Photo: Tikal National Park - The North Acropolis

Sitting in the stillness up on Temple II in Tikal National Park in Guatemala, it’s hard to imagine the bustling Mayan crowds and bright colors that adorned the powerful city-state 1200 years ago. Jungle now encroaches on the North Acropolis, in spite of the thorough excavations which began in the 1950s. It is a conglomeration of over 100 different temples and tombs built successively on top of each other over a 1000 year period, beginning well before the Common Era. The rows of stelae below document the great deeds of the rulers of Tikal.