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Tikal

The magnificent site of Tikal lies amidst the lush rainforests of
northern Guatemala in the heart of the region known as the Petén.
Here, where the forest canopy today towers up to 50 and 60 meters
(150-180 ft.) in height, a city of 60,000-70,000 people surrounded by
verdant corn fields once bustled with activity.

Tikal has long been regarded by archaeologists as the "capital" of the
Maya, although for a people whose political organization did not
evolve beyond the level of the city-state, this may not be a totally
accurate characterization. In any case, it does represent one of the
most impressive architectural achievements of the Maya civilization,
being dominated by five sky-scraper-like pyramids each exceeding 60 m
(200 ft.) in height. Although its history spans the entire "Classic
Period" (indeed, its earliest dated monument (A.D. 292) has often been
cited as the beginning point of that epoch), its hey-day was reached
in the eighth century A.D. when the five imposing pyramids were
constructed, all within roughly a fifty-year span of time. Scarcely
less than a century later, Tikal, like most of the other Maya
city-states, was abandoned and the jungle began to encroach on its
temples and palaces.

(At the right is a photograph of the 20-story pyramid which the
excavators of Tikal have labelled Temple I.)

Archaeologists have speculated as to why Tikal was built where it was,
especially since it lies so near (25 km, or 16 mi.) to another older city
(Uaxactún) of like size and importance. As I point out in my book, both
cities are aligned to peaks in the Maya Mountains (located in present-day
Belize) at the winter solstice sunrise: Uaxactún to Baldy Beacon (1020 m,
or 3346 ft.) and Tikal to Victoria Peak (1120 m, or 3674 ft.) It would
appear that Uaxactún was constructed first, in the belief that Baldy
Beacon was the highest mountain in the range, but with the subsequent
discovery that Victoria Peak exceeded it in elevation, the Maya opted to
build a newer and larger "capital" aligned to it. In any event, both
Uaxactún and Tikal lie atop the drainage divide between the Gulf of Mexico
and the Caribbean Sea.

If one finds it amazing that the Maya could raise such great structures as
the five "sky-scraper" pyramids of Tikal without the use of the wheel or
the block and tackle, one finds it almost as amazing that the
archaeologists who excavated the site should have failed to appreciate the
significance of the pyramids' precise spatial arrangement. When I visited
the site in 1979, my principal objective was to determine how and why they
had been positioned as they were. Standing atop Temple I, I quickly
realized that Temple III lay directly west of it, marking the sunset
position at the time of the equinoxes. (In the photograph above we see
Temple II in the middle-foreground, Temple III to our left in the
middle-background and Temple IV to our right in the far background.)
Conversely, of course, a priest atop Temple III could observe the
equinoctial sunrise above Temple I. Also from Temple I, a sight-line to
Temple IV (the highest of the five pyramids: 67 m, or 221 ft.) marks the
sunset position on August 13 -- "the day the world began", according to
the Mesoamericans.

As one stands atop Temple IV, it is readily apparent that only one
man-made structure intersects the horizon, and this is Temple III.
However, it does so only with an architectural embellishment known as a
"roof comb" (a false front added by the Maya to their otherwise squat
buildings to give them more imposing height) -- in this case, a triple
roof comb whose azimuth marks the winter solstice sunrise position over
Victoria Peak, which is often invisible in the morning haze.

At first glance, Temple II (which is slightly offset to the left, or
south, across the central plaza from Temple I as seen in the middle
photograph above) might be regarded as simply an architectural
"counter-weight" to the latter. However, it is not until one mounts Temple
V, located on a hill to the south of the main complex, that a couple of
other spatial relationships become apparent. Temple I, as viewed from
Temple V, defines an azimuth of 15.5º east of north, reinforcing not only
a right-angle to Temple IV but also marking the same alignment as the
"Street of the Dead" at Teotihuacán. On the other hand, Temple II as seen
from Temple V marks an azimuth of 352º, or 8 degrees west of north -- a
key alignment also observed at the ancient "Olmec" site of La Venta and
whose significance is explained in my book. Thus, all five of the great
pyramids at Tikal form part of an ingenious "astronomical matrix" with
which the city's priests could calibrate all the major dates of their
ritual year.

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