Why Was Calakmul Such a Powerful Rival to Tikal?

The two great super-states of the Classic Maya lowlands were Tikal and Calakmul, and for more than four centuries — from the late 5th to the late 8th — the political history of the central lowlands was shaped by the rivalry between them. The two cities were near-neighbors, separated by only about 80 kilometers of Petén rainforest, and each was the seat of a major dynasty: the Muutul of Tikal and the Kaan (Snake) of Calakmul. The wars between them are recorded in the carved stelae of both cities in a level of detail that has no parallel in the ancient world. The question of why Calakmul was so powerful — and so persistent in its rivalry with Tikal — is the central question of Maya political history.

For the wider context, see the overview on major Maya cities and archaeological sites, the deeper account of the city itself in Calakmul, Caracol, and the Snake kingdom, and the consequences of the rivalry for the southeastern frontier in what happened at the ancient city of Copán.

Geography and the shape of the rivalry

The central Maya lowlands are organized around a network of rivers and seasonal wetlands, and the geography of the region shaped the political history in important ways. The two great cities sat in the center of the lowlands, with Tikal on a low, well-drained ridge in the central Petén and Calakmul on a limestone escarpment in the Calakmul region of the modern Mexican state of Campeche. The two cities were close enough to project direct military power into each other’s hinterland, and the wide bajo (seasonal wetland) systems that surrounded each city made the regions difficult to approach, except along the narrow causeways and ridge trails that the Maya themselves had built.

The natural advantages of the two cities were roughly equal: both had access to fertile alluvial soil in the surrounding bajos, both had natural aguada water-storage systems, and both sat on defensible ridges above the floodplain. The geography did not by itself make one city more powerful than the other, but it did make the rivalry a matter of direct, persistent conflict rather than a distant diplomatic competition. The two dynasties were the two heaviest political players in a very small arena.

The Snake dynasty origins

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 so-called 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, in a relocation that the Proyecto Arqueológico Calakmul of INAH (led by Ramón Carrasco Vargas since 1994) has linked to a major building program at the new site.

The dynastic origins of the Snake kingdom are still debated, but the inscriptions of Calakmul claim descent from a long line of earlier kings. The famous Stela 8 of Calakmul, dedicated in 520 CE, lists a dynastic sequence of the Snake kings, and a series of stelae in the central precinct of the site, dedicated throughout the 6th, 7th, and 8th centuries, records the political history of the dynasty. The dynastic history is read in the wider context of Maya writing, language, and books and Maya hieroglyphs and the glyph system.

The first great war: the Star War of 562 CE

The first great military engagement between Calakmul and Tikal was the so-called Star War of 562 CE, in which a Calakmul-Copán-Caracol alliance 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 on the throne under Calakmul’s influence. The event is recorded on Stela 16 at Caracol and on the contemporary Tikal monuments; it marks the beginning of the political ascendance of Calakmul in the central lowlands. The wider background is in Tikal: heart of the Classic Maya world and Copán: dynasty of the 18 Rabbit.

The reasons for the 562 war are not entirely clear. The leading interpretations are:

Dynastic conflict between the two super-states, with Tikal’s late-5th-century Teotihuacan-influenced dynasty coming into conflict with the more local Petén dynasties.
Control of trade routes, especially the routes that passed through the Bajo de Santa Fe and Bajo de la Juventud between the two cities.
Caracol’s bid for autonomy from Tikal, with Caracol seeking an alliance with Calakmul as a way to escape Muutul control.
Calakmul’s expansionist program under the new Snake king Sky Witness (Yax Nuun Ahiin I), who is the dynastic figure most associated with the great wars of the late 6th and 7th centuries.

The leading scholarly readings of the 562 war are associated with the work of David Webster of the Pennsylvania State University, of Takeshi Inomata of the University of Arizona, and of the late Eric Thompson of the Carnegie Institution. The war is treated in the wider context of warfare, captives, and human sacrifice and the history of the Maya civilization.

