Calakmul, Caracol, and the Snake Kingdom

For nearly two centuries in the 6th and 7th centuries CE, the Kaan (Snake) dynasty of Calakmul was the dominant political power of the central Maya lowlands. Its kings installed and deposed rulers in cities across the Petén, defeated the great dynasty of Tikal in 562 CE, and held the political balance of the entire central lowland region. The story of how the Snake dynasty built and lost this empire — and the recent LiDAR discoveries that have revealed its true scale — is one of the most dramatic chapters in Maya archaeology.

For the wider context, see the overview on major Maya cities and archaeological sites, and the deeper account of the dynastic warfare in why Calakmul was such a powerful rival to Tikal. For the great city on the losing end of the Snake kingdom’s main campaigns, see Tikal: heart of the Classic Maya world.

Calakmul

Calakmul sits on a limestone escarpment in the modern Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in the Mexican state of Campeche, about 30 kilometers south of the Guatemalan border. The site was first described in 1931 by the American archaeologist Sylvanus Morley of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who named it from the Maya phrase meaning “the place of two adjacent mounds” (ca-laak-muul). The first systematic excavation was carried out in 1982 by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) under the direction of the Mexican archaeologist Ramos de la Vega, and the modern long-term project, the Proyecto Arqueológico Calakmul of INAH, has been led since 1994 by Ramón Carrasco Vargas.

The site is enormous. The 1990s survey work of Iguálido Folan and Lynne Heller suggested that Calakmul’s settlement zone covered at least 30 square kilometers, and the 2018 LiDAR survey conducted by the PACUNAM Foundation and the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) confirmed an extensive low-density built environment radiating out to a total of more than 100 square kilometers. The city’s central precinct contains the great Civic Center with two enormous pyramids — Structure I and Structure II — of which Structure II rises about 45 meters above the plaza, and an extensive acropolis complex of platforms, stairways, and range buildings.

The signature feature of Calakmul is the density of its carved stelae. At least 114 stelae have been documented in the central precinct, with 95 of them carved, more than at any other Maya city. The corresponding corpus of altars is at least as large, and a wide range of carved panels and lintels survives. The political history of the city, as recorded in the inscriptions, is the political history of the Snake dynasty. The relevant iconography is surveyed in Maya stelae, altars, and stone monuments.

The Snake dynasty and the rise of Calakmul

The Kaan (“Snake”) dynasty was not originally based at Calakmul. The earliest known Snake kings, Yax Ch’een I and Itzamnaaj B’ahlam, ruled from a city (the Snake-head city) that scholars have tentatively identified with Dzibanche in southern Quintana Roo, where the earliest Kaan monuments are dated to the late 5th century CE. The dynasty moved its capital to Calakmul in the 6th century, and the major building program of the central precinct dates from the second half of that century.

The Snake dynasty’s first great political success was the alliance with Caracol and the Star War of 562 CE, in which a Snake king defeated the great Tikal dynasty and broke its power for a generation. The defeated Tikal lord, Wak Chan K’awiil, was captured and eventually killed, and a new Tikal king, Animal Skull, was installed. The event is recorded on Stela 16 at Caracol and on the contemporary Tikal monuments; the wider background is in Tikal: heart of the Classic Maya world.

For the next 130 years the Snake kings presided over a shifting network of vassal cities. Yax Nuun Ahiin I (the “Sky Witness”) ruled from about 686 CE and presided over the political zenith of the dynasty. His successor, Itzamnaaj K’awiil, was a contemporary of Jasaw Chan K’awiil I of Tikal and, like him, was involved in the great political events of the late 7th century.

The wars with Tikal

The 7th-century wars between Calakmul and Tikal are the best-documented military events of the ancient Maya world. The Tikal monuments record a sequence of attacks and counter-attacks in 679, 695, and 711 CE. The most important of these, in 695 CE, was the Tikal victory under Jasaw Chan K’awiil I that broke the Snake kingdom’s power and forced the Kaan kings to abandon their Calakmul capital for almost a century. The event is recorded on Stela 16 at Caracol and on a series of contemporary monuments at Calakmul and Tikal. The full military and political narrative is laid out in why Calakmul was such a powerful rival to Tikal.

After the defeat, the Snake kings returned to Calakmul in the 8th century and resumed the dynastic program. Yuknoom Ch’een II (r. 686–695 CE and again, after a period of exile, in 799 CE) is the most prominent of these later kings, and his monuments at Calakmul include Stela 9, the Temple of the Nine Lintel sub-structure, and a series of elaborate platforms in the central precinct. The city was still occupied in the 9th century, but the last securely dated monument at the site is Stela 88 of 909 CE, after which the urban area was abandoned.

