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Atharaphelun t1_iuc8vp0 wrote

Reply to Lidar technology unearthed tropical megapolis beneath forest canopy of the Calakmul Biosphere | Ancient Maya by marketrent

And for reference, Calakmul was one of the two Mayan "superpowers", the other being the city of Tikal, its rival. Each city built up a network of client city-states and alliances which contended with each other, much like Athens and Sparta in the Peloponnesian War. And like Classical Greece, there was a third, bigger and more powerful external power that exerted direct and indirect influence upon the Maya world at this time, which was the great city of Teotihuacan in the Central Mexico Valley (which played a role much like the Persian Empire in Classical Greece).

The rivalry of Tikal and Calakmul is a rather epic tale which led to constantly changing fortunes for either side (with Teotihuacan occasionally intervening by deposing Mayan rulers and installing dynasties backed by Teotihuacan, as what happened in Tikal, Copán, and Quiriguá), and ultimately ending, for as yet to be universally agreed upon reasons, in the Classic Maya Collapse, a sort of second Dark Age of the Mayan world (the first one being the societal collapse at the end of the Preclassic Maya period called the Preclassic Maya Collapse, the reasons for which are even less known than the Classic Maya Collapse).

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