Archaeological Site: Topoxte, the ancient Mayan city on islands in the middle of a Lake

Topoxte is a pre-Columbian Maya archaeological site in the Peten Basin in Peten, northern Guatemala with a long occupational history dating as far back as the Middle Preclassic. As the capital of the Kowoj Maya, it was the largest of the few Postclassic Mesoamerican sites in the area. Topoxte is located on an island on Yaxha Lake across from the important Classic period center of Yaxha. Topoxte was named by Teobert Maler in 1904. The name means `seed of the Ramon tree.` There is no record of the name Topoxte prior to this. The Ramón tree, commonly known as breadnut, was an important component of the ancient Maya diet. Topoxte occupies five of a cluster of six islands at the western end of Lake Yaxha in the municipality of Melchor de Mencos in the eastern part of the Guatemalan department of Peten. Due to the extreme fluctuations of the water level of the lake, these islands can sometimes become landlocked.The principal occupation existed on the three islands named Topoxte, Cante and Paxte. Archaeological investigations have revealed that the site was occupied from the Middle Preclassic right through to the Late Postclassic. The principal ruins of the pre-Columbian city are spread over three islands: Topoxte, Cante and Paxte, in the southwest of Yaxha Lake, of which Topoxte is the largest. All three of these islands were densely occupied, with all construction except the ceremonial architecture being aligned according to the local topography.

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