---

Explore Belize Caves is featured on Trip Advisor as an Attraction in Belize City.

 

---

---

More information about Altun Ha

Altun Ha is a comparatively small, but surprisingly rich, minor ceremonial center of Clasic Maya Civilization. Located 10 km from the Caribbean sea and 30 miles north of Belize City, in an area once thought to be peripheral to the Maya civilization, Altun Ha was an important link in the coastal trading routes between the southern lowlands (Guatemala, Honduras & Belize) and the Yucatan and Mexico. The extensive excavation carried out at Altun Ha by the Royal Ontario Museum?s British Honduras Expedition from 1964-1970, headed by Dr. David Pendergast, have demonstrated the significance of this region of the ancient Maya world.As with most Maya sites, the true ancient name of the city is unknown. The name Altun Ha, literally ?rockstone water?, is a rough translation into Maya of the name of the nearby modern village of Rockstone Pond.The site encompasses an area of approximately 2.5 square km. (approx. one square mile), and includes at least 500 visible structures or mounds. At its peak, the population of Altun Ha and the surrounding vicinity may have been 8,000-10,000 inhabitants, with perhaps 3,000 individuals living in the central square mile of the site.The earliest evidence of the settlement at Altun Ha dates to 200 B.C., although it is likely that nomadic hunting-and-gathering people lived in the area long before then. The earliest permanent buildings were erected in an area west of the central precinct, now accessible to visitors. The earliest construction in the central precinct may date to the time of Jesus Christ. The first major construction in A.D. 100, in the form of a temple near the principal reservoir, but by the beginning of the Classic Period (A.D. 250) the focus had shifted to the area, which the visitor sees today. This was to be the central core of the site for some six centuries. The northern plaza was the primary ceremonial precinct until close to the end of the Early Classic, about A.D. 550, when construction was begun on the second plaza.The basic form of the ceremonial buildings consists of a solid pyramidal structure, atop which an altar, chambered building of masonry, or the perishable wood and thatch was placed. Each of the ceremonial structures which the visitor sees today represents not one but several buildings. The Maya periodically rebuilt their temples covering the earlier structures completely and building on top of it, or modifying it in some other major way. The temples thus grew is size through successive additions over the centuries. The modern reconstructions of these pyramids represent a composite of different construction phases, a combination that would never be visible in ancient times.Construction at Altun Ha continued until about A.D. 900, though a decline in the quality of new building was evident 150 years earlier. As at other classic Maya sites, the society appears to have been severely disrupted early in the tenth century A.D. Although no single factor explains the collapse of Maya civilization, there is some evidence that a violent peasant revolt may have contributed to the downfall of the Maya at Altun Ha.

The center was not completely abandoned after the collapse, but appears to be occupied for about 100 years after construction activity had ceased, and reoccupied 200 years later during the 13th and 14th centuries.