La Corona (Guatemala)
Coordinates: 16 ° 30 ′ 20 ″ N , 90 ° 22 ′ 48 ″ W.
The place La Corona is a pre-Columbian Maya ruin site on the Río San Pedro in the Central American Republic of Guatemala . The city, initially referred to as "Site Q" in Mayan research , was discovered in 1995 and archaeologically examined in the years that followed. The name "La Corona" is Spanish and means "the crown" in German. The ruined city was named by the first archaeologists who found a series of five temples that resembled a crown.
location
The city of La Corona was surrounded by other Mayan cities: Calakmul was in the northeast, Tikal in the east, Dos Pilas , Yaxchilán and Pietras Negros in the southwest, Palenque and Toniná in the west.
Research history
During the 1960s, looted Mayan artifacts referring to a previously unknown city appeared in international antique markets for the first time . For a long time it was assumed that the descriptions contained therein referred to Calakmul , but the differences to the artifacts found there were too great. Only with the discovery of La Corona could the mystery be solved. A Yale University archaeologist and three students from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas examined this small group of ruins in the remote Peten region of northern Guatemala. Her expedition was supported by the National Geographic Society , the El-Peru-Waka Research Project, and local guides.
La Corona was badly devastated when it was discovered and many of the buildings were in poor condition. So far, a main plaza and several temples have been identified. An important find is a 90 × 50 cm limestone slab with 140 Maya characters . So far, however, only part of the entire site has been archaeologically examined and documented.
history
During the heyday of the city of La Corona , the Mayan cities of Calakmul in what is now Campeche, Mexico and Tikal in the Peten region of what is now Guatemala were in a war for supremacy. The Prince of Calakmul built on alliances with smaller cities such as Dos Pilas , El Peru , La Corona and others to encircle and defeat their rival Tikal. La Corona and El Peru were strategically located near the San Pedro Martir River . Around AD 670, Tikal began an attack on a group of smaller towns in the hope of gaining access to areas in the west and thereby displacing rival Calakmul from the lucrative trade with the southern highlands. The residents and leaders of the city of La Corona fled after this military attack by Tikal and the city was largely destroyed. As the fighting continued, Calakmul defeated rival Tikal.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Arlen F. Chase, Diane Z. Chase: Late classic maya political structure, political size, and warfare arenas . In: Cociedad Española de Estudios Mayas (ed.): A sentamiento, estructura politica y ritual en la civilization maya . Madrid 1998, p. 11-29 .
- ↑ a b Abram Katz: Long-Sought Maya City Found in Guatemala. National Geographic, September 29, 2005, accessed March 3, 2011 .
- ^ Past Exhibition: "Lords of Creation: The Origins of Sacred Maya Kingship". Dallas Museum of Art, 2010, accessed March 3, 2011 (English, special exhibition on Mayan culture).