Mayapan (in Spanish Mayapán ) is a Maya site précolombien which is located in the Yucatán, with the Mexico, some 40 km in the south-east of Mérida and to 100 km in the west of Chichén Itzá. Mayapan was the political capital of the Mayas in the peninsula of Yucatan of the end of the year 1220 until in the years 1440.

In 1221, the Mayas revolt against the Maya-Toltec lords of Chichén Itzá. After a short civil war, the lords of several cities and important families meet to restore a central capacity in Yucatan. It is then decided to build a new capital close to the town of Techaquillo, town of Hunac Ceel, the general who beat the administrators of Chichen Itza. This new city is built inside a defensive wall and is called “Mayapan”, which means “standard of the Maya people”. The head of the household Cocom, a rich and old family which took share with the revolt against Chichen, is selected as king but each noble family and local lord send members of their families to Mayapan to belong to the government. This arrangement will last more than 200 years. Another version is given in a Maya chronicle of the colonial period according to which Mayapan would be contemporary of Chichen and Uxmal and which it would be allied with those but the archaeological excavations give this version like less probable. In 1441 Ah Xupan of a powerful noble family of Xiu tests resentment towards the Cocom leaders and organizes a revolt. This one results in the death of the majority of the family members Cocom, Mayapan is plundered, set fire to and given up. Yucatan falls into one period of war between city-states.

Today, the site of Mayapan is far from being one of the most impressive Maya sites. This is due partly to the fact that at the end of the revolt, all the buildings as their foundations were burned and destroyed. However, Mayapan forever atteintle architectural level of Chichen Itza or Uxmal. A central pyramid is a smaller version of the “Castillo” of Chichen Itza, there were also some temples of moderate size and a palate (of which exist only the foundations). Moreover, Mayapan had a reduced public architecture. The majority of the 400 km ² of the intramural city were occupied by some 3  500 residential buildings. It is thought that Mayapan sheltered between 11  000 and 15  000 people.

Five years of archaeological excavations on the site of Mayapan were carried out by “Carnegie Institution” in the Fifties. In 2001, new excavations were launched under the direction of “Grinnell College”.

See too

Related articles

• Maya Civilization
• Maya People
• List of the Maya sites
• Chichén Itzá

External bonds

• Maya civilization
• history of the Mayas