Archaeologists believe they discovered the remains of a Mayan rebel base from Mexico centuries ago.
The city of Sac Baran, or “The Land of White Jaguars,” was home to the Mayan Lacandon Charles people who resisted Spanish conquest and are known today as the last Mayan rebels of Chaipas, a modern southern Mexican nation. The location has been circumventing archaeologists for decades.
After Spain acquired the capital of Lacan Tun (“Great Rock”) in 1586, Lacandon Chol moved further into the jungle, where he founded Sac Balan. They remained there until the Exploration Party, led by Friar Pedro De La Concepción, discovered its base in 1695. Soon, the Spanish army held back the city and renamed it Nuestra Señorade Dolores (“Our Female Women”). By 1721, the site had been abandoned. The location was lost, but the city’s records were written and written from that point on.
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Now, researchers believe they have found the site’s ruins again. The most likely location of the base was fixed using the Historical Records and Geographic Information System (GIS) Technology, a team led by Josuhé Lozada Toledo, an archaeologist at the National Institute of Human History (INAH) in Mexico City.
Lozada Toledo relied on the account of Friar Diego de Rivas in Spain to narrow down where Sak-Bahlán was. A 1695 letter from de Rivas explained that Sac Baran was on the plain along the corner of the Lacanto River, passing through Chiapas. A note from De Rivas in 1698 describes a four-day walk with soldiers from the city to the Lacantun River, followed by a two-day canoeing journey to the confluence of the Lacant and Pasion rivers.
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In addition to these accounts, Rosada Toledo considered the difficulty of the terrain and the amount of cargo a person could carry to estimate the actual distance covered during those journeys.
“By combining all these variables, I was able to get an approximate range of places where the sack balun sites could be placed,” Rosada Toledo said in a translated statement from INAH.
The range turned out to be very accurate. Archaeologists have found what appears to be Sacubalan near the Jatate and Ixan rivers near the current Mexico-Guatemala border.
“It was the most difficult field trip I’ve ever had in my life, but in the end I found archaeological evidence at the places I marked,” Rosada Toledo said.
Archaeologists have already spent two field seasons testing the mapping and excavation of the site, as well as when it was occupied.
This study is explained in detail in the next issue of Journal chicomoztoc.
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