Officials said that archaeologists discovered ceramics, human burial ground, and bullets from Spanish guns at the Guatemalan site of the last Maya city to resist European conquest.
The new excavation project began last June in an effort to understand more about the TayasalThe excavation’s archeologist told AFP that this was the location where Maya settlers first settled in 900 BCE during their Preclassic period.
Tayasal was the last Maya city to yield to the Spanish conquest in 1697, a century after Europeans entered the western highlands of what is now Guatemala, Suarlin Cordova said.
”More than 100 years passed in which the northern part of Guatemala was totally outside of Spanish rule, and this happened mainly because the jungle functioned as a natural border that made the arrival of the Spaniards to these places very difficult.”
In 1525, Tayasal was also part of the route used by Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes on his journey to present-day Honduras.
Most of the buildings at the Tayasal site are buried under earth and vegetation inside a 7-square-kilometer area near Lake Peten Itza.
Among partially exposed structures at the site is a 30-meter-high acropolis that, according to research, functioned as the residence of the ruling elite.
Also visible is a water well used since pre-Hispanic times.
Jenny Barrios, Guatemala’s Ministry of Culture and Sports, stated that one of the goals of the project was to improve the site so tourists can “appreciate” its Maya archaeological value.
The Maya civilization reached its height between 250 and 900 AD in what is present-day southern Mexico and Guatemala, as well as parts of Belize, El Salvador, and Honduras.