Caracol

Set deep in the foothills of the Maya Mountains of western Belize, Caracol is one of the largest cities of the ancient Maya. The site was rediscovered in 1938 by the Belizean forester A. Hamilton Anderson, and major modern excavation began in 1985 under the Caracol Archaeological Project of the University of Central Florida, led by Diane and Arlen Chase. The project has produced the most thoroughly mapped settlement of any Classic Maya city, with the result that Caracol’s urban area has been estimated at more than 200 square kilometers, with a population that may have reached 100,000 people at the Late Classic peak.

The city’s greatest building is the Canaa (“Sky-Place”) pyramid, a single radial pyramid 43 meters high that dominates the central precinct. The central acropolis of Caracol contains a long sequence of carved monuments, including Stela 16 — the monument that records the Star War of 562 CE — and an unusually large ballcourt, three temple pyramids, and a wide range of public architecture. The site is also famous for the Caana Palace, an enormous range building on the south side of the central plaza that served as the royal residence.

Caracol’s history is the history of its relationship with Calakmul. The Star War of 562 CE was fought as an alliance of the Snake dynasty and the Caracol-Copán axis. After the war, the Caracol king K’an II ruled as the political partner of Calakmul for more than a century. The relationship eventually broke down, and the surviving inscriptions of the late 7th century show a Caracol-Copán alliance in which Yat Ahk II of Caracol participated in a major war with Calakmul in 799 CE and another in 810 CE. The broader political background is in what happened at the ancient city of Copán.

The LiDAR revolution

The 2009 LiDAR survey at Caracol, conducted by the Chase’s project in cooperation with the National Science Foundation and NCALM, was the first major LiDAR coverage of a Classic Maya city, and it transformed the field. The map showed an extensive network of reservoirs, terraces, causeways, and dense rural settlement that had been completely hidden under the forest canopy, and it prompted a wave of similar surveys at other sites.

The 2016–2018 PACUNAM LiDAR Initiative mapped more than 2,100 square kilometers of the central Maya lowlands, including much of the Calakmul region. The results, published in Science in 2018 by Marcello A. Canuto and colleagues, demonstrated that the entire Calakmul region — including its rival cities, its hinterland, and its causeway system — was far more densely populated than had previously been assumed. The estimate of 7 to 11 million people for the central Maya lowlands, and the recognition that even a single political center like Calakmul could draw on a population in the hundreds of thousands, has changed how the wider collapse of the lowland cities is interpreted. The implications are laid out in causes of the Classic Maya collapse.

Rediscovery and conservation

Calakmul was first described in 1931 by Sylvanus Morley of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, who photographed the stelae but did not excavate. The site was visited in 1932 by the Mexican archaeologist Eusebio Dávalos Hurtado of the INAH, and major excavation began in 1982 with the UNAM project of Ramos de la Vega. Since 1994, the Proyecto Arqueológico Calakmul of INAH, led by Ramón Carrasco Vargas, has been the principal research and conservation project. The site was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2002 as part of the “Ancient Maya City and Protected Tropical Forests of Calakmul, Campeche” nomination.

Caracol is administered by the Belize Institute of Archaeology (NICH), and the modern long-term project, the Caracol Archaeological Project of the University of Central Florida led by Diane and Arlen Chase, has run continuously since 1985. The site is one of the most thoroughly mapped cities of the ancient Maya and is a major tourist destination, with the new road to Caracol, completed in 2011, dramatically increasing visitor numbers.

Sources

Martin, S. & Grube, N. (2008). Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens (2nd ed.). Thames & Hudson. — link
Fash, W. L. (2001). Scribes, Warriors and Kings: The City of Copán and the Ancient Maya. Thames & Hudson. — link
Stuart, D. & Stuart, G. E. (2008). Palenque: Eternal City of the Maya. Thames & Hudson. — link
Demarest, A. A. et al. (1997). The Petexbatun Regional Archaeological Project: A Multidisciplinary Study of the Maya Collapse. Vanderbilt University (final reports). — link
Canuto, M. A. et al. (2018). Ancient lowland Maya complexity as revealed by airborne laser scanning of northern Guatemala. Science 361 (6409), eaau0137. — link
Chase, A. F. & Chase, D. Z. (2014). Ancient Maya Cities and the Caracol Project. University of Pittsburgh Latin American Archaeology. — link
Miller, M. E. (1986). The Murals of Bonampak. Princeton University Press. — link