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Tulum
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Tulum ( (Tulu'um in Modern Maya) ; in Spanish orthography, Tulum) is the site of a Pre-Columbian Maya walled city serving as a major port for Cobá.
The ruins are located on 39-foot (12-m) cliffs, along the east coast of the Yucatán Peninsula on the Caribbean Sea in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. One of the best-preserved coastal Maya sites, Tulum is today a popular site for tourists.
Maya site may have been formerly also known by the name Zama, meaning city of Dawn.
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Encyclopedia
Tulum ( (Tulu'um in Modern Maya) ; in Spanish orthography, Tulum) is the site of a Pre-Columbian Maya walled city serving as a major port for Cobá.
The ruins are located on 39-foot (12-m) cliffs, along the east coast of the Yucatán Peninsula on the Caribbean Sea in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico. One of the best-preserved coastal Maya sites, Tulum is today a popular site for tourists.
Description
The Maya site may have been formerly also known by the name Zama, meaning city of Dawn. Tulúm is also the Yucatec Mayan word for fence or wall (or trench), and the walls surrounding the site allowed the Tulum fort to serve as a defense against invasion. From the numerous depictions in murals and other works around the site, Tulum appears to have been an important site for the worship of the Diving or Descending God.
The city was first mentioned by Juan Díaz, part of Juan de Grijalva's expedition of 1518. The first detailed description of the ruins was published by John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood in 1843 in the book Incidents of Travel in Yucatan. John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood first visited Tulum in the mid-19th century AD. As they arrived from the sea John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood first saw a tall building that impressed them greatly. This was most likely the great Castillo of the site. They made accurate maps of the site’s wall and other buildings while Catherwood made some stunning sketches of the Castillo, along with others, which would have been as close to a photograph as possible at the time. Stephens and Catherwood also discovered an early classic stela at the site that had an inscribed date of AD 564 that was most likely brought in from a nearby town to be reused. Work conducted at Tulum continued with that of Sylvanus Morley and George P. Howe beginning in 1913. The work was continued by the Carnegie Institution from 1916 to 1922, Samuel Lothrop in 1924 who also mapped the site, Miguel Angel Fernandez in the late 30s and early 40s, William Sanders in 1955, and then later in the 1970s by Arthur Miller. Through these investigations done by William Sanders and Arthur Miller it has been determined that Tulum was occupied by the late Postclassic around AD 1200. The site continued to be occupied until contact with the Spanish was made in the early 16th century with the site being abandoned completely by the end of the 16th century.
Architecture
Tulum has architecture typical of Maya sites on the east coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. This architecture is recognized by a step running around the base of the building which sits on a low substructure. Doorways of this type are usually narrow with columns used as support if the building is big enough. As the walls flare out there is usually two sets of molding near the top. The room usually contains one or two small windows with an altar at the back wall, roofed by either a beam-and-rubble ceiling or being vaulted. This type of architecture resembles that done at the nearby Chichen Itza just on a much smaller scale.
Tulum was protected on one side by steep sea cliffs and on the landward side by a wall that averaged about three to five meters in height. The wall also was about eight meters thick and 400 meters long on the side parallel to the sea. The part of the wall that ran the width of the site was slightly shorter and only about 170 meters on both sides. This massive wall would have taken an enormous amount of energy and time which shows how important defense was to the Maya when they constructed the site here. On the Southwest and Northwest corners there are small structures that have been identified as watch towers showing again how well defended the city would have been. There are five narrow gateways in the wall with two each on the north and south sides and one on the west. Near the northern side of the wall a small cenote would have provided the city with fresh water. It is this impressive wall that makes Tulum one the most well known fortified sites of the Maya.
Among some of the more spectacular buildings at the site is the Temple of the Frescoes that included a lower gallery and a smaller second story gallery. Niched figurines of the Maya “diving god” or Venus deity decorate the façade of the temple. This “diving god” is also depicted in the Temple of the Diving God in the central precinct of the site. Above the entrance in the western wall a stucco figure of the “diving god” is still preserved which the temple gets its name from. A mural can still be seen on the eastern wall that resembles that of a style that originated in highland Mexico called the Mixteca-Puebla style. Also in the central precinct is the Castillo which is seven and half meters tall. The Castillo was built on a previous building that was colonnaded and had a beam and mortar roof. A small shrine appears to have been used as a beacon for incoming canoes. This shrine marks a break in the barrier reef that is opposite the site. Here there is a cove and landing beach in a break in the sea cliffs that would have been perfect for trading canoes coming in. This characteristic of the site is probably one of the reasons the Maya founded the city of Tulum here in the first place, for later Tulum would become a very prominent trading port of the Maya during the late Postclassic.
Trading
Both coastal and land routes converged here at Tulum which is apparent by the number of artifacts found in or near the site that show contacts with areas all over Central Mexico and Central America. Copper artifacts from the Mexican highlands have been found near the site as have flint artifacts, ceramics, incense burners, and gold objects from all over the Yucatán. Salt and textiles were among some of the goods brought to Tulum by sea that would then be dispersed inland. Typical exported goods include feathers and copper objects that came from inland sources. These goods could be transported by sea to rivers such as the Río Motagua and the Río Usumacincta/Pasión system that could be taken inland giving seafaring canoes access to both the highlands and the lowlands. The Río Motagua starts from the highlands of Guatemala and empties into the Caribbean while the Río Pasión/Ucamacincta river system also originates in the Guatemalan highlands and empties into the Gulf of Mexico. It may have been one of these seafaring canoes that Christopher Columbus first encountered off the shores of the Bay Islands of Honduras. Jade and obsidian appear to be some of the more prestigious materials found here as the obsidian would have had to have travelled clear from Ixtepeque in northern Guatemala which was nearly 700 kilometers away from Tulum. This huge distance coupled with the density of obsidian found at the site show that Tulum was a major center for the trading of obsidian.
Tourism
The archaeological site is relatively compact (compared with many other Maya sites in the vicinity), and is one of the best-preserved coastal Maya sites. Its proximity to the modern tourism developments along the Mexican Caribbean coastline (the so-called "Riviera Maya" surrounding Cancún) has made it a popular destination for tourists. Daily tour buses bring a constant stream of visitors to the site. The Tulum ruins are the third most-visited archaeological site in Mexico, after Teotihuacan and Chichen Itza. It is popular for the picturesque view of the Caribbean and a location just 128 km (80 miles) south of the popular beach resort of Cancún.
A large number of cenotes are located in the Tulum area such as Maya Blue, Naharon, Temple of Doom, Tortuga, Vacaha, Gand Cenote, Abejas, Nohoch Kiin and Carwash cenotes and cave systems.
The tourist destination is now divided into three main areas: the archaeological site, the pueblo (or town), and the zona hotelera (or hotel zone).
See also
External links
- - A video from the archaeological site at Tulum.
- A Photographic Web-Book on the Maya
- (Spanish)
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