Remains of 3000-year-old Mayan city discovered in northern Guatemala

AFP

29 May, 2025 11:01 PM2 mins to read

This image from the Guatemalan Ministry of Culture and Sports shows a pot discovered at the Uaxactun archeological site in the Maya Biosphere, Peten department, Guatemala. Photo / AFP

Archaeologists have unearthed the remains of a Mayan city nearly 3000 years old in northern Guatemala, with pyramids and monuments that point to its significance as an important ceremonial site, the Central American country’s culture ministry has announced.

The Mayan civilisation arose around 2000 BC, reaching its height between 400 and 900 AD in what is present-day southern Mexico and Guatemala, as well as parts of Belize, El Salvador and Honduras.

The city named “Los Abuelos”, Spanish for “The Grandparents”, once stood some 21km from the important archaeological site of Uaxactun, in Guatemala’s northern Peten department, the ministry said in a statement.

It is dated to what is known as the “Middle Preclassic” period from about 800 to 500 BC, and is believed to have been “one of the most ancient and important ceremonial centres” of the Mayan civilisation in the jungle area of Peten near the Mexican border.

“The site presents remarkable architectural planning” with pyramids and monuments “sculpted with unique iconography from the region”, said the ministry.

The city takes its name from two human-like sculptures of an “ancestral couple” found at the site.

The figures, dated to between 500 and 300 BC, “could be linked to ancient ritual practices of ancestor worship,” said the ministry.

This image from the Guatemalan Ministry of Culture and Sports shows two anthropomorphic sculptures of human form or appearance that 'represent an ancestral couple'. Photo / AFP

‘Unique canal system’

The city, which covers an area of about 16sq km was discovered by Guatemalan and Slovak archaeologists in previously little-explored areas of the Uaxactun park.

Nearby, they also found a pyramid standing 33m high with murals from the Preclassic period and “a unique canal system,” according to the statement.

“The set of these three sites forms a previously unknown urban triangle ... These findings allow us to rethink the understanding of the ceremonial and socio-political organisation of pre-Hispanic Peten,” said the ministry.