Set deep in northern Guatemala’s jungle, Tikal is a gem in
the crown that is Central America’s Mayan ruins. With its numerous excavated
sites, the complex is a winding affair, worthy of the nine hours we spent
roaming and exploring.
Once one of the more important cities of the ancient Mayan
world, the now-crumbling walls of Tikal reach back into time, brushing against
400 BCE. It is overwhelming to think about time as being such a vast expanse, to
stand next to massive structures, moss-covered tributes to human achievement,
and imagine how long they stood silent, waiting to whisper their secrets of another time and place.
Throughout the unearthed complex, many structures still
await their exhumation, pyramid-shaped hills that could be nothing but
pyramids, temples. Rectangular stones poke through roots and vines here and
there, offering but a sample of what the jungle has secreted away.
It is perplexing that creations of such enormity, once
abandoned during the Mayan Empire’s decline, could be relegated to relative
obscurity. A once-towering city swallowed by fauna, disappearing into the
jungle, destined to spend centuries as a thing of myth, of local lore. How do
we lose a whole city of such magnitude?
Tikal is at once a feat epitomizing the amazing things of
which humans are capable of creating, and an example the incredible force with
which nature can swallow those creations whole, bit by bit, until we hardly
remember they existed at all.
