Los Abuelos – a 3,000-year-old Maya city emerges from the jungle
Meet Los Abuelos and the 3 000-Year-Old Maya Triangle
Grand-parent statues, sunrise calendars and jungle canals—plus what to know if you’d like to explore northern Guatemala one day.
1 | A headline that shook the room
On 30 May 2025 Guatemala’s Ministry of Culture and Sports (MCD) filled the National Palace in Guatemala City.
Archaeologist Mónica Urquizú opened the press event, announcing that brand-new finds from the Petén jungle “rewrite our ceramic timeline and prove the Maya tracked the sun centuries earlier than we thought.”
Project leaders Milan Kováč and Dora García then dropped the numbers:
- 17 years of fieldwork
- ≈ 1 200 km² scanned with jungle-penetrating lidar
- 176 ancient settlements mapped
- 20 already under excavation
- All of it north-east of Uaxactún, the long-time research hub in northern Guatemala
The real jaw-dropper? Three previously unknown Preclassic cities—Los Abuelos, Petnal and Cambrayal—sit in a near-perfect five-kilometre triangle, pushing sophisticated Maya city-building back to around 700 BCE.
2 | Los Abuelos — the ceremonial heart
Deep in the brush, archaeologists met two life-size limestone elders—quickly nicknamed la abuela and el abuelo. Beneath these statues (catalogued 5A & 5B) they uncovered:
- A tomb loaded with pottery, sea-shell jewellery and obsidian arrowheads
- Two big-cat skeletons guarding the grave
- An upright carved stela still standing sentinel
Steps away sits the oldest known “Group E” solar observatory in Petén: at equinox dawns the sun rises exactly over its central pyramid—an eighth-century-BCE calendar you can walk through.
Plaza edges hold frog-shaped limestone altars—you’ll see twins of these in neighbouring Petnal.
Official label: Los Abuelos is described as “un centro ceremonial”—a city built first and foremost for ritual.
3 | Petnal — the political powerhouse
Five kilometres north-west (by jungle trail) rises Petnal’s 33-metre (108 ft) pyramid. Its summit chamber still shows red-white-black murals—colour is a rare luxury this far back in time. On the plaza sit the same frog altars you met at Los Abuelos, hinting at shared ceremonies across the triangle.
Official label: Petnal is “un centro político”—the administrative capital of the trio.
4 | Cambrayal — canals before their time
Cambrayal’s engineers channelled palace wastewater through a 57-metre stucco-lined drain—practical plumbing centuries before Rome. They also left a chunky barrigón (pot-bellied) sculpture, a style from Guatemala’s Pacific coast that proves long-distance contacts long before the Classic era.
5 | Why you should care
- The clock just rolled back – pyramids, astronomy and water-tech are now dated 300–400 years earlier in northern Petén.
- Early science & engineering – tracking solstices, sculpting elders, plumbing palaces—all by 700 BCE.
- Prototype city network – a snug five-kilometre spacing foreshadows Classic-period alliances like Tikal–Uaxactún.
6 | How lasers keep rewriting Maya history
The MCD team credits lidar for spotting dozens of hidden platforms, roads and reservoirs inside their 1 200 km² survey block—a reminder that every new scan expands the ancient Maya world in both scale and age.
7 | Travel notes for future explorers
| What | Details |
|---|---|
| Gateway | Fly into Flores (FRS), the island town on Lake Petén Itzá. |
| See right now | The triangle itself is still an active dig, but Uaxactún (25 km away) has a climbable Group E complex and night-sky tours. |
| Gear checklist | Light long sleeves, 2–3 L of water, good trail shoes; jungle humidity > 80 %. |
| Respect | No artefact collecting. Stick to paths, hands off painted stucco, drones only with permission. |
| Amp it up | Outfitters bundle Tikal, a Yaxhá sunset boat ride and El Mirador heli day-trips for the hardcore Preclassic itch. |
8 | What’s next?
- 2026: 3-D laser scans of statues, murals and stela
- Pollen cores from the canals—think a 1 500-year climate diary
- Community workshops to craft low-impact tourism and anti-looting patrols
9 | A treasure for everyone
The ministry closed its briefing by calling the discovery *“a treasure that enriches the heritage of Guatemalans *and of all humanity.”
Picture sunrise atop a moss-covered pyramid, limestone grandparents watching the first light. The jungle still has stories—keep your boots ready.
Sources (all May 2025)
- Ministerio de Cultura y Deportes (Noticias MCD) – Ciudades mayas de más de dos mil años de antigüedad revelan sus secretos (30 May 2025)
- Bloomberg Línea – Guatemala anuncia hallazgo de ciudad maya de más de 2 500 años (30 May 2025)
- Crónica – Los Abuelos, Cambrayal y Petnal, las ciudades preclásicas descubiertas en Uaxactún (30 May 2025)
- Prensa Libre – Presentan nueva ciudad maya “Los Abuelos” y otros tesoros arqueológicos de Uaxactún (31 May 2025)