The wars of the 7th century

For more than a century after the 562 war, the Snake kings presided over a shifting network of vassal cities, and the political history of the central lowlands was dominated by Calakmul. The great Yax Nuun Ahiin I (the “Sky Witness”), who ruled from c. 686 CE, was the dominant figure of the late 7th century, and his monuments at Calakmul record a long series of wars and tribute-extraction events. The military alliances of the Snake kingdom at this time included Caracol, Quiriguá, and the smaller Petén cities.

The high point of Calakmul’s power was the late 7th century, when a new generation of wars with Tikal erupted. The Tikal monuments record a series 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 695 war is best understood as a generational conflict between the dynasties, with the Snake kingdom projecting military power into the central Petén and the Tikal dynasty building a new alliance network. The political and military background is in Tikal: heart of the Classic Maya world, and the social context of the wars is in warfare, captives, and human sacrifice.

The recovery and the 8th-century wars

After the defeat of 695 CE, the Snake kings returned to Calakmul in the 8th century and resumed the dynastic program. The most prominent of these later kings is Yuknoom Ch’een II (r. c. 686–695 CE and again, after a period of exile, from c. 799 CE). The monuments of the late Snake dynasty 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.

The 8th-century wars between Calakmul and Tikal are recorded on a series of late monuments at both cities, including the Stela 16 of the Yax Nuun Ahiin group, the Temple 21 sub-structure at Tikal, and the great Temple II of the Tikal North Acropolis. The wars are read in the wider context of causes of the Classic Maya collapse.

The Caracol alliance

A central element of Calakmul’s military strategy was its alliance with Caracol, the great city in the foothills of the Maya Mountains of western Belize. The Caracol-Cakakmul alliance was forged in the late 5th century and was the foundation of the Snake kingdom’s political power. The relationship was tested repeatedly in the 7th and 8th centuries, and the surviving inscriptions show that it eventually broke down: by the late 8th century, Caracol was fighting Calakmul in the wars of 799 and 810 CE, and the alliance was effectively dead. The relationship is in Calakmul, Caracol, and the Snake kingdom, and the archaeology of Caracol is treated in the same page.

The LiDAR revolution and the size of the Snake kingdom

The most important development in the modern understanding of Calakmul’s power is the use of airborne LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging), a technology that strips the forest canopy from aerial imagery to reveal the contours of the ground beneath. The first major LiDAR survey at Caracol, conducted in 2009 by Arlen and Diane Chase of the University of Central Florida in cooperation with NCALM and the National Science Foundation, revealed an enormous settlement that had been hidden under the forest canopy, with a network of reservoirs, terraces, causeways, and dense rural settlement.

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 was far more densely populated than had previously been assumed, with the result that the population of the central Maya lowlands may have been on the order of 7 to 11 million people at the Late Classic peak — perhaps twice as many as the older estimates of 2 to 5 million. The implications for the political power of Calakmul are substantial: the Snake kingdom could draw on a population in the hundreds of thousands, and its military reach was correspondingly greater.

Why Calakmul, why Tikal?

The persistence of the rivalry between the two cities is the subject of a long scholarly debate. The leading explanations are:

Geographic determinism — the two cities were close neighbors and had a long history of conflict dating back to the Preclassic.
Dynastic rivalry — the Snake and Muutul lineages had been competing for political ascendancy for centuries, and the rivalry had become a structural feature of the political system.
Control of trade routes — both cities were at the intersection of major trade corridors, and the rivalry was a fight for control of the routes.
Personal leadership — the Snake kingdom was repeatedly saved from defeat by the abilities of individual kings, and the Muutul dynasty was similarly held together by great kings like Jasaw Chan K’awiil I.

The political and economic context is in Maya trade, markets, and economy and Maya society, politics, and daily life.

The long decline

The decline of Calakmul was not sudden. The Snake kingdom lost its dominant position in the central lowlands in the late 7th century with the Tikal victory of 695 CE, but the dynasty itself continued to rule at Calakmul for at least two more centuries. The last securely dated monument at the site is Stela 88 of 909 CE, and the city was probably abandoned within a generation. The political and environmental background is in causes of the Classic Maya collapse.

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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
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