50 Fun Facts About Tikal

In the first Star Wars film, Tikal's temples rising above the jungle stood in for which rebel moon?

Yavin 4 is the jungle moon where the Rebel Alliance hides its base. Its outdoor scenes were shot among the Guatemalan ruins, using the real Maya pyramids as the rebel stronghold.

George Lucas chose Tikal for Star Wars after spotting the ruins on what in an English travel agency?

A poster of the Guatemalan ruins caught the director's eye, and he decided to turn the real Maya city into a jungle moon for his space saga.

Which James Bond film used Tikal's ruins as the exterior of villain Hugo Drax's pyramid headquarters?

Moonraker places the lair deep in the Amazon rainforest, but the pyramid's exterior was really filmed among the Maya ruins of Guatemala.

More than 7,000 tourists crowded Tikal on 21 December 2012, damaging Temple II, to mark what supposed event?

The end of the world was the rumour tied to the 2012 phenomenon. Many of the visitors climbed the pyramid's stairs that day, causing reported damage.

Which Spanish conquistador passed within a few kilometres of Tikal in 1525 yet never mentioned the ruins?

Hernán Cortés left the ruins out of his letters, and the first official expedition to the overgrown city did not arrive until 1848.

Which toxic metal, washed by rain from cinnabar paint on Tikal's buildings, polluted some of the city's reservoirs?

Mercury is carried in cinnabar, the pigment the Maya spread over buildings and monuments. Sediment from the reservoirs beside the central temple and palace shows severe contamination.

Tikal's Temple II faces Temple I across the Great Plaza and was built by King Jasaw Chan Kʼawiil I to honour whom?

His wife, Lady Lahan Unen Moʼ, bore a name meaning Twelve Macaw Tails. The king was entombed in the pyramid opposite, so the couple's monuments face each other across the square.

Before 1951, reaching Tikal meant days of jungle travel on foot or by mule until what was built there?

An airstrip beside the ruins opened the remote site to archaeologists and visitors, and a national park was declared around it four years later.

What distinction does Temple IV, built around 741, hold among the six great numbered pyramids of Tikal?

The tallest of the six, it also ranks among the highest pre-Columbian structures still standing in the Americas. It was built to mark the reign of King Yikʼin Chan Kʼawiil.

Tikal's Temple I is nicknamed for a carved lintel showing a king seated on the throne of which animal?

Jaguar is the animal on the lintel, hence the name Temple of the Great Jaguar. The pyramid was raised over the tomb of King Jasaw Chan Kʼawiil I, who died in 734.

Tikal's Temple I rises in nine stepped levels, which may symbolise the nine levels of what Maya realm?

The underworld suits a funerary pyramid: the royal tomb was built first, and the stepped structure was then raised over it.

The towering roof comb of Tikal's Temple VI is covered on its back and sides with panels of what?

Hieroglyphs give the building its other name, the Temple of the Inscriptions. The text reaches back to a date equal to 1139 BC, a mythical or dimly remembered founding event.

Tikal's Plaza of the Seven Temples is closed on its north side by an unusual row of three what?

Ballcourts were the arenas of the Mesoamerican ballgame, a sport played with a solid rubber ball; three courts stand side by side along this plaza's edge.

Some of Tikal's reservoirs began life as what, before the Maya plastered them to make them watertight?

Quarries left behind by the cutting of building blocks were sealed and reused. Other reservoirs were natural hollows given the same waterproof lining.

The pyramids and palaces of Tikal were built from which type of rock, cut locally at the site itself?

Limestone lies beneath the whole city, which stands on a series of parallel ridges of the rock rising above swampy lowlands.

Which airborne technology digitally removed the jungle canopy in 2018, showing Tikal was bigger than thought?

Lidar maps the ground with laser pulses, and the survey of northern Guatemala revealed some 60,000 uncharted Maya structures hidden under the trees.

Which American university's Tikal Project mapped and restored the ruined city between 1956 and 1970?

