10-04-2025
Archaeologists Excavating a Maya City Found a 1,700-Year-Old Altar. It Shouldn't Have Been There.
Archaeologists recently made the first discovery of a Teotihuacan-style altar within a Maya city.
The find offers early evidence of the intermingling of two cultures, offering insight into tensions that may have existed between the powers.
Experts are still trying to parse out the relationship between the ancient cities of Teotihuacan and Tikal.
Archeologists have discovered a 1,700-year-old altar that upends what we thought we knew about two distinct cultures: the Maya and the Teotihuacan.
In a discovery announced by Guatemala's Culture and Sports Ministry, archaeologists working on a project in Tikal National Park discovered a Maya-era residence—dubbed Group 6D-XV—featuring a distinctly Teotihuacan altar in the center of the home.
Tikal is a 2,400-year-old Maya city in the heart of Guatemala—far flung from Mexico's ancient city of Teotihuacan. The presence of this altar implies that the two shared a relationship that spanned the 600-plus miles that separated them.
'The researchers agree that Group 6D-XV was inhabited by individuals with strong ties to or from Teotihuacan, who, in addition to bringing their funeral and architectural traditions, were also free to manifest their own cultural identity and beliefs in a key space within Tikal,' the researchers wrote in a translated statement. 'This confirms the cosmopolitan character of this important Mayan city.'
Scholars from Brown University who were part of the research team published their findings in the journal Antiquity, and believe there was more to the 'cosmopolitan character' than just art.
The limestone altar measured about 3.5 feet by 6 feet, and stood in the center of the home—a key element of Teotihuacan style. Built around the late 300s A.D., the altar's design featured original murals in red, yellow, and black, depicting a figure that the study notes resembles a deity called the 'Storm God.' The mural further follows the Teotihuacan tradition of altars dedicated to deities instead of rulers—the latter of which was a common practice in Mayan culture.
The experts agree it wasn't the work of a Maya artist, but of an artisan trained in Teotihuacan, the power located 630 miles northwest of Tikal (outside modern-day Mexico City).
The residence also contained anthropomorphic figures adorned with red-toned tassels—yet more detail from Teotihuacan traditions.
'What the altar confirms is that wealthy leaders from Teotihuacan came to Tikal and created replicas of ritual facilities that would have existed in their home city,' Stephen Houston, one of the authors of the study, said in a statement. 'It shows Teotihuacan left a heavy imprint there.'
Experts believe the site had two key construction timeframes—an original build lasting from 300 A.D. to 400 A.D. (which shows Teotihuacan origin) and an expansion of the central altar, which stretched from 400 to 450 A.D.
Tikal was founded in 850 B.C. and was originally known as a small city. But it grew into a dynasty around 100 A.D., and its people likely began interacting with residents of Teotihuacan a couple of centuries later. 'It's almost as if Tikal poked the beast and got too much attention from Teotihuacan,' Houston said. 'That's when foreigners started moving into the area.' At one point between 100 B.C. and 750 A.D., Teotihuacan was one of the world's largest cities, home to over 100,000 residents.
Evidence began to mount that the two cities were in conflict, and that Teotihuacan's presence in Tikal could have involved an element of occupation or surveillance.
'The Maya regularly buried buildings and rebuilt on top of them,' Andrew Scherer, another author of the study, said in a statement. 'But here, they buried the altar and surrounding buildings and just left them, even though this would have been prime real estate centuries later. They treated it almost like a memorial or a radioactive zone. It probably speaks to the complicated feelings they had about Teotihuacan.'
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