Yaxchilan

Listen first. Somewhere above you, in the canopy, a deep roar rolls through the trees. It sounds like a large animal, but it is a howler monkey, often no bigger than a small dog. The air is heavy and wet. The ground under your feet is soft with leaf litter, and moss covers the old limestone. Through the trees, you can hear the brown water of the Usumacinta River sliding past. This is Yaxchilan, and the forest has held it for a long time.

Most visitors arrive the way the ancient people did, by water. Long narrow boats leave from the riverside village of Frontera Corozal and travel downstream between walls of green. On one bank is Mexico. On the other bank is Guatemala. The river is the border today, but for the Maya who built this city, it was a highway. Canoes carried trade goods, messengers and warriors along it, and the city that controlled this bend could watch everything that passed.

And it really is a bend. The river makes a deep loop here, almost like a horseshoe, and the city sits inside that curve. Water protects it on several sides. The rulers chose the spot with care. From the higher buildings, they could look out over the river and the hills beyond. Keep that in mind as you walk. Every staircase here climbs toward a view, and every view was a statement of power.

The name Yaxchilan is modern. It is usually translated as green stones, and it was given by explorers in the late nineteenth century. The ancient inhabitants used a different name. Scholars who read Maya hieroglyphs believe the city's royal title referred to a split sky. The city reached its peak in the Classic period, especially in the seventh and eighth centuries, when it was one of the strongest powers on this river.

Before you reach the main plaza, you may pass through a dark, narrow building known as the Labyrinth. Its passages twist and turn, and the air inside is cool and damp. Bats often live in the shadows. Bring a small light if you have one. When you come out the other side, the space suddenly opens. In front of you is the Great Plaza, a long flat terrace running parallel to the river, lined with temples, palaces and stone monuments.

Here is what makes Yaxchilan special. Its great treasure is not height or size. It is carving. The Maya here carved the stone beams over their doorways, called lintels, with scenes and long hieroglyphic texts. Most ancient Maya cities carved stelae, the tall standing stones. Yaxchilan did that too. But its lintels are among the finest stone relief work in the whole Maya world. To see them, you often have to stand in a doorway and look straight up.

Two rulers dominate the story told in these stones. The first is known as Shield Jaguar the Great, who ruled for a remarkably long time and transformed the city with new buildings. The second is his son, Bird Jaguar the Fourth. Their reigns covered much of the eighth century. Together they filled the city with monuments that recorded battles, captives, rituals and royal family ties. The stones are a kind of political archive, written to persuade.

One of the most important women in Maya history is connected to this place. She is Lady K'abal Xook, a wife of Shield Jaguar. A temple known as Structure 23 was dedicated to her. Its lintels showed her performing a royal ritual of bloodletting, pulling a cord set with thorns through her tongue, while the king holds a torch above her. In another scene, a great serpent rises from smoke, and an ancestral figure appears from its mouth. These were sacred visions made solid in stone.

Now for a surprise. Several of those famous lintels are not here. In the 1880s, the British explorer Alfred Maudslay removed some of them, and they travelled across the ocean. Today, carvings from this temple are displayed in the British Museum in London. So the empty doorway you look at here has a twin, thousands of kilometres away, behind glass. Other carved pieces from the site are kept in museums in Mexico City.

Next, look up the hill toward Structure 33. It is often called the finest building at the site. Bird Jaguar the Fourth dedicated it, and it sits high above the plaza with a long stairway leading up to it. On top, a tall pierced roof comb rises like a stone crest. Along the base, carved steps show scenes from the ballgame, the sacred Maya sport played with a heavy rubber ball. Climb slowly. The stairs are steep and often slippery.

Inside Structure 33 sits a large stone statue of a seated figure, often identified as Bird Jaguar himself. The statue has lost its head, which rests nearby. Here is a story you will not find in the inscriptions. According to a belief held by the local Lacandon Maya, if the head is ever returned to the body, the world will end. It is folklore, not history. But Lacandon people have come to this temple to pray for generations, which reminds us that the site is still sacred to someone.

Yaxchilan did not stand alone. Downriver lies another great Maya city, Piedras Negras, on the Guatemalan side. The two cities were rivals and sometimes partners, and their inscriptions mention each other. Rulers here proudly recorded captives taken in war, and many carvings show kings standing over bound prisoners. Then, around the ninth century, monument building stopped, as it did across much of the southern Maya lowlands. Slowly, the forest moved back in over the plazas.

Before you leave, stand still for a moment in the Great Plaza. Notice the light coming through the high trees, green and broken into small patches on the stones. Notice the moss, the roots pushing between blocks, the smell of wet earth. Somewhere a monkey calls again. When you walk back down to the river and step into your boat, look over your shoulder. The temples disappear into the green very quickly, just as they did for more than a thousand years.