Altar de Sacrificios
Altar de Sacrificios ( Spanish ) is a Maya archaeological site in Petén, right next to today's border river to Mexico Usumacinta . The settlement is one of the earliest foundations in the central lowlands and can be classified in connection with the then increasingly flourishing trade along the river.
Finds of the 19th century, which were made when Teoberto Maler rediscovered the site in 1895, date to the Middle Preclassic . Sylvanus Morley described the inscriptions found in Altar de Sacrificios in 1938. The full archaeological excavation took place in the last third of the 20th century. Numerous steles and monuments were uncovered, which the local rulers had erected in the years 455 to 849. Altar de Sacrificios had its cultural heyday in the late classical period.
Some artefacts suggest a central Mexican influence, which among other indications first led Eric Thompson to the thesis of an invasion of the Putún Maya , which contributed at least partly to the collapse of the classical Mayan culture in the central lowlands. The more recent Maya research is rather critical of this.
literature
- Nikolai Grube (ed.): Maya, god kings in the rainforest. Potsdam 2012, ISBN 978-3-8480-0033-3 , p. 442
Individual evidence
Web links
Coordinates: 16 ° 28 ′ 1.2 ″ N , 90 ° 31 ′ 58.8 ″ W.