Overview

• Los Abuelos is a nearly 3,000-year-old Maya city in Petén, Guatemala, spanning about 16 square kilometers and dating to the Middle Preclassic period (800–500 BC).
• The site features pyramids, monuments sculpted with unique regional iconography and two anthropomorphic sculptures of an “ancestral couple” linked to ritual ancestor worship.
• Adjacent sites Petnal and Cambrayal complete an urban triangle, with Petnal’s 33-meter pyramid adorned with Preclassic murals and Cambrayal housing a unique canal system inside a palace.
• The excavations were conducted by Guatemalan and Slovak archaeologists under the Uaxactún Regional Archaeological Project with backing from Comenius University in Bratislava.
• In April, researchers also unearthed a 1,000-year-old Teotihuacan altar at Tikal, providing further evidence of early cultural interactions across Mesoamerica.