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The lowlands of the Yucatán Peninsula were once home to many powerful Maya city-states. Today, sites such as Tikal, in Guatemala, and Calakmul, in Mexico, showcase the architectural accomplishments of these prosperous centres. The great temple-pyramids standing within them now pierce a lush jungle canopy, which can provide a sense that these settlements were islands of urbanism within an ocean of pristine rainforest. Survey work over the last decade or so has helped to reveal how effective the Maya were at taming this environment, though, with networks of road-like causeways stretching far into the jungle, while subtle irrigation and drainage systems enabled agriculture. Despite this wealth of new information, there was still a conspicuous blank on the archaeological map. An area of some 3,000km² within the Balamkú Biosphere Reserve in Mexico was totally devoid of any known Maya sites. This is in part because, even by the standards of the Yucatán Peninsula rainforest, the region is remote and hard to access.
Examining the area using modern satellite images reveals a more-or-less unbroken carpet of green. Seeing beneath this shroud is most easily achieved with LiDAR, a remote-sensing technique that employs aerial-mounted lasers capable of reaching the ground surface, allowing the tree cover to be virtually stripped away. Given the wide spread of Maya settlements across the lowlands, it seemed likely that something must exist within this void. At the same time, the area was simply too large for an archaeological project to be able to survey it all. Instead, success would depend on narrowing the options to the areas most likely to contain ancient urban sites. But where to start? This question was tackled by Ivan Šprajc, head of the Institute of Anthropological and Spatial Studies at ZRC SAZU, Slovenia. He is an archaeologist with over 30 years’ experience of working in the region, and a track record of rediscovering lost Maya cities.
Seeking settlement
‘I expected something to be there’, says Ivan. ‘One of the most suitable areas was a peninsula of elevated terrain projecting into an area of low-lying wetlands, the so-called bajos. This position seemed particularly suggestive because practically all major Maya centres are situated in the immediate vicinity of these bajos. Access to water was – and is – a crucial consideration in this environment. The whole Yucatán Peninsula is a relatively flat landscape that is almost entirely formed from limestone. As a result, karstic phenomena such as caves, underground rivers, and sinkholes are common. This, in turn, means that there is almost no reliable source of surface water. Perennial streams are practically non-existent, while the underground water-table is very deep, with depths ranging from 80m to 120m. This makes it inaccessible with the technology available to the Maya. The only source of freshwater is often the little lakelets that occur in the bajos, and most commonly form at its edges.’
Access to drinking water was only one of the advantages that came from founding settlements near the bajos. Another is that nodules of chert are often obtainable in the wetlands. The Maya believed that these lumps of fine-grained stone were created by lightning strikes, but this material was also crucial for their technology, as it was used to make a range of tools, including weapons and ritual implements, such as axes, knives, and spearheads. An additional gain that flowed from proximity to the wetlands was that they presented a way to undertake sustainable agriculture. While rainforest soils are notorious for rapidly losing their fertility once the trees are felled, careful adaptation and management of the wetlands enabled crops like maize to be grown successfully for centuries. A final benefit bestowed by this boggy terrain is that it is difficult to traverse, which amounts to a natural defensive quality – something that would be of particular value given the regularity with which hostilities could break out between the various Maya city-states. If a major centre or centres did once exist in the Balamkú Biosphere Reserve, then, the peninsula that caught Ivan’s eye would have provided a tempting spot to establish such a settlement.
‘When the aerial survey concluded and we saw the LiDAR imagery, it became obvious that the whole peninsula had once been densely settled with residential and other structures’, says Ivan. ‘But, of course, without ground truthing you can never know for sure exactly what you’ve got, so the next step was to examine the site in the field. That presented some challenges. The whole central part of the Yucatán Peninsula is now made up of biospheres, so it is all jungle. This is not an area that you can simply walk across. Instead, we need vehicles, not least because we work in the dry season, so there is almost no water available in the field. We have to bring everything we drink in with us, alongside all of our other provisions and equipment. If we went in the rainy season, the lakelets would be full of water, but it would be impossible to survey on foot because half of the terrain is flooded or swampy. You just can’t move through the landscape. The Maya could do it, because they had that network of causeways crossing the wetlands, but they aren’t something we can use now.’
