After taking us through the Central Acropolis-an impressive but claustrophobic warren of windowless rooms, tiny courtyards and ruined shrines-Tony Ortiz, a veteran Tikal National Park guide with a strong sense of the dramatic, led his small group out into the bright sunshine and onto a stone platform overlooking the Great Plaza. “This is the Tikal that everybody knows,” Ortiz said, with a proprietary wave of an arm that encompassed the expansive plaza and its ornate monuments and huge temples. “This was the center of the Mayan world.”
Archeologists really have only just begun to reveal the full magnificence that was Tikal: a sprawling metropolis of more than 50,000 people dominated by enormous temples-the tallest structures erected in the hemisphere until modern times-and ruled by castes of learned priests and autocratic kings gorgeously attired in jaguar-skin robes, plumed headdresses and jade jewelry.
Today, more than 1,000 years after the mysterious collapse of lowland Mayan civilization and with most of Tikal’s buildings still jungle-shrouded ruins or only partly restored, to stand in the Great Plaza is to know something of the awe medieval peasants felt when they entered a cathedral. This was the heart of Tikal at its zenith, when it was to Mayan civilization what Athens was to ancient Greece.
A flattened hilltop like most of Tikal’s major sites, the Great Plaza covers about 3 acres, and for religious ceremonies must have been as jampacked as St. Peter’s Square during a papal audience. Two great temples face each other across the plaza, which is surrounded by palaces, sacrificial altars, a ritual ball court and some 70 stelae, elaborately inscribed memorial stones that tell much of what we know about Tikal and Mayan culture.
There have been some major breakthroughs in Mayan studies in recent years-80 percent of Mayan inscriptions now can be deciphered, and two undisturbed city sites were discovered in Belize just last year-but many mysteries remain. Among them, why Tikal was chosen as the place for a great city and how it managed to flourish for more than 1,500 years, from about 700 B.C. to A.D. 900 but suddenly collapsed.
Tikal is in the heart of El Peten, the vast but thinly populated lowland region of northeastern Guatemala. In contrast to the cool temperate highlands where most Guatemalans live, El Peten is hot, steamy and covered with towering tropical forest, dense jungle that is home to nearly 300 species of brilliantly plumed tropical birds and where jaguars prowl, spider and howling monkeys swing between the giant trees and vampire bats are lords of the night. Archeologists think the ancient Mayans chose this seemingly inhospitable spot for their chief city because it was on a main trade route between lowland and highland Mayan settlements and had a large supply of flint, prized for making tools and weapons.
The Mayans were one of only a handful of cultures to independently develop an alphabet, understood the mathematical concept of zero and had astronomical calenders as accurate as our own, but they never invented the wheel or discovered metal. At its peak, Tikal covered about 18 square miles, and an enormous manual labor force must have been needed to clear the forest and drain swamps for agriculture as well as build the causeways, palaces and temples that can be seen today.
About 4,000 Mayan structures have been identified within the boundaries of the 250-square-mile national park, most buried deep in the jungle. There are a lot of theories as to why Tikal’s social structure disintegrated, including overpopulation, warfare with other Mayan cities and a bloody revolt by long-oppressed and overworked peasants that wiped out the ruling aristocratic and priestly castes-and the lowland Mayan civilization along with them.
Tikal was discovered in 1848, but it wasn’t until the mid-1950s, when the national park-the first such archeological and nature preserve in Central America-was established that archeologists from the University of Pennsylvania began excavating the core of the city, the vicinity of the Great Plaza. So that visitors can see the sort of romantic ruins that greeted the first explorers, some sites have been cleared of trees but otherwise left untouched.
However, most of the buildings on the Great Plaza have been restored, and it takes only a little imagination to conjure up scenes of barbaric splendor, gory rituals in which kings mutilated themselves to appease their ancestors and ceremonial ball games ended in bloody sacrifice. Imagination gets a lot of help from the stelae, still standing where they were found but now protected by thatch roofs. Most are artfully carved of white limestone and depict Tikal’s kings in their splendor, sometimes with a defeated enemy king, his hands and legs bound, crouched at their feet awaiting sacrifice.
Five enormous temples dominate Tikal, the tallest equal to an 18-story building. Neither of the two temples facing each other in the Great Plaza is the highest-that honor goes to the Temple of the Double-Headed Serpent (Temple IV). But the facing temples are a dramatic grouping-Tikal’s most photographed sight and its signature image.
