![]() ![]() It was a beautiful vision-but nearly all wrong. Thompson, who died in 1975, theorized that Tikal and other sites were virtually unpopulated “ceremonial centers” where priests studied planets and stars and the mysteries of the calendar. Eric Thompson, who argued that the Maya were peaceful philosophers and extraordinary observers of celestial events content to ponder the nature of time and the cosmos. And until recently, the same could be said about the nature of the Maya themselves.įor much of the 20th century, Maya experts followed the lead of Carnegie Institution of Washington archaeologist J. Yet most of Tikal-the heart of Guatemala’s Tikal National Park, about an hour’s drive northeast of the modern city of Flores-has not even been excavated. During its heyday, archaeologists say, “downtown” Tikal was about six square miles, though research indicates that the city-state’s population may have sprawled over at least 47 square miles. Though magnificent, the ruins of Tikal visible today represent but a fraction of the original city-state. 750, Tikal was home to at least 60,000 Maya and held sway over several other city-states scattered through the rain forest from the YucatánPeninsula to western Honduras. Tikal’s great plaza, at the heart of what was one of the most powerful city-states in the Americas, is surrounded by monumental structures: the stepped terraces of the North Acropolis, festooned with grotesque giant masks carved out of plaster and masonry a steep pyramid called Temple I, whose roof comb towers 145 feet above the ground, and its mate across the plaza, TempleII, soaring 125 feet above the grass and a complex of mysterious buildings called the Central Acropolis.
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