Chocolá
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please discuss this issue on the talk page or replace this tag with a more specific message. This article has been tagged since December 2006. |
Chocolá was a Late Preclassic site (400 BC to 200 AD), a complex of more than 100 structures that was discovered before the turn of the last century but, until now, no one had undertaken systematic and comprehensive excavations. Now there are exploring the social and cultural developments that led to the rise of the Classic Maya, with sophisticated city-states, hieroglyphic literacy, exquisite ceramics, and the most advanced mathematics and astronomy in the New World. The first two seasons of Archeologist work here demonstrated that this site, perched between the coast and a chain of volcanoes, can rightfully be called a great lost Maya city.
Based on older as well as still accumulating evidence, scholars assume that innovative developments occurred in the southern Mesoamerican area during the Pre-Classic period (1500 B.C.–A.D. 200) that strongly influenced the later great Mesoamerican civilizations. Ironically, scholars lack a clear sense of even the broader events and processes that shaped southern Guatemala’s history and gave it its peculiar and, as long assumed, seminal character. The investigations in Kaminal Juyú and Tak'alik Abaj in the last decades, showed the strong relationship between these two regions, and consider the presence of other sites among both zones, like Chocolá, participating in a political entity and sharing of ideological, technological and economical goals. The strategic position of Chocolá will be a solution to these questions, including the study of theoretical problems as evolutionary sociopolitical processes to lead towards urban societies.
There are Structures up to 25 mt. High, and large palaces as Structure 5, 20 mt long and 5 mt High, Also there are workshops of pottery. There have been found more than 3,000 objects including Sculptured monuments and altars, and fine Preclassic pottery and figurines, To the north there are Caves with archeologic remains, there is a museum in the modern town of Chocolá, a 3 hours drive from Guatemala City. Source FAMSI
