EL MIRADOR

Where?   Péten, Guatemala

What?     Vast Maya citadel, swallowed by the jungle

IT’S HOT – steaming hot. The air heavy enough to slice. Sweat streaming in rivulets. Insects humming. Howler monkeys earning their name. The jungle rears higher, a looming canopy of mahogany, cedar and spiny ceiba, Guatemala’s national tree which was considered sacred by the ancient Maya, who believed its roots grew down into the underworld. Seems appropriate. For this particular patch of forest hides one of the Maya’s largest, earliest and most astonishing cities. A place that’s lain abandoned for centuries and is only now beginning to reveal its secrets ...

The Maya civilisation spanned from around 2000 BC to AD 900 – though there are still modern Maya people living across Central America today. During their era of dominance, the Maya founded powerful settlements featuring large plazas, exquisite stone carvings and enormous stepped pyramids. Many visitors converge on the Guatemalan site of Tikal – once an important capital – to appreciate Mayan architectural virtuosity at its best restored and most reachable.

However, secreted away in the country’s remote, wild, densely tangled Petén region in the far north, is a city that was bigger and grander than better-known Tikal, yet is now visited by only a handful of people. El Mirador’s heyday was from around 300 BC to AD 150, during the Mayan Preclassic period, well before Tikal came to prominence some 500 years later. Spread across a series of low, limestone hills, El Mirador was twice the size of Tikal, with a purported population of over 80,000 people.

For reasons unknown – perhaps environmental degradation or threats from nearby rivals such as Teotihuacán in Mexico – El Mirador collapsed. It was rediscovered in 1926, and aerial photographs taken in 1930 revealed its massive peaks of man-made stone protruding from the rainforest canopy. And that’s largely how El Mirador remains. An overgrown behemoth, still consumed by nature.

Only a fraction of the 16-square kilometre (6-square mile) site has been excavated, partly because the vegetation helps protect the ruins from the damaging effects of the sun, partly because it’s such a Sisyphean task.

Unless you’re in possession of a helicopter, the only way to get to El Mirador is on foot or by mule from the village of Carmelita. It takes two days, on a route that becomes a knee-deep mud bath during the rainy season, and remains a broiling, buggy expedition year round, with the possibility of meeting deadly fer-de-lance snakes, toxic chechen trees or even jaguar.

But it’s worth it. The grand scale and sophistication of El Mirador is still evident even beneath its thick green cloak. Not least the triadic pyramid of La Danta, which at 70 metres (230 feet) is the tallest the Maya ever built; researchers estimate it would have taken 15 million man-days to construct. Today, wooden ladders lead up La Danta’s steep, stepped flank to the summit, from where the tops of the site’s other pyramids jut up above the rampant trees.

Rising 55 metres (180 feet) high, El Tigre is the site’s second largest complex and faces La Danta on an east–west axis. Its Jaguar Paw Temple has been well excavated, revealing panels depicting Maya deities and big cats. Between these pyramids lies the Central Acropolis, a plaza where coronations and sacrifices would have been performed. Here, the carved stucco of the Central Acropolis frieze show Hunahpu and Xbalanque, the Hero Twins of Maya creation mythology, carrying their father’s severed head through the underworld.

But El Mirador’s reach extended far further into the jungle. The city was the ceremonial nexus of many interconnected settlements, encompassing maybe a million people. A network of sacbeob, chalky-white limestone causeways, ran across the Mirador Basin, linking these settlements together. Follow this road system today and you’ll find countless Mayan ruins, including the huge city of El Tintal (second only in size to El Mirador) and the older temples at Nakbé. Impressive sites, long hidden. Which make you wonder, what else might be concealed within this impenetrable sea of green?