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The Lowlands's District of
Mirador Basin
Chief:
created in honor of AW Americas first Symposion guest, Dr. Richard Hansen, aka Kan Ahau Kawiil
Built by Americas Scribes, graphic design by FireStorm Acoma
"Cradle of Maya Civilization."
"The earliest Maya did not build on rivers or existing lakes.
Rather, they chose the swamps and marshes. These swamps were the economic engines of the whole system,
however, because they were transporting the swamp mud, or muck, by the thousands of tons into the cities
and building sophisticated terrace gardens. These cities were green cities, not with parks of trees
and grasses like ours, but parks of corn, squash, beans, cotton, cacao, gourds, and palms."
"The ancient population must have been near a million, based on experiments to estimate the
labor contributions in the construction of the massive architectural complexes.
There are dozens of major ancient cities, hundreds of smaller ones, and the largest
pyramids are found within these ancient cities. The largest pyramid of these is the Danta. It is 70 to 72 meters high, with massive platforms to support it. The first basal platform is 600 m x 320 m x 10 , with two other additional platforms and numerous large structures (Pava Group) placed on it. The platforms were designed to sustain the three dominant buildings of the summit of danta, and all were definitely and unequivocally constructed in the Late Preclassic period, truly a monumental effort, and even more poignant when considering that there were hundreds of contemporaneous buildings being constructed during this period of time within El Mirador and all the major surrounding sites (26 major cities, and hundreds of smaller ones)."
 Structure 34 in El Mirador, painting by Tatiana Prouskouriakoff The causeways of Mirador Basin:
"The causeways of the Mirador Basin are some of the most unusual aspects of the ancient
Preclassic constructions of the area. The features are unusual because of their antiquity
(Middle and Late Preclassic, 600 B.C.-AD 150), and the size and extent. Many of these causeways
average 20-30 meters wide and 2-4 meters high, and extend up to 25 km. What is curious is that,
although they can be easily spotted crossing the swamps, the Maya elevated the causeways even
upon reaching higher ground. These are massive constructions that were known anciently
as "sacbe" or "sacbeob" in plural, meaning "white road", and were covered with a thick layer of
white lime plaster. The sacbeob were both intra-site (meaning extensive causeways
connecting major architectural complexes within major centers), or inter-site, meaning connections
with adjacent or distant sites."
The use of Lime:
"It was the excessive use of lime that was responsible for the collapse of the Maya in the Mirador Basin
in the Preclassic period. Numerous experiments and extraordinary research, led by Dr.
Thomas Schreiner of Berkeley, have shown that it was the conspicuous consumption of lime that led to
massive deforestation, which led to massive runoff and sedimentation into the the rich marshlands
and burying the rich organic mucks under a meter-two meters of sterile clay.
The mucks were no longer accessible to renovate fields and it was impossible to maintain major populations."
Trade in Mirador Basin:
"The ancient Maya of the Mirador Basin imported obsidian, originally in nugget form, but then in
finished pieces, jade, basalt, salt, chert from Belize, and granite. They also imported shell,
particularly the strombus shell and the spondylus spiny oyster shell.
It appears that strombus shells may have actually served as a sort of currency between 1000 and 600 B.C.,
because this shell is consistently found in ritual contexts, but we have yet to find it as jewelry."
Flora And Fauna:
"The Mirador Basin is a completely enclosed basin, surrounded by a range of low karstic limestone hills
that is found in the precise north central Peten and part of the southern part of Campeche, Mexico.
The Guatemalan side of the border has about 810,000 acres of pristine forest,
with 5 types of tropical forest within the basin. Within [these 5] macro communities of forest,
there are up to 12 micro-communities so that the entire place is a collage of floral species."
"Mirador Basin has the basic tropical forest species, including tapir, crocodiles, jaguars, pumas, ocelots, jaguarundis, margays, peccaries, deer (white tailed and brocket), Howler monkeys, Spider monkeys, and a wide range of birds, including the rare harpy eagles, the Ornate Hawk Eagles, the Orange Breasted Falcons, the King vulture, the Great Curassow, Crested Guan, the scarlet macaws, a wide range of parrots, trogons, ocellated turkeys and hummingbirds. Mirador Basin also has the rare false vampire bats, and all types of reptiles and amphibians."
 Peten, Mexico 2000-2006 Fires (image NASA) Conservation:
"The conservation of the Mirador Basin represents the last stand for tropical forests in all of Central America. There is no other opportunity to save such a vast area 810,000 acres in Guatemala alone, which, when combined with the adjoining Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in Mexico, means the permanent protection for nearly 2 million acres of primal forest. This is an area large enough to prevent genetic congestion by tropical flora and fauna, and will be the last refuge for any survivors. The goal is to have the forest look about the same in 200 years as it does today."
(Quotes from the answers provided by Dr. Richard Hansen at the AW Symposion Series: Symposion with Dr. Richard Hansen 2/08)
Links:
Suggested readings on the Maya:
Mayan folklore:
Mayan Calendar:
Worth watching:
Books by Dr. Richard Hansen:
Images used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License
The Discussions of Mirador Basin:
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