Ichkabal
Ichkabal is the name of an archaeological site of the pre-Columbian Mayan culture, located about 40 kilometers west of the Bacalar lagoon, in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico, 9 km northeast of the site of Dzibanché and also very close to the site of Kohunlich.
Ichkabal site as far as September 2021 is still not open to public, but it is expected to open by 2022.
The Ichkabal site is relatively extensive and is located in the southeastern rainforest of the Yucatán Peninsula. There are vestiges of the Preclassic, Classic and Postclassic, including the late Postclassic. This chronology implies that the site began to be populated around 300 or 400 years BC. of C. and was in force until near the year 1500 d. from C.
The explorations of Ichkabal to date allow estimating that most of the significant constructions were erected between 250 and 600 AD. It has also been established that Ichkabal, like Kohunlich and Dzibanché, represented a trade link between the cities of the Yucatan Peninsula and several Mayan cities in Central America.
The site consists of three large structures and a series of smaller buildings, most of which remain unexplored. The largest building is 40 meters high. Due to its extension and the prolonged period of occupation and development of the place that has been determined, it is estimated that the archaeological investigations of Ichkabal will generate data and reveal details of the Mayan culture throughout the next decades, until well into the 21st century.
In fact, in these monuments vestiges of the Mayan occupation have been found before the collapse, when the population abandoned these constructions, in the year 900 after Christ. Reason why, today it is considered the most relevant Mayan city of the Yucatan peninsula, which could mean the most important political center of pre-Hispanic civilization, as well as the place where the lineage of the Divine Lords of Kanal originated, known for being the most important of this culture. This amazing city has architectural structures never seen before in the Mayan ruins, just to say that one of its buildings measures more than 40 meters in height and 200 meters in the pyramidal base. Quadruple the base size of the main pyramid of Kukulcán in one of the wonders of the modern world, the ruins of Chichén Itzá.
Within this framework and through the record left by the Lizardi Ramos, the specialist of the National Institute of Anthropology and History of Mexico (INAH), Javier López Camacho found the monuments of Ichkabal, while he was in search of another much smaller archaeological territory , baptized by Lizardi Ramos as “Las Higueras”. In other words, it was an accidental discovery that gave way to new hypotheses about the Mayan civilization.
Each of the buildings in Ichkabal has its own characteristics. There are 3 monumental structures and several a little smaller. Building 4, the tallest building, is 40 meters high. Likewise, among several of the structures, there is an open plaza of approximately 300 meters.
To the east, there is another large 40-meter building with a more extensive base, called Building 1, which to the south has another structure of moderate height. As if that were not enough, the city of Ichkabal has a lagoon or aguada measuring 80 × 60 meters with an almost perfect rectangle. This lagoon, apparently, has stones on its banks that prevent erosion. So it has been preserved in its entirety since the Mayan occupation.
This water supply system has been a factor that widely allows research regarding the agrarian development of this civilization. Well, according to archaeologists, the Mayan Civilization in the city of Ichkabal could have used other methods with respect to agriculture that until now we do not know.