There are other trails in the jungle, though. Dirt roads were opened in the first half of the 20th century for commercial enterprises such as chicle extraction. This is a tree sap that was used to make chewing gum, so sourcing it became a lucrative economic activity, until an artificial alternative was developed. Logging was another industry that required tracks to be scythed through the rainforest. All told, numerous dirt roads existed in the past, even if most of them are now overgrown. It is still possible to locate these 20th-century trails, though, and once they have been found it is also permissible to reopen them for vehicles, allowing the archaeologists a way in. In such challenging conditions, these relics of the more recent past can be almost as tricky to locate as the Maya archaeology. Finding a suitable trail once depended on poring over old aerial photographs, but now more often involves scrutinising LiDAR imagery. Even so, it can take days or even weeks to find a convenient candidate. After identifying the nearest parking place, there is still plenty of work for the team to do: they survey the site on foot, using machetes to clear the way.
Inside Ocomtún
When the team reached the peninsula they sought in 2023, it was clear that the implications of the LiDAR results were accurate. At the same time, numerous additional features that were too subtle to appear on that imagery were also apparent. The ruins of a city were spread across an area of over 50ha, covering the tongue of higher land. Apart from a few fragments of walls, most of the exterior masonry had tumbled away, after falling victim to neglect and aggressive vegetation. The remaining ruins present an enigmatic jumble of mounds. Some are remnants of once-impressive pyramids, one of which dominated the city acropolis and rose over 20m high. Other mounds mark the location of palaces or more humble residences, while the settlement also incorporated plazas and a court for playing the popular Maya ballgame. Scattered among the mounds the team found altars and large numbers of monolithic cylindrical stone columns, which would once have flanked entranceways. While comparable columns are known elsewhere, the sheer number gifted this lost city its new name: Ocomtún, the Maya word for stone columns.
While the external masonry architecture belonging to the final phase of the city’s monuments had collapsed, it is entirely possible that excavation could reveal important surviving stone structures at Ocomtún. This is because the Maya architectural emphasis was on external rather than internal spaces. A classic way for a ruler to show off their power was by rebuilding an earlier monument in order to make it grander and bigger. In the case of a temple-pyramid, they would usually accomplish this by tearing down the shrine standing at its summit, or even just encasing it within the new fabric, as they extended the monument upwards and outwards to create a more imposing edifice. The result is that these Maya pyramids can resemble the layers of an onion, with excavation revealing a series of earlier and successively smaller – but still well-preserved – monuments nested one inside the other.
Maya settlements can be a source, too, of sculpted monuments bearing glyphs that preserve valuable historical information. ‘We only found one of these’, says Ivan. ‘It was a block that was carved in relief and carried an inscription, but it was no longer in its original location. Instead, we discovered it reused in a staircase. Apparently, its original role was as a lintel in an entranceway. One portion is missing, so it seems that part of the block was cut away on one side, while another face was reshaped, meaning that part of the relief and associated inscription is missing. What the block shows is a captive, apparently a noble captive, who had become the prisoner of another lord.’
‘Our epigrapher translated the inscription, which refers to the settlement that the captive came from, and also gives the names of both the lord holding him prisoner and the city he is from. It is possible that the name of this second site, which is Maatz´, could also be the Maya name for Ocomtún. Equally, though, this victorious lord may have lived elsewhere and erected the monument there. If so, it may be that the guys from Ocomtún attacked them, and then brought the block back with them. We know of many similar cases where monuments or inscriptions were taken as spoils of war, before being reused at another settlement. It was essentially a form of boasting that allowed the winners to advertise their victory over the occupants of another city. When the block at Ocomtún was reused in the staircase, it was placed upside down. We do not know exactly what that signified, but it is notable that an offering was left in front of the block as well. The relief itself seems to belong to the Late Classic period, which puts it in the 7th or 8th centuries. Analysis of ceramics in the offering shows that they belong to the Terminal Classic period in the 9th and 10th centuries, with the types of pottery most common in an area to the north known as the Chenes region. This introduces a third possibility – that the block was placed Ocomtún, or even that the whole stairway was built or modified, by late immigrants who were arriving during this period, and who made an offering to accompany this reuse of the stone.’
The centres cannot hold
The ruins of Ocomtún have revealed plenty more examples of offerings that were made in the settlement during the Terminal Classic period, including one on the city acropolis. While, as we have seen, such deposits could be made against the backdrop of large-scale movement into a city, the biggest story from this era is how the urban populations of the lowlands ultimately dwindled. The Terminal Classic period culminates in what is known as the Classic Maya collapse, when numerous centres, including Tikal and Ocomtún became largely deserted and the curtain fell on the era of building magnificent architectural monuments within them. For many decades, the explanation for the abandonment of the cities in the Maya lowlands was considered one of the great mysteries of archaeology.
