A Jungle Altar That Reveals More About Mayan And Teotihuacan Culture Was Unearthed In Guatemala
Near the 2,400-year-old Maya city of Tikal in modern-day Guatemala, a team of researchers unearthed an altar that reveals more about Mayan and Teotihuacan culture.
It was built around the late 300s A.D. and was decorated with four panels painted red, yellow, and black depicting a person wearing a feathered headdress and flanked with shields.
The person’s face contains almond-shaped eyes, a nose bar, and a double earspool. It looks similar to other portrayals of a deity known as the “Storm God” in central Mexico.
The painted altar was the work of an artist at Teotihuacan, not a Maya artist. Teotihuacan was a large city located in northern Mexico that covered about eight square miles and housed more than 100,000 inhabitants.
At its peak between 100 B.C. and A.D. 750, it was one of the largest cities in the world. However, it was abandoned before the rise of the Aztecs in the 14th century.
It is believed that the Teotihuacan altar was used for sacrifices, especially of children. The remains of three children no older than the age of four were found on three sides of the altar. It took one and a half years for the archaeologists to uncover the altar and analyze it thoroughly.
The discovery supports the idea that Tikal was a major hub at the time. People from other cultures visited the city, making it an important cultural center.
“What the altar confirms is that wealthy leaders from Teotihuacan came to Tikal and created replicas of ritual facilities that would have existed in their home city. It shows Teotihuacan left a heavy imprint there,” said Stephen Houston, a co-author of the study and a professor at Brown University.
Tikal was founded around 850 B.C. It existed as a small city for many years before it blossomed into a dynasty around 100 A.D. Two centuries later, the Teotihuacan and the Maya at Tikal began interacting with each other.
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The Teotihuacan were traders who traveled all over the country. Their relationship with Tikal started out as a casual trading one but quickly became less than friendly. In the 1960s, archaeologists found a cut stone with text describing the conflict.
According to the text, the Teotihuacan removed the king of Tikal and replaced him with a puppet figure around A.D. 378. The presence of the Teotihuacan in the Maya city changed Tikal forever.
The Maya usually buried buildings and rebuilt on top of them, but in the case of the painted altar, they buried it and the surrounding structures, and left the land untouched. This pointed to how they felt about Teotihuacan.
After the Teotihuacan occupation, Tikal rose to greater power over the next few centuries. Eventually, they declined around 900 A.D., along with the rest of the Maya world.
The research was published in the journal Antiquity.
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