. The mystery begins with the fact that there just aren't any...

Around 700 AD, Tikal had the largest dam built by the ancient Maya of Central America, used sand filtration to cleanse water entering reservoirs, a "switching station" that accommodated seasonal filling and release of water, and the deepest, rock-cut canal segment in the Maya lowlands. All this to support a population at Tikal of perhaps 60,000 to 80,000 inhabitants and an estimated population of five million in the overall Maya lowlands.

Iconographic studies of Teotihuacan murals confirm the extension of the lineage of a ruler of the ancient city of Tikal, Guatemala, already revealed by epigraphists of the Maya area. The aforementioned investigation sums up to interpretations of Stele 31 of Tikal that relate to the dynastic line of Atlatl-Cauac ("Dart-thrower Owl"), possible ruler of Teotihuacan between 374 and 439 AD, and whose son, Yax Nuun Ayiin I, was seignior of Tikal. The emblem of this lineage would be represented by the image of a bird with a shield, observed in Teotihuacan murals, declared Dr. Raul Garcia Chavez, researcher at the...