MAYAN ARCHITECTURE
DIALOGUE BETWEEN MEN AND GODS

The first Maya pyramid was built in Uaxactun, Guatemala, just before the birth of Christ. For the next 1,500 years, indigenous architecture matured in an almost continuous evolution towards verticality, abstraction and refinement. This supposed a vast technical base, as the builders lacked steel tools and work animals.

Text and illustrations by Leonardo Berges

In the ninth century a new horizontal style brought by the altiplano (high plains) people emerged. Spanish colonialists found the last vestiges of that architecture when they arrived in 1520. The conquest ended a creative dialogue between men and the gods that had lasted almost seventeen centuries.