Pennsylvania's archaeologists mapped the city on a scale never before seen in the Maya area, recorded more than 200 monuments and rebuilt many of the structures visitors see today.

A superbly preserved carved wooden lintel from Tikal's Temple IV was taken in the 1800s to which Swiss city?

Basel is where the panel now resides, after Gustav Bernoulli removed it in 1877. It shows King Yikʼin Chan Kʼawiil seated on a palanquin.

Tikal's Temple I once appeared on the back of a 50-centavo banknote in which Guatemalan currency?

Quetzal money is named after Guatemala's national bird, the resplendent quetzal, which also appears on the country's flag.

Tikal lies in which department of Guatemala, the country's northernmost and its largest by area?

Petén covers about a third of Guatemala's area, yet the landlocked department is only sparsely populated.

Which island town, about 64 km by road from the ruins, is the main jumping-off point for visits to Tikal?

Flores has its old quarter on a small lake island joined to the mainland by a short road. Santa Elena, the suburb on the facing shore, is the other large settlement near the ruins.

The modern name Tikal is said to come from Yucatec Maya words meaning 'at the' what?

Waterhole is the usual reading: hunters and travellers are said to have used the name for one of the old reservoirs. Another reading is 'the place of the voices'.

Which gigantic tree, sacred to the ancient Maya and also called the kapok, stands out in Tikal National Park?

Ceiba is also the national emblem of Guatemala, and the towering tree is a sacred symbol in Maya mythology.

Which colourful bird, named for the eye-shaped spots on its tail feathers, is regularly seen at Tikal?

Ocellated turkey flocks live only on the Yucatán Peninsula and in nearby Belize and northern Guatemala. Each tail feather ends in a blue-bronze spot tipped with gold.

Which animals account for more than 60 of the 100-plus mammal species recorded in Tikal National Park?

Bats far outnumber every other kind of mammal in the park, which also shelters five species of wild cat and the endangered Baird's tapir.

Which day-active relative of the raccoon, regularly seen at Tikal, has females that live in groups called bands?

Coati and coatimundi are two names for the same animal, and the white-nosed species found among the ruins ranges from Arizona all the way to the edge of Colombia.

Tikal National Park is one of the few UNESCO World Heritage properties listed for its ruins and for what else?

Its biodiversity earned the park natural as well as cultural criteria: more than 300 kinds of bird and over 2,000 higher plants have been recorded there.

Carved planks from Tikal's Temple I were given by explorer John Boddam-Whetham to which London institution?

The British Museum received two of the four planks from the intricately carved central lintel. The other two were also removed in the nineteenth century, and nobody knows where they are.

Which rival Maya superpower, about 100 km to the north, fought Tikal in a long-running war of alliances?

Calakmul and its enemy each gathered a network of mutually hostile allies. The kings of both capitals took the title kaloomteʼ, which implies something like 'high king'.

Conquerors from which great central Mexican city are thought to have founded a Tikal dynasty in the 4th century?

Teotihuacan lay far away in the Valley of Mexico, yet its style shows up at Tikal in architecture, painted pottery and the war dress worn by kings on their monuments.

The foreign lord linked to Tikal's takeover in 378 is nicknamed for a glyph pairing a spearthrower with which bird?

Owl and weapon together give the name Spearthrower Owl, invented by archaeologists for a figure who may have ruled a great city in central Mexico. His son was soon made Tikal's king.

Which headless reptile was buried beside Tikal's king Yax Nuun Ahiin I, probably as a nod to his name?

Crocodile is the last word of the king's name as scholars translate it. He took the throne in 379, and at least nine sacrificed youths were laid around his funeral bier.

Which Maya city in modern Belize recorded on its Altar 21 a crushing defeat of Tikal in 562?

Caracol grew rapidly after its victory, while the losers fell silent: the beaten city raised no dated monuments for more than a century.

Which outpost, founded by Tikal in 629 to control trade on the Pasión River, later turned against its parent city?

