Recently in Central America, archaeologists were lucky enough to find an ancient burial site that appeared during the era of the change of civilizations. At that time, an era of decline had already begun in the Olmec states in southern Mexico, and the Mayan civilization was flourishing in Guatemala. The found tomb serves as a kind of symbol of the continuity of the two great cultures.
In the south-west of Guatemala, on the territory of the archaeological site Tak'alik Ab'aj, 180 kilometers south of the capital, one of the most ancient tombs of the Mayan leader was found. It belongs to the possible founding father of this civilization, who lived in the 18th century BC, who was called K'utz Chman. Probably, he was the high priest during the transition from the Olmec civilization to the ancient Maya. The archaeologists did not find human remains in the burial - most likely, they disintegrated into dust. But many jade beads, a jade pendant in the form of a figurine with the head of an American neck, ceramic dolls and clay shards were recovered from the ground.
The burial was discovered in the Guatemalan department of Retalhuleu in June 2012, according to the British newspaper Daily Mail, but only during the study it turned out that this is the tomb of Kutz Chman. This conclusion was made on the basis of the inscriptions found on the jade figurine, the rich decoration of the grave, and radiocarbon dating. According to the archaeologist Miguel Orrego, whose words are quoted by the website bbc.co.uk, radiocarbon analysis of the soil showed that the burial dates from 700 to 400 BC. The archaeologist calls the person buried here "a great leader" who served as a link between the Olmec and Mayan cultures.
Some historians suggest that on the initiative of Kutz Chman (in the Mayan language his name means "Grandfather Vulture"), pyramids that became characteristic of the Mayan civilization then appeared on the land of this Indian people (instead of more ancient square structures), as well as stone bas-reliefs with images of the royal family … "Grandfather vulture", or Grandfather vulture, is actually the American black catarta, or Uruubu (Coragyps atratus), a bird from the American vulture family that lives in the warm temperate and tropical climates of North and South America and feeds like its counterpart from the Old Light (vulture Neophron percnopterus), carrion. The vulture vulture symbolized the political and economic power that the elders of the clan possessed in Mayan culture.
Olmecs, who created the brightest civilization of pre-Columbian America and influenced a number of other high cultures of the New World, disappear by the 5th century BC. According to a number of researchers, the Olmec culture, which flourished in the 1200s - 400s BC, is characterized by the predominance of architectural structures made of clay and earth, a highly developed technique of stone carving (especially basalt), round-relief sculpture, images of giant heads in helmets and deities in the form of a jaguar man, a sophisticated technique of processing jade and jadeite (the common name of the stone is jade), hollow clay figurines of "babies" with a white surface, ceramics of archaic shapes (spherical pots without a neck, drinking bowls and much more) with characteristic ornaments. One of the two most important signs of civilization, writing,appeared among the Olmecs no later than the 1st century BC.
Among the Mayans from the forest regions in northern Guatemala, hieroglyphic inscriptions - a series of pictograms consisting of dates and hieroglyphs - have been known from about the same time, that is, from the 1st century BC. During the excavations of Monte Albán, the fortified capital of the Zapotecs in the Oaxaca Valley (Valles Centrales de Oaxaca), archaeologists have found earlier examples of writing, similar to both Olmec and Mayan. Their exact dating has not been established, but, apparently, they appeared no later than the 6th-5th centuries BC. The Takalik-Abakh settlement is the first major monument of the Mayan civilization, bearing many features of the Olmec influence.
Copan (Soran) was one of the largest Mayan cities in Honduras. Appearing in the first centuries BC, during its heyday in the 7-8 centuries AD, it became the center of an independent political union of the Mayans, covering the territory of modern southeastern Guatemala and northeastern Honduras. The locals gave the name "bridge" to Nahuatl much later. In the middle pre-classical period (about 899-400 BC), the Mayans settled on an increasingly vast territory, and trade between cities was actively developing.
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On the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, the first settlements and temples appear around 500 BC. It is possible that the first major Mayan cities in present-day Guatemala - such as El Mirador with the largest known Mayan pyramid (72 meters) and the Nakbé - also emerged at this time. Traces of settlements in the area of the fortress city of Tikal date back to scientists from the 7th century BC. During this period, the Mayan civilization grew and gained strength.
