Trips to Guatemala

NATIONAL PARK TIKAL

Tikal, located in the Guatemalan region of Petén, is greater the excavated archaeological site of the American continent.

The name “Tikal” means “Place of the Voices” or “Place of the Languages” in Mayan, and was coined by Sylvanus Morley; specialistic American archeologist in the Mayan culture.

Tikal, one of the main cultural and population centers of the Mayan civilization, prospered mainly during the classic period, approximately from 200 to 850. Some palaces of the elite were burned, and the population gradually decayed until the site was left at the end of century X. The last dated monument data of 899.
According to the archeologists, the city of Tikal was a ceremonial center where rites were realized to obtain good agricultural harvest. In the central Acropolis there were floors of houses probably of familiar type, steam baths, playgrounds of ball, places of markets and water channels. The Mayans reached a high, agricultural and commercial cultural, artistic, city-planning, mathematical, astronomical development.

The students consider that in its maximum apogee, Tikal had a population of 100,000 to 150,000 inhabitants. Six great pyramidal temples survive and the real palace, besides some pyramids smaller, palaces, carved residences and stones.

The ruins of Tikal, as it leaves from the National Park Tikal (of an extension of 576 km2s) were the first archaeological site in being declared Patrimony of the Humanity in 1979, and also, the first Patrimony of the mixed Humanity (ecological and archaeological) of the world.

Tikal was used as scene of the rebellious base in the Star Wars film and is the model of the Mayan city in the film of Mel Gibson, Apocalypto.

The National Park Tikal, heart of the Mayan forest, shelters felines smaller like pumas and jaguars. The toucans and the parrots fly between the trees, while the monkeys excite in the branches. By his ebullient vegetation it is called to Tikal and its environs the third lung of the world.

The site can every day be visited by the public of the year. An asphalt road of 76 km communicates to Tikal with Flowers, the main city of the Petén.

It is possible to be arrived at Tikal by land (eight hours from city of Guatemala) and by air.