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Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a Mayan city nearly 3,000 years old in northern Guatemala, with pyramids and monuments that point to its significance as an important ceremonial site.
The Mayan civilization arose around 2000BC, reaching its height between 400 and 900AD in what is present-day southern Mexico and Guatemala, as well as parts of Belize, El Salvador and Honduras.
The city named Los Abuelos, Spanish for “The Grandparents,” once stood some 21km (13 miles) from the important archaeological site of Uaxactun, in Guatemala’s northern Petén department, the country’s culture ministry said in a statement on Thursday.
It is dated to what is known as the Middle Preclassic period from about 800-500BC, and is believed to have been “one of the most ancient and important ceremonial centers” of the Mayan civilization in the jungle area of Petén near the Mexican border, it added.
“The site presents remarkable architectural planning” with pyramids and monuments “sculpted with unique iconography from the region”, said the ministry.
The city takes its name from two human-like sculptures of an “ancestral couple” found at the site.
The figures, dated to between 500 and 300BC, “could be linked to ancient ritual practices of ancestor worship”, said the ministry.
The city, which covers an area of about 16 sq km (6 sq miles) was discovered by Guatemalan and Slovak archaeologists in previously little-explored areas of the Uaxactun park.
Nearby, they also found a pyramid standing 33 meters (108ft) high with murals from the Preclassic period and “a unique canal system”, according to the statement.
“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 Petén,” said the ministry.
In April, scientists discovered a 1,000-year-old altar from Mexico’s ancient Teotihuacán culture at Tikal, elsewhere in the Petén department.
That find was interpreted as proof of ties between the two pre-Hispanic cultures, which lived about 1,300km apart.
Tikal, about 23km from Uaxcatun, is the main archaeological site in Guatemala and one of its biggest tourist attractions.