Dos Pilas was handed to a four-year-old prince of Tikal's own royal house. He later became a vassal of Tikal's great enemy and went to war against his own kin.

King Jasaw Chan Kʼawiil I was buried under Tikal's Temple I wearing a huge 114-bead necklace of which material?

Jade ornaments covered the king's body, and the necklace alone weighed 3.9 kilograms. Sculpted portraits show him wearing the same enormous beads in life.

The headless skeleton in Tikal's Burial 85, linked to the dynasty's founder, had its missing head replaced by what?

A greenstone mask with shell-inlaid teeth and eyes stood in for the head. The man had probably died in battle, and his followers wrapped his bones in textiles as an upright bundle.

Archaeologists recovered rotted wooden statues from Tikal's mud-flooded Burial 195 by filling their hollows with what?

Stucco poured into the hollows in the dried mud captured four effigies of the god Kʼawiil, whose wooden originals had long since vanished.

Where did archaeologists find the smashed upper half of Stela 29, Tikal's earliest dated monument, in 1959?

In a rubbish tip close to Temple III lay the stone, deliberately broken centuries earlier. Its carved date, equal to AD 292, is the earliest of its kind to survive from the Maya lowlands.

Which complex beside Tikal's Great Plaza became the royal burial ground, each new tomb topped by another temple?

The North Acropolis was begun around 350 BC and kept growing as kings were buried in it. By the 9th century it held 43 stelae and 30 altars.

Bone analysis shows that the founding king of which distant Maya city spent his childhood and youth at Tikal?

Copán's dynasty began when Kʼinich Yax Kʼukʼ Moʼ arrived there in 426. Later portraits show him dressed in the warrior garb of central Mexico.

Tikal's twin-pyramid complexes were each built to celebrate the end of which 20-year cycle of the Maya calendar?

Kʼatun endings were marked by the king in person, and in the city's later centuries a whole new complex was raised for each ceremony. Nine such groups have been found.

Which grim motif decorates the rear outer wall of the central temple on Tikal's Plaza of the Seven Temples?

Skull and crossbones designs run along the back of the restored building, the middle one in the row of small shrines that gives the plaza its name.

What are the Maler, Maudslay, Tozzer and Méndez at Tikal, each named after an early explorer or archaeologist?

Causeways of packed and plastered rock linked the Great Plaza with outlying temples. They eased everyday traffic in the rainy season and also served as dams.

What did archaeologists do in 1965 to Temple 33, a 33-metre pyramid in the heart of Tikal?

They took it apart completely to reach the older shrines hidden inside. The excavators felt they could not restore it, and its rubble went to fill a large trench they had dug nearby.

Turtle shells in the tomb of Tikal's king Yax Nuun Ahiin I had been arranged to form a kind of which instrument?

Xylophone-style rows of shells lay among the offerings, along with an incense burner shaped like an elderly god seated on a stool of human bones.

Tikal's Corriental reservoir holds the oldest known water filter made with which mineral, layered with quartz sand?

Zeolite removed harmful microbes and toxins from the drinking supply, and the system was already at work more than 2,000 years ago.

Tikal's carved lintels were cut from the hard wood of which tree, whose latex, chicle, is used in chewing gum?

Sapodilla is a very hard red-brown wood that grows locally, and the lintels made from it are the most elaborately carved wooden ones to survive anywhere in the Maya region.

Inscriptions at the ruins show that the people of ancient Tikal called their city by which name?

Yax Mutal means 'First Mutal'. Tikal is a far younger label, adopted shortly after the ruins were rediscovered in the 1840s.

What cracked the roof comb and summit shrine of Tikal's Temple III, the last great pyramid raised in the city?

Lightning left a 10-centimetre crack in the vaulting of the pyramid, which is only partly restored and has never been excavated.

By the end of the 9th century, who had moved into the royal palaces of the dying city of Tikal?

Squatters blocked up doorways in the rooms they took over and left household refuse behind, while simple thatched huts went up in the ceremonial plazas.