Word: tikal
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
History issues grim warnings about the future of cities. Since the beginning of civilization, they have risen to greatness only to collapse because of epidemics, warfare, ecological calamities, shifts in trade or social disorder. Calah, Tikal and Angkor are among the fabled places that disappeared into the sands or jungles of time. Surviving cities have undergone wild swings of fortune. Alexandria, Egypt, may have housed several hundred thousand people at its peak in Roman times, but when Napoleon entered it in 1798, it had shrunk to 4,000 souls. Since then, it has again boomed to nearly 3 million...
...also one of the great centers of Mayan civilization. Ruins -- still largely unrestored, insufficiently studied and besieged by tomb robbers -- dot the lowland forests: the pyramids of Xunantunich and Altun Ha and the vast complex of Caracol, which in the 6th to 7th centuries was the rival of Tikal, across the Guatemalan border...
...exhibition in New York, which was coordinated by Maya Scholar Charles Gallenkamp, features objects of ineffable fragility and beauty. These include six polychrome ceramic bowls excavated over the past five years at Tikal, the largest of all the known ancient Maya cities. Found in tombs at a site dubbed Mundo Perdido in the Peten jungle of Guatemala, these funerary vessels depict the underworld gods and beasts that haunted the Mayas. One bowl rests on a turtle swimming in a painted, stylized underground sea. Rising from the lid is the symbol of resurrection, a long-beaked water bird...
Also from Tikal are incense burners that reflect the Mayas' grotesque imaginings of hell. The 14-in.-high Old Fire God is a satanic orange figure that holds out a human skull. Another censer represents a Maya lord whose throne is decorated by the long-nosed figure of the Cauac Monster, who rules the Maya underworld...
...hundred years, they spread north, east and south, until Maya cities & towns dotted an area of 125,000 square miles. No one knows the total number of settlements, but there were "countless" small ones, and at least 100 that were metropolitan enough to have temples, statues and hieroglyphs. Tikal, in Guatemala, may have had a population of 200,000 or more; its ruins cover several hundred acres, and include five temples, one of them over 200 feet high. Copan, in Honduras, has within its inner group of buildings a sizable stadium, sculptured stairways, terraces, pyramids. At Chichen Itza and Uxmal...