Mayan Monuments of Belize

Wedged against the Caribbean sea between two much larger nations, Belize is a tiny Central American treasure bordered by Mexico to the north and Guatemala to the west. Formerly a European colony known as British Honduras, the small country spans a geographical area of nearly nine thousand square miles, about the size of New Hampshire. Therein lives a mixed population of about three hundred thousand Creole, Maya, Garifuna, and Mestizo residents, with some backgrounds including Chinese or Lebanese ancestry. The Mayan ancestry is best reflected in some of the largest remains from their past, including abandoned villages, temples, and altars spread across the country.

Given a modern Mayan language name that translated to Rockstone Pond, the name of a nearby village, Altun Ha is well-known in Belizean pop culture for the appearance of one of it's pyramids on the country's top-selling brand of beer, Belikin. That fifty-four foot tall pyramid is the largest pyramid on the archaeological site, which covers an area of about five square miles; however, most remains are concentrated on about twenty percent of that area, with several hundred structures appearing in the most densely constructed square mile. Even though it is of massive size, the site was not discovered until 1963, and then only by amateur archaeologist and bush pilot Hal Ball. Within a few years, the Royal Ontario Museum had sent a full excavation team to uncover the historically rich site. Altun Ha had been occupied for about seven hundred years before abandonment around A.D., a period of great mystery and intrigue in Mayan history.