The discovery of an altar at the Maya site of Tikal in Guatemala may shed more light on the relationship between Tikal and Teotihuacan. Or does it pose more questions than it answers?
Tikal was part of the Maya culture area, in what is now eastern Mexico and northern Central America.
Eight hundred miles to the west of Tikal was the non-Maya city of Teotihuacan, north of present-day Mexico City.
Archaeologists have found evidence in Tikal of Teotihuacan influence. But what sort of relationship was it?
Was it just Teotihuacan influence? Was Tikal actually conquered by Teotihuacan? Did it have a Teotihuacan ruling class?
The April 8th issue of Antiquity magazine (published by Cambridge University Press) has an article about the altar and the general topic.
From the Antiquity article: “The nature and extent of interactions between the distant regions and cultures of Mesoamerica remain open to much debate. Close economic and political ties developed between Teotihuacan and the lowland Maya during the Early Classic period (AD 250–550), yet the relationship between these cultures continues to perplex scholars. This article presents an elaborately painted altar from an elite residential group at the lowland Maya centre of Tikal, Guatemala. Dating to the fifth century AD, the altar is unique in its display of Teotihuacan architectural and artistic forms, adding to evidence not only for cultural influence during this period, but also for an active Teotihuacan presence at Tikal.”
Here below is a photo of the altar now (from the southwest) and below that an artist’s rendering of how it looked before (from the northwest) :
Illustration of Altar at Tikal, from northwest. Source: H. Hurst
The artwork on the altar is in Teotihuacan, not Maya, style. The Antiquity article says that “The form and painted decoration of the … altar point strongly to the presence of artists trained at Teotihuacan.”
The article’s conclusion states that “The…compound and its altar add to the growing evidence of Teotihuacan influence in Maya material culture and imagery, suggesting not just local adoption of artistic styles but potentially the presence of Teotihuacan-trained painters practising their skills at Tikal in the fifth century AD… Far from loose Maya imitations, the altar murals are expert examples of a complex, non-local style and likely evidence of the direct presence of Teotihuacan at Tikal as part of a foreign enclave…”