El Mirador, Guatemala

Home

Guatemala Page

Petén Page

Skip to how to get to El Mirador

El Mirador Ruins, Mirador Basin

Petén, Guatemala

________________

See other sources

There is a lot of reconstruction work going on at El Mirador in a surprisingly large effort, including La Danta.

El Mirador flourished as a trading center from around 300 BCE to 150 CE during the Maya Pre-Classic Period. With a population as Structure 34 high as 80,000, it was one of the first large cities in North America. The city's main group of buildings covers two square kilometers and many were built on a grand scale. The largest pyramid at El Mirador, El Tigre, has six times the surface area as Temple IV at Tikal and is 55 meters tall.

The Danta Complex is about 300 meters wide on each side of the bottom base, which is 7 meters high and supports a series of buildings. The next and smaller platform rises another 7 meters. Above that is another platform around 21 meters high, which is topped off by three pyramids, the tallest of which is 21 meters high. The total height is 70 meters, making it taller than Temple IV at Tikal.

The reasons that El Mirador is not swamped with tourists are its inaccessibility and that a lot of it is still unrestored mounds and pyramids in the jungle, though a lot of work is being done. Once a person has hiked to the top of El Tigre, the view that awaits is mostly of jungle and other ruins, such as Calakmul and Nakbé in the distance. Still, it is the idea of a formerly lost city in the jungle that brings people to see it and more work is being done there each year. Current tours also can involve visiting Nakbé and will take just one day longer than seeing just the one main site. They require stamina and involve riding horses (or more often mules) or walking for around 27-30 hours over the course of five days. Saddle horses or mules are good to have along, but if you are not going in the rainy season, you will probably alternate walking with riding and may want to share a horse among two of you .

El Mirador was a pre-Columbian site for whose existence there is no logical reason that I can see, except that it became a center of trade and its bajos were then shallow lakes. It was far into the Petén Jungle and is, at best, even now difficult to get to without a helicopter. Currently there is a project called the Mirador Basin National Park, whose objective is to form a major national park in the area, where archaeological excavation will be done and tourists also can share in the discoveries about the Maya civilization. This will be done with the help of the Guatemalan government and interested individuals.

In July 2002, I was part of a group that first went to Nakbé and then to El Mirador. Along the way, we also stopped at a smaller site, where we found three pot sherds that fitted together. Near the end of our journey, we camped at El Tintal and climbed its pyramid. This is an incredible area and I returned in 2005 for greeting the New Year there with some friends. See my discussion of how to get there.

On April 18th, 2002, President Alfonso Portillo signed legislation, which established the Mirador Basin National Monument as a Special Archaeological Zone. This is intended to provide for the permanent protection of 600,000 acres of tropical rainforest in this area, which surrounds the oldest and largest Maya archaeological sites in Mesoamerica. The Mirador Basin National Monument is designed as a wilderness preserve without roads.