In Guatemala, painted altar found at Tikal adds new context to mysterious Maya history

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — Just steps from the center of Tikal, a 2,400-year-old Maya city in the heart of modern-day Guatemala, a global team of researchers including scholars from Brown University have unearthed a buried altar that could unlock the secrets of a mysterious time of upheaval in the ancient world.

The altar, built around the late 300s A.D., is decorated with four painted panels of red, black and yellow depicting a person wearing a feathered headdress and flanked by shields or regalia. The face has almond-shaped eyes, a nose bar and a double earspool. It closely resembles other depictions of a deity dubbed the “Storm God” in central Mexico.

In a study released on Tuesday, April 8, in Antiquity, the Brown researchers, along with co-authors from across the United States and Guatemala, argue that the painted altar wasn’t the work of a Maya artist. Instead, they believe it was created by a highly skilled artisan trained at Teotihuacan — the formidable ancient power whose seat was located 630 miles west, outside modern-day Mexico City.

“It’s increasingly clear that this was an extraordinary period of turbulence at Tikal,” said Stephen Houston, a professor of social science, anthropology, and history of art and architecture at Brown, who co-authored the paper. “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. It shows Teotihuacan left a heavy imprint there.”

Even before discovering the altar, Houston and colleagues knew the Maya interacted with Teotihuacan for centuries before their relationship became closer.

Founded in about 850 B.C., Tikal existed for generations as a small city with little influence before ballooning into a dynasty around 100 A.D. Archaeologists have evidence that Tikal and the much more powerful Teotihuacan began interacting regularly about two centuries later. What seemed at first to be a casual trading relationship, Houston said, quickly became something more contentious.

“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.”

An ancient coup d’etat

Houston said that over several decades, scholars have collected mounting evidence of a less-than-friendly relationship. The research started in the 1960s, when archaeologists found a cut and mutilated stone with well-preserved text describing the conflict in broad terms. 

Thanks to the stone’s text, they learned that “around A.D. 378, Teotihuacan was essentially decapitating a kingdom,” Houston said. “They removed the king and replaced him with a quisling, a puppet king who proved a useful local instrument to Teotihuacan.”

Decades later, using light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology, the Brown scholars and several colleagues discovered a scaled-down replica of the Teotihuacan citadel just outside the center of Tikal, buried under what archaeologists believed were natural hills. The discovery suggested that in the years leading up to its overthrow, Teotihuacan’s presence in the Maya city probably involved an element of occupation or surveillance.

Co-author Andrew Scherer, a professor of anthropology and of archaeology and the ancient world at Brown and director of the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World, said the altar was built right around the time of the coup. He said the altar’s meticulously painted exterior isn’t the only evidence of the capital’s heavy-handed presence: Inside the altar, the archaeologists found a child buried in a seated position, a rare practice at Tikal but common at Teotihuacan. They also found an adult interred with a dart point made of green obsidian; Scherer said the material and design of the dart point are distinct to Teotihuacan.

The fact that the altar and the area around it was later buried, Scherer said, cements the research team’s theory that Teotihuacan’s presence left Tikal forever changed and even scarred.

“The Maya regularly buried buildings and rebuilt on top of them,” Scherer said. “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.”

Power begets power

“Complicated” is an apt way to describe Tikal’s collective memory of the Teotihuacan coup, Houston said. The event may have shaken Tikal to its core, but it ultimately made the kingdom more powerful: Over the next few centuries, Tikal rose to yet greater heights, becoming a nearly unmatched dynasty before eventually declining around 900 A.D., along with the rest of the Maya world.

“There’s a kind of nostalgia about that time, when Teotihuacan was at the height of its power and taking increasing interest in the Maya,” Houston said. “It’s something exalted for them; they looked back on it almost wistfully. Even when they were in decline, they were still thinking about local politics in context of that contact with central Mexico.”

As they uncover more details about the contentious story of Teotihuacan and Tikal, Houston and Scherer said they’re both struck by how familiar it sounds: An all-powerful empire spots paradise and decides to plunder its riches.

“Everyone knows what happened to the Aztec civilization after the Spanish arrived,” Houston said. “Our findings show evidence that that’s a tale as old as time. These powers of central Mexico reached into the Maya world because they saw it as a place of extraordinary wealth, of special feathers from tropical birds, jade and chocolate. As far as Teotihuacan was concerned, it was the land of milk and honey.” 

Along with Houston and Scherer, authors of the study include Edwin Román Ramírez, Lorena Paiz Aragón, Alejandrina Corado Ochoa, Cristina García Leal and Rony E. Piedrasanta Castellanos of the Proyecto Arqueológico del Sur de Tikal; Angelyn Bass of the University of New Mexico; Thomas G. Garrison and David Stuart of the University of Texas at Austin; and Heather Hurst of Skidmore College. Funding for the research came in part from the PACUNAM Lidar Initiative and the Hitz Foundation.