Tikal: Analyze, understand and live the biggest Mayan city-state by Richter Dieter & Concoha Daniel

Author:Richter, Dieter & Concoha, Daniel [Richter, Dieter ]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-12-27T05:00:00+00:00

SOUTH ACROPOLIS

At the southeast corner of this monumental plaza you can pass through an opening. Following the walkway you will pass the so called South Acropolis. You won’t recognize anything as the whole complex is under jungle. The South Acropolis is one of the biggest complexes of Tikal, but has never been touched during excavations or restorations. This is how you have to imagine all of Tikal at the moment of its discovery! The whole site covered by jungle!

TEMPLE V

The little path brings you directly to the back of Temple V. Going around it you will be standing in front of the second highest temple pyramid of Tikal as well as of the whole Mayan World – 57 m. high. It is a massive monster! This one was the first of the big temple pyramids that were constructed in Tikal. Comparing this temple construction with the later ones you will notice that this early architecture presents an enormous mass, but although this is considered an elaborate design the great architects of the later centuries built with much more perfection. The temple pyramid shows seven huge levels getting narrower from the bottom towards the top. At the top of the pyramid the sacred temple was raised, which still carries an enormous roof comb on top. Temple V was constructed between 600 and 650 AD.

A famous epigrapher came out with the theory of the so called hiatus of Tikal – a time span of 130 years: 562 – 692 AD. The reason for his theory is that so far no hieroglyphic texts have been found, which date this period of time. That no texts have been found doesn’t mean that they didn’t exist. They might not have been found so far, could be stolen or even destroyed. BUT: During this time the governing people of Tikal decided to erect two of the biggest and most impressive temple pyramids ever constructed in Mayan culture! Temple V is still today the second highest temple in the Mayan World. In 600 AD, there existed no comparable construction at any other Mayan. Also the two temples 5D-32 and 5D-33 – erected on the southern edge of the North Acropolis, were impressive buildings (Structure 5D-33 was destroyed during the archaeological project the University of Pennsylvania carried out in the 60’s. The university published a few pictures of the temple before demolishing it - accessible at www.famsi.org under “The Tikal Digital Access Project”). Temple 5D-32 sheltered the important Burial 195, the tomb of Animal Skull, the 22nd ruler of Tikal. Temple 5D-33 was just three meters smaller than Temple II, the Temple of the Masks. So the second highest temple of all Mayan temples and two other monumental important ones were constructed during the hiatus………….. It is well known that many epigraphers do not collaborate in their analysis with archaeologists; they ONLY analyze hieroglyphic texts. Very sad!

At the northeastern corner of the platform carrying Temple V there is a small thatch roof with photos taken during the intervention.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.