‘We know what happened, more or less’, Ivan says. ‘We can be certain about what factors contributed to the collapse. One driver was demographic pressure caused by overpopulation, which led to deforestation, because more land was needed for agriculture. It was not sustainable, though, which resulted in soil depletion. This also caused problems with wood availability, which was needed for cooking, burning stone to make lime, and firing ceramics, as well as for building. On top of all of that, there were wars. Unfortunately, these were always present in the Maya world, just as they have been throughout the history of humanity, but we know from the surviving inscriptions that conflict intensified during the Late Classic and Terminal Classic periods. If one city-state attacked and defeated another one, that might momentarily help the victorious ruler and his people, because they could seize their opponent’s wealth. But, if the defeated state also occupied an important position in the commercial trade network, then destroying it would ultimately hurt the victors as well.’
‘Sure enough, this warfare caused major problems. Trade routes were essential to the Maya world and could be very long- distance. Obsidian and jade, for example, were of great importance to the Maya and can be found being used all over the lowlands, even though the nearest natural sources are in the highlands of Guatemala. Once the trade routes collapsed, these prestigious materials were no longer available in the region. Another problem was salt. There is no salt in the interior of the Yucatán Peninsula, so it had to be obtained from either the coast or the highlands of Guatemala.’
‘So we can see that population pressure, reduced soil fertility, war, and trade disruption were all factors in the Maya collapse. What we don’t know yet is what the prime mover was. There are some indications from the epigraphy that the collapse started in the southern portion of the lowlands, which is interesting because this is an area where water is comparatively plentiful. Apart from that, though, we cannot yet see what the sequence of events was. It seems certain, though, that the establishment of completely different long-distance supply networks during the Postclassic period is no coincidence. At that time, all of the trade switched to maritime routes. We can see a series of ports were occupied along the coast, and that is where the Maya sustained themselves following the collapse; there, as well as in the northern part of the Yucatán Peninsula and in the southern highlands, where there was no comparable break in settlement. That was a volcanic landscape, with fertile soil and plenty of water, so the population was not as vulnerable and had more options to sustain themselves.’
The search continues
While the discovery of Ocomtún added a major new settlement to the map of the Maya lowlands, the LiDAR imagery suggested that it was not the only important site to lie within the archaeological black hole in the Balamkú Biosphere Reserve. While Ocomtún sits in the northern part of this area, Ivan arranged for two other tempting targets in the south to be surveyed. Once again, the results were intriguing, and the team examined one of the targets on foot earlier this year. Sure enough, it proved to be the site of another major Maya settlement, though one that is very different in character to Ocomtún.
‘We hoped that there would be some inscriptions or standing masonry monuments’, says Ivan, ‘but we didn’t find anything of that nature. It seems as though the landscape made this site less attractive. The terrain is very rocky, with only a thin layer of soil. Perhaps this area was only developed when the surrounding areas – where the conditions were more favourable – were already full and couldn’t support a larger population. That is only a working hypothesis for now, not least because it does seem that there was at least some early activity nearby. I see this new site as a culturally poor variation on Maya urbanism – it has nothing at all of the architectural elaboration seen at places like Tikal. We found almost no monuments, very few altars, and not even the cylindrical stone pillars that characterised Ocomtún. There were also no agricultural terraces or modifications to the nearby bajos. It was just piles of stone, showing the presence of many structures. As the absence of buildings containing mortar is a characteristic of the site, we have named it Cotná, meaning “house with dry-stone walls”. This settlement raises lots of questions, but in general it seems like a great example of the variation that existed within Maya culture.’
Shedding light on this archaeological black hole is, then, revealing not just lost cities in the depths of the jungle, but the range, too, of Maya responses to an extraordinary environment.
Acknowledgements: The surveys in 2023 and 2024 were financially supported by ZRC SAZU (http://www.zrc-sazu.si/en), the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (http://www.arrs.si/en/index.asp), Ken & Julie Jones Charitable Foundation, Milwaukee Audubon Society (http://www.milwaukeeaudubon.org), Peter Thornquist, and Leslie Martin (USA), and companies Ars longa (http://www.arslonga.si), Adria kombi (http://www.adriakombi.si/?lang=en), Rokus Klett (http://www.rokus-klett.si/ lang=en), Artos, and BSL (Slovenia).
All images: courtesy of Ivan Šprajc
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