Cobá

Altitude: 8 m (26 ft)

How to get there

By bus from Cancún (about 2.5 hours), Tulum (about 1 hour) or Valladolid (about 2 hours); by car from Cancún via the MEX 307, branching off 2km/1.3mi south of Tulum (128km/79mi) onto a good road heading north (Cobá 42km/26mi); alternatively via the MEX 180 to Nuevo Xcan (85km/53mi), there turning off to the south (Cobá 45km/28mi).

Cobá, one of the biggest Mayan sites in Mexico encompassing a number of groups of ruins, lies close to several small lakes in dense Quintana Roo bush country. Blessed by Yucatán standards with an abundance of water, this now almost completely overgrown ancient cult site and settlement was inhabited for a very long period from the early Classic period to the late 15th c. History

Recent research suggests that Cobá (Mayan: "water moved by the wind") experienced its heydey in the Mayan Classic period (ad 600-900) though some of the buildings have been shown to date from the post-Classic era (ad 900-1450). It was still occupied when the Spanish arrived in the country but they were evidently unaware of its existence.

The site was rediscovered in 1891 by the Austrian Teobald Maler. Between 1926 and 1929 excavations were carried out for the Carnegie Institute by leading scholars, initially by the Briton Dr Thomas Gann and afterwards by the American and British archaeologists Sylvanus G. Morley, J. Eric Thompson and H. D. Pollock. Since 1973 research at Cobá has been undertaken by the Mexicans themselves.

The Ruins

Ample time is needed for a visit, both because the site covers a very large area and because the scenery is so beautiful. Some of the excavated pyramids, temples and stelae have yet to be named, others are identified only by numbers or letters assigned to them by archaeologists. The network of paths is also subject to frequent change.

Within the vast area of the site, estimated to be at least 70sq.km/27sq.mi, researchers have so far identified 45 local thoroughfares and connecting roads as well as more than 6000 buildings and other structures. A total of 32 stelae from the Mayan Classic period have already been found, most of them decorated with reliefs. Although the earliest date so far recorded (on Stela 6) is ad 613, the architecture of a number of buildings is strongly reminiscent of the Guatemalan Petén, suggesting construction during the Early Classic era (ad 300-600). Cobá's special status as a major metropolis is further indicated by the large number of sacbeob (plural of sacbé = white road) uncovered. These causeways, surfaced with limestone mortar flattened by heavy rolling, form an extensive network linking the centre with outlying districts. Quite exceptionally some of the raised roadways are as much as 10 m (33 ft) wide, and one runs for almost 100km/62mi to Yaxuná, an ancient cult site south-west of Chichén Itzá where, in the early 1990s, two graves were discovered dating from between ad 300 and 315 and unexpectedly revealing the influence of Teotihuacán. The road system in the vicinity of Cobá constitutes the most elaborate found anywhere in Meso-America.