The Grand Temple of the Jaguar (Temple I) is the largest of the two, a step-pyramid 130 feet high and so steep that people have been killed trying to climb it. It is now closed to the public. The Temple of the Jaguar was built for King Ah-Cacau, who reigned in the 8th Century, when Tikal’s population and glory peaked.
Ah-Cacau’s tomb was found within the temple while it was being restored. His kingly grave goods included 180 jade ornaments, along with pearls and richly carved bone objects, some of which can be seen in the National Park Museum. The second, smaller and less steep Great Plaza temple is Temple II, or the Temple of the Masks, so called for the carved faces that decorated the lintel of the small enclosure atop it. This is one of the few Mayan temples dedicated to a woman, Ah-Cacau’s queen. There are 42 broad steps to the top, which has the best view of the plaza and from where you also can see the other great temples looming surrealistically above the 100-foot-high jungle canopy.
Even in its semiruined state, the Great Plaza conveys a sense of urbanity: This was unquestionably the heart of a great city. However, as soon as you leave the plaza to explore other temple and palace sites, the presence of the vast surrounding jungle is powerful and all-pervasive. The paths and trails to the main sites, such as towering Temple IV and the spooky “Palace of the Bats,” are wide and well marked but canopied by giant trees through which monkeys swing, macaws flutter and where termites build giant nests. The underbrush rustles with the passage of snakes and small animals, and the air is filled with warbling of birds, the chorusing of cicadas and the buzzing of tree frogs.
For many visitors, the literal high point of a trip to Tikal is the climb up the 212-foot-high Temple of the Double-Headed Serpent (Temple IV), tallest of all the Mayan temples and the highest structure ever built by Native Americans. Indeed, not until around the turn of the century, when the invention of the elevator made Manhattan skyscrapers possible, were taller structures built in the hemisphere.
The temple’s surreal presence in the depths of a dense jungle-it’s as though the ruins of the Empire State Building stood in a clearing in the White Mountains National Forest-symbolizes all that is marvelous and inexplicable about Tikal. The Temple of the Double-Headed Serpent is unrestored at its base and so big that at first it appears to be a steep hill rather than a building. It was built in the middle of the 8th Century by Yaxkin Caan Chac, Ah-Cacau’s son, who succeeded him as king.
Because of its height and unrestored condition, this temple is potentially more dangerous to climb than the Temple of the Jaguar, but the national park service has installed six wooden ladders at key points that make the ascent relatively easy.
The door lintel with the double-headed serpent carving that gave the temple its name is gone, taken like the one in the Temple of the Masks from the summit ceremonial room by a 19th-Century explorer. Both are now displayed in a museum in Basel, Switzerland.
This greatest of Tikal temples may be in ruins and its ornaments looted, but the stunning view-once reserved for kings and high priests but now available to any tourist of sound wind and limb-remains intact. The Great Plaza lies below, the tops of the other high temples jut bizarrely out of the forest canopy nearby, and running away to the horizon in all directions is the real conqueror of Tikal: the jungle.
JUNGLE-COVERED REGION OFFERS 4,000 ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES
Tikal, greatest of all the Mayan cities, is in El Peten, a remote and jungle-covered lowland region in northeastern Guatemala. El Peten is vast but thinly populated with few and very poor roads.
Most visitors prefer to fly into Flores, the regional capital, and travel by bus or rental car to Tikal National Park. The road from Flores to Tikal is one of the few paved ones in El Peten, and the drive takes about an hour.
Visitors generally stay only a day or two, but it takes a week or more to thoroughly explore Tikal: the national park covers 250 square miles and contains about 4,000 archeological sites.
There are several hotels in Flores, and three small inns and several restaurants within the national park boundaries.
Many tour companies run one-day packages to Tikal from Guatemala City, Antigua and other resort areas. Prices differ from company to company and with the season but are usually in the $150-$200 range. Flying time from Guatemala City is about an hour. These tours focus on the heart of Tikal.
A visit to Tikal is usually one of the highlights of any trip to Guatemala.
Tikal is also an obligatory stop for anyone traveling along La Ruta Maya, a 1,500-mile itinerary of major Mayan sites from the Yucatan to El Salvador.
An indispensable companion for anyone on the Mayan route is the guidebook “La Ruta Maya” (Lonely Planet, $15.95), which has detailed sections and good maps-hard to find in Central America-covering the Yucatan, Guatemala and Belize, which have the most and finest Mayan sites.
For information about Tikal and La Ruta Maya, write: Guatemala Tourist Commission, 299 Alhambra Circle, Suite 510, Coral Gables, Fla. 33134; or call 800-742-4529.
