Calakmul and the Snake Kingdom: Great Rival of Tikal

Calakmul, in the forests of southern Campeche in Mexico, was the seat of the Kaanul or “Snake” kingdom, the most powerful Maya dynasty of the 7th century AD. From around 600 to 750 its kings built a web of alliances across the Maya lowlands and fought a long struggle with Tikal for supremacy. Its story, pieced together from hieroglyphic inscriptions, transformed our understanding of Maya politics.

A city in the forest

Calakmul lies on a low rise beside a large seasonal swamp, or bajo, about 35 km north of the Guatemalan border. The site was occupied from the Middle Preclassic period, and by the Late Preclassic, around 400 BC – AD 150, it already had large buildings, including the first phase of Structure II.

The modern name, given in 1931 by the botanist Cyrus Lundell, roughly means “two adjacent mounds” in Yucatec Maya. The ancient city was known by other names, including Chiik Nahb and Uxte’tuun. At its height the city may have held around 50,000 people, although estimates vary considerably.

Calakmul has the largest number of carved stone monuments, or stelae, of any Maya site, about 120. Unfortunately, the local limestone is soft, and many inscriptions have eroded badly, so much of the city’s history is known from texts at other sites.

Structure II and life in the city

Calakmul’s core covers about 2 sq km of plazas, palaces and temples, and surveys have mapped more than 6,000 structures in the wider settlement. Its largest building, Structure II, faces the main plaza from the south. It is about 45 m high, with a base roughly 140 m on each side, and was enlarged over many centuries. Inside it archaeologists found earlier temples, including a Preclassic facade decorated with large stucco masks.

A second great pyramid, Structure I, stands nearby. On clear days the view from the summits extends across the forest towards the Mirador Basin in Guatemala, home of the giant Preclassic city of El Mirador.

Water was a constant concern. The city relied on rain collected in large reservoirs and on channels that fed water from the surrounding swamp. In 2004 archaeologists uncovered painted murals on a pyramid in the Chiik Nahb complex, north of the centre, showing people preparing, serving and exchanging food, salt and other goods, with captions naming each product. They are rare evidence of everyday commerce in a Maya city.

The Snake dynasty

The Snake kings used an emblem glyph showing a snake head, read Kaan or Kanul. Inscriptions show that in the 5th and 6th centuries this dynasty ruled from Dzibanché in what is now Quintana Roo. At that time Calakmul appears to have been the seat of a different lineage, identified by a bat emblem.

Around the 630s the Snake kings moved their seat to Calakmul. Epigraphers Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube were among the scholars who reconstructed this history in the 1990s and 2000s, showing that the Snake kingdom was a “superpower” that ruled through vassal kings rather than direct conquest.

Rise to supremacy

The Snake kingdom first struck at Tikal in 562, when Tikal’s king Wak Chan K’awiil was defeated by the Kaanul king known to scholars as Sky Witness. Caracol, a Snake ally, was once thought to be the main victor, but most epigraphers now credit the Kaanul king. Tikal entered a long period with few dated monuments, often called the Middle Classic hiatus.

The Snake kings also attacked Palenque in 599 and 611, long before Pakal the Great brought that city to its height. These campaigns show the dynasty’s reach across hundreds of kilometres.

Yuknoom the Great

Calakmul reached its peak under Yuknoom Ch’een II, often called Yuknoom the Great, who ruled from 636 to about 686. He acted as overlord to kings at Naranjo, Cancuen, La Corona, El Perú (Waka’) and Dos Pilas, and attended or oversaw their accessions.

At Dos Pilas, a breakaway member of Tikal’s royal family, Bajlaj Chan K’awiil, became a loyal Calakmul vassal and fought against his own relatives at Tikal. In 657 Calakmul attacked Tikal and forced its king, Nuun Ujol Chaak, to flee. In 679 Dos Pilas, with Calakmul’s support, defeated Tikal again.

Through marriage alliances, gifts and military pressure, Yuknoom built the largest political network of the Classic Maya world. Kings of other cities described themselves as his yajaw, “his vassal”.

Royal marriages tied the network together. A Snake princess known as Lady K’abel married into the ruling family of El Perú (Waka’) and held the military title of kaloomte’; her probable tomb was discovered there in 2012. Such women carried Calakmul’s influence into allied courts for generations.

Defeat by Tikal

Yuknoom’s successor, Yuknoom Yich’aak K’ak’ (“Fiery Claw”), took the throne in 686. In 695 he suffered a major defeat at the hands of Tikal’s king, Jasaw Chan K’awiil I. Tikal’s inscriptions record the capture of a Calakmul war image, a large figure of a patron deity carried into battle.

After 695 Calakmul’s power slowly weakened. Tikal’s next king, Yik’in Chan K’awiil, defeated Calakmul’s allies at El Perú in 743 and Naranjo in 744. Calakmul’s network fell apart, and its kings lost control of their former vassals.

In the later 8th century the Snake emblem glyph fades from Calakmul’s own inscriptions and the older bat emblem reappears. Some scholars read this as a sign that the Kaanul line had lost its hold on the city, although the details of the change are still unclear.

A tomb in Structure II, excavated by Ramón Carrasco in 1997, contained a jade mask and rich offerings. It is widely, though not universally, identified as the burial of Yuknoom Yich’aak K’ak'.

Decline

Calakmul continued to raise monuments in the 8th and 9th centuries, but on a smaller scale. Like other southern lowland cities, it was affected by the Classic Maya collapse, with its last dated monuments in the late 9th or early 10th century. The population dwindled, and the city was eventually abandoned to the forest.

Rediscovery and protection

After Lundell’s report in 1931, the site was mapped by the Carnegie Institution of Washington in the 1930s. Large-scale excavations began in 1982 under William Folan and continued from 1993 under the Mexican National Institute of Anthropology and History, led by Ramón Carrasco.

The ruins lie within the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve, created in 1989, which protects more than 7,000 sq km of tropical forest, home to jaguars and many other species.

UNESCO listed Calakmul as a World Heritage Site in 2002, and in 2014 the listing was expanded to include the surrounding forests, making it one of Mexico’s few mixed cultural and natural World Heritage Sites.

Timeline

• c. 400 BC – AD 150: Late Preclassic growth; first phase of Structure II.
• 562: Tikal is defeated by the Snake king Sky Witness.
• 599 and 611: Snake kingdom attacks on Palenque.
• c. 635: The Snake dynasty establishes its seat at Calakmul.
• 636: Yuknoom Ch’een II becomes king.
• 657: Calakmul defeats Tikal.
• 695: Tikal defeats Yuknoom Yich’aak K’ak'.
• 1931: Cyrus Lundell reports the ruins.
• 2002: Inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Why it matters

Calakmul revealed that the Classic Maya were not a collection of isolated city-states but a world of rival power blocs. The Snake kingdom’s rise and fall, recovered from inscriptions across the lowlands, is one of the clearest examples of how ancient texts can rewrite the political history of a civilisation.