Travel Guide Toniná

Toniná, "the house of stones" or "the place where stone sculptures rise in honour of time", in Tzeltal, is a superb Mayan site, whose original - and unique - configuration and architecture echo its hybrid location, on the border between the Highlands and the Lowlands. The site, inhabited from the 1st century AD, was to be occupied until the 16th century and the arrival of the Spanish conquerors, although its heyday was in the distant 7th to 9th centuries (Late Classic period). Its very long period of occupation makes it a contemporary of the classical Mayan cities of Palenque, Tikal or Copan rather than the more recent ones of the Yucatan Peninsula (Maya-Toltec civilization). The incessant exchanges with these neighbouring cultures, more or less warlike, were to shape the city during more than a thousand years of formation and evolution: Tonina presents both the iconography proper to the classical Maya culture (terrestrial monsters, aquatic deities, celestial birds and dragons of the inframundo) and that of the later Chen or Puuc cities, characterised by geometric motifs in greca escalonada and the presence of representations of Chaac, the god of Rain. The visit to the site also allows you to discover the beautiful landscapes of the surroundings of Ocosingo, these undulating plains where cows and sheep graze peacefully, both during the 10 km journey from the small town and from the top of its imposing pyramidal structure (75 meters, 10 meters more than the Pyramid of the Sun in Teotihuacan).