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Domingo Leiva / Getty Images/Flickr RF
Bastions of Power: Tikal, an archeological gem once ruled by the Mayans, is located in northern Guatemala.
On Monday we posted a story about a new photo book on civilization’s most important sites. The list of 100 destinations includes Tikal, an ancient Mayan city in Guatemala (pictured above).
Looking at the beautiful, mysterious photo featured in the book got us wondering about Tikal. What adventures and lessons in ancient civilization await a visitor?
We did a little poking around and discovered that the pyramid-like structures are in Tikal National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site that protects more than 222 square miles of tropical rainforest. It was here that Mayan civilization settled and flourished from the 6th century B.C. to the 10th century A.D.
Submitted by Jason Ladouceur / UGC
Gran Plaza, Tikal, Guatemala
The city was once home to 90,000 Mayan Indians, according to UNESCO. The ruins, which include temples, tombs and religious monuments, are made up of 3,000 buildings. One-time dwellings dot the surrounding countryside.
If exploring an ancient civilization sounds intriguing, but you yearn for even more adventure, there is always the preserve's jungle. The mantled howler monkey, dwarf anteater, kinkajou, puma and jaguar are among the 54 species that live there.
If this seals the deal, check out Guatemala's tourism website for more information on how to travel to Tikal.
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Tikal is, indeed, a fascinating site and well worth the trip. But not too far away, in neighboring Honduras, is the Mayan city of Copán, the place where it's believed the Mayan calendar was developed and perfected. Copán offers a more compact site more easily accessible to tourists, and with a museum superior to that of Tikal. If you're in the area, visit both. If you can visit only one, see Copán.
I decided to go back packing in Belize for one month for something different vacation wise, At 52 years young I found a travel companion in Belize and we went to Tikal, It was amazing, We stayed in the town called Flores which is about a 40 minute bus ride. Expect a long day walking around there,,,we went for the sunrise tour and it was beautiful! And those howler monkeys were so vocal, It will be lots and lots of walking, but I enjoyed every minute of it,
This may be the Travel section but ancient civilization has always been a fascination for me, especially that there was a global knowledge of pyramid building. The pyramid builders and astronomers clearly were both in on the design of their monuments, and much further to the south in Aperos Peru Pyramids were being built long before the Egyptians ever began to build their first step pyrmids. That indicates to me that the cradle of Western civilization is not Sumeria, Mesopotamia or Egypt for that matter. The builders built their pyramids basically according to what portion of the night sky and represented their astronomy, mathamatics, and stoneworking skills to reflect the Constellations in their part of the world. We have yet to compare the layout and design of American pyramids against Egyptian pyramids. It is obvious the egyptians built the great pyramids in a layout refelcting the Constellation of Orion and some may have shown the Southern Cross was part of that design. What is interesting is that the three pyramids were built long after much older pyramids in Egypt which formed the other stars of the Orion constellation, the Great pyramids completed the representation of the Orion constellation on the Gizah plateau. A design was adhered to and followed over the course of many dynasties and centuries. What is also interesting is that the Peruvian pyramids and cities were also built on a high desert plateau though be it a high mountain plateau and a river runs through it, the Peruvian Nile, with an Upper and Lower region along the course of that river. Much like an Upper and Lower Egypt. It would be interesting to find wether those pyramids are also placed identically or to some approximation of the Egyptian pyramids or what layouts and designs representing constellations may have been incorporated into the Peruvian pyramids, as well as the mathamatical representations for any number of terrestial or celestial objectives. The ancient scales of measurement could be compared between civilizations and compared to modern measurement systems. It would also be interesting to discover wether the ancients knew of other mathamatical concepts such as Prime Numbers and wether their stonework and building efforts would reflect other mathamatical concepts.
In closing, What makes the Gizah plateau especially interesting is in raising the question of wether the placement of the Great Pyramids would correspond to the perturbations of the galactic plane and the Orion constellations position in the Galactic plane being represented in the equatorial region of the earth on the Gizah Plateau. Which would infer the ancients knew of the existence of a galactic plane and other spatial coordinate systems...and could be an indication the pyramid builders of the world had help....and the knowledge has been carried through thousands of years....but we have not yet learned of our celestial neighbors existence in the galaxy, they may have left some clues.
Could the mass and size of the Great pyramids reflect the calculations for distances and mass of those three stars in Orions belt? Possibly even the actual distance and compare it to our modern scale of distance to those stars. Was there an overall ancient mathamatical model or way of viewing those concepts, it appears there may have been.
And who predated the Peruvians, what hidden secrets lay buried under the oceans during the last Ice Age...This world may yet see what has been frozen over given the conditions affecting the polar ice caps.
If Antarctica was inhabited or colonized in the Pre-Ice Age, when the Ice Age was upon it would humans not move North to a warmer climate? There may have been Southern migrations to the North as well as Northern Migrations to the South during the Ice Ages. If the earth's axis and wobble was perturbed for a period of time by some other event in the solar system, Antarctica may have been nearer to the equator at some point in time and whatever it was that affected the earth's axis or tilt has since taken that long to reshape and settle into the world we know today.
That could also have been due to a shift in the earth iron core and magnetic field causing the earth to tilt which would be an extreme point in its tilt, if Antarctica was once at or near the equator. As it settled Antarctica would become uninhabitable. There are cycles in this solar system, perturbations that cycle over time in the orbits of planets, the earth may be nearer to the sun now than it was in past Ice Ages. A variability in how the earths magnetic field interacts with changing distances between the earth and sun.
Great information! If the earth's axis and wobble was perturbed for a period of time by some other event in the solar system, Antarctica may have been nearer to the equator at some point in.