Calakmul
Calakmul, located in Campeche, Mexico, is an ancient Maya city that once played a pivotal role in Maya civilization. Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2002, with an extension in 2014, it encompasses both the archaeological site and the surrounding tropical forests within the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve. The city, covering approximately 3,000 hectares, was a significant urban center during the Classic period, supporting an estimated population of 50,000. It was ruled by the influential Kaanul dynasty, which expanded its power through strategic alliances and military conquests, notably against the major city-state of Tikal.
The Calakmul Biosphere Reserve is the largest tropical forest in North America, spanning over 723,000 hectares and housing a rich variety of endemic and endangered species. While archaeological research continues to unveil insights into the socio-political dynamics of the Maya, environmental threats such as population growth, deforestation, and tourism pose challenges to the preservation of both cultural and natural heritage. The region's unique ecology, characterized by seasonal variations, has fostered exceptional biodiversity, including species like jaguars and various primates. Calakmul serves as a vital link in the Selva Maya, connecting forest ecosystems across Central America. The site is not only a testament to the achievements of the ancient Maya but also a focus of ongoing conservation and archaeological efforts.
Calakmul
Site information
- Official name: Ancient Maya City and Protected Tropical Forests of Calakmul, Campeche
- Location: Campeche (state), Mexico
- Type: Mixed (natural and cultural)
- Year of Inscription: 2002, with an extension in 2014
Located in the heart of the Yucatan Peninsula, the site encompasses the ruins of a city that once dominated Maya civilization. The site was expanded in 2014 to include the surrounding tropical forest in the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve. The exceptional size of both the city and the forest are key to their importance. Calakmul, which covers 3,000 hectares, or 11.5 square miles, held an estimated fifty thousand people at its climax during the Classic period. The city was one of the biggest in the Maya lowlands and was ruled by a dynasty that produced the most powerful kings in the region for more than a century.
The Calakmul Biosphere Reserve includes both the city and the tropical forest and covers 723,185 hectares, or 2,800 square miles. It contains a rich variety of endemic and endangered species, including jaguars. It is the largest tropical forest in North America and part of a biological corridor in the Yucatan Peninsula. Archaeological excavations in the city continue to reveal its role in the regional political geography, its development, and possibly the collapse of the Classic Maya civilization. However, the tropical forest faces threats to its ecology from population growth, hunting, farming, increased tourism, and a lack of overall planning.
History
People were living at the site of Calakmul fifteen hundred years ago, but its size and importance grew with the rise of the kings of the Kaanul, or Snake, dynasty. They came from elsewhere in the Yucatan Peninsula and made a new home in Calakmul in the early sixth century. These kings immediately began making alliances with other city-states that surrounded the city of Tikal, which dominated the region. In about 562 CE, a Snake king named Sky Witness coordinated a joint attack from all sides and captured Tikal. Dedicated to expanding their kingdom into an empire, the Snake kings of Calakmul eventually reigned over an area of 5,000 square miles and more than 1.5 million people. Local kings became vassals to the Snake kings as each city-state jostled for power and control of trade.
Tikal counterattacked during the late seventh century. It finally defeated Calakmul in a major battle in 695, although the two cities continued to fight for decades. Calakmul went into decline, and eventually both cities succumbed to the Maya collapse in the eighth and ninth centuries, when urban centers became depopulated. The reason for that overall collapse is not known, although there are many suggested causes.
The population of Calakmul and the surrounding area shrank and remained negligible for a thousand years. As a result, the city and its thousands of buildings had little human intervention. During that time an extensive forest reclaimed the ruins and developed an exceptional biodiversity, in part due to its unique ecology. The rainforest becomes seasonally dry from November to May, when some of the still-remaining water reservoirs of the Maya serve as resources to a variety of species.
During the 1980s, the human population of the region began to rise because of migration and high birth rates. The Calakmul Biosphere Reserve was created in 1989 to protect the archeological site and forest. Logging in the surrounding area had diminished timber resources by the 1990s, and residents turned to agriculture, clearing land for fields and often using slash-and-burn techniques to do so. Land ownership was sometimes unclear, and national policies to increase agricultural production to fight poverty made conservation difficult.
During the 1990s, a series of conservation programs were aimed at uniting the population with the goal of economic growth through improved agricultural productivity with limited ecological impact. These programs had some initial success but achieved little long-term change. No single plan exists to integrate natural and cultural heritage protection and management with participation by local residents to improve their lives. The reserve itself suffers from poor design that makes enforcement of land use difficult. In addition, two highways have been built through the forest core to reach Calakmul and nearby hotels. Tourism, attracted to the area after it was named a World Heritage Site, has strained limited water supplies.
Significance
Because so few people have lived in the region during the past one thousand years, both the city and the forest remain largely untouched. For the city, this means archeologists can uncover key information about Maya culture and how it developed in the central lowlands of the Yucatan peninsula, including the era when the population increased rapidly in size and social complexity. This was reflected in the site's monumental architecture, such as palaces and pyramids, hieroglyphic inscriptions, and technological adaptations to the environment with its alternating wet and dry seasons.
Investigations may eventually determine cultural developments at the city and exchanges with neighboring cities in architectural styles, fine arts, and water management. Although the inscriptions on some of its one hundred twenty commemorative stelae have eroded away, the information can be correlated with carvings at other sites to help understand the region's political history and organization, especially regarding the Snake kings. In particular, this information could aid in understanding how the cities grew, prospered, and were then suddenly abandoned in the ninth and tenth centuries.
Maya forestry and agricultural practices, which developed over a millennia, are also being studied. These activities affected the composition of the forest and water resource management in an area important to the entire Yucatan Peninsula. Some of these traditional practices are still maintained among the local residents. In addition, the bioreserve's forest, with its unique climate and terrain, provides habitats for a wide variety of plants and animals, including threatened species. In addition to jaguars, five other feline species and two kinds of primates live there. The forest is at the center of the Selva Maya and connects with forest ecosystems in Guatemala, Belize, and other parts of Mexico.
Bibliography
Ancient Maya City and Protected Tropical Forests of Calakmul, Campeche. World Heritage List. World Heritage Cultural Centre, UNESCO, 2016. whc.unesco.org/en/list/1061.
Cucina, Andrea, editor. Archaeology and Bioarchaeology of Population Movement among the Prehispanic Maya. SpringerBriefs in Archaeology, 2015.
Haenn, Nora. Fields of Power, Forests of Discontent: Culture, Conservation, and the State in Mexico. U of Arizona P, 2005.
Martin, Simon, and Nikolai Grube. Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens: Deciphering the Dynasties of the Ancient Maya. 2nd ed., Thames & Hudgson, 2008.
Thompson, I., and T. Christophersen, editors. "Case Study: Improved Agro-Forestry Management near the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in Mexico." Cross-Sectoral Toolkit for the Conservation and Sustainable Management of Forest Biodiversity, CBD Technical Series No. 9, Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2008, p. 17. www.cbd.int/doc/publications/cbd-ts-39-en.pdf.
Vance, Eric. "In Search of the Lost Empire of the Maya." National Geographic Magazine, vol. 203, no. 3, Sept. 2016. www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/09/maya-empire-snake-kings-dynasty-mesoamerica/.