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Tulum Quintana Roo Mexico Mayan Ruins Photography
Photography by Bill Bell
Tulum ( (Tulu'um in Modern Maya) ; in Spanish orthography, Tulum) is the site
of a Pre-Columbian Maya walled city serving as a major port for Cobá.[1] The
ruins are located on 12-meter (39 ft) cliffs, along the east coast of the
Yucatán Peninsula on the Caribbean Sea in the state of Quintana Roo, Mexico.[1]
One of the best-preserved coastal Maya sites, Tulum is today a popular site for
tourists.[1]
The Maya site may have been formerly also known by the name Zama, meaning city
of Dawn. Tulúm is also the Yucatec Mayan word for fence or wall[1] (or trench),
and the walls surrounding the site allowed the Tulum fort to serve as a defense
against invasion. From the numerous depictions in murals and other works around
the site, Tulum appears to have been an important site for the worship of the
Diving or Descending god.[1]
The city was first mentioned by Juan Díaz, part of Juan de Grijalva's expedition
of 1518.[1] The first detailed description of the ruins was published by John
Lloyd Stephen s and Frederick Catherwood in 1843 in the book Incidents of Travel
in Yucatan. John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood first visited Tulum in
the mid-19th century AD. As they arrived from the sea John Lloyd Stephens and
Frederick Catherwood first saw a tall building that impressed them greatly. This
was most likely the great Castillo of the site. They made accurate maps of the
site’s wall and other buildings while Catherwood made some stunning sketches of
the Castillo, along with others, which would have been as close to a photograph
as possible at the time. Stephens and Catherwood also discovered an early
classic stela at the site that had an inscribed date of AD 564 that was most
likely brought in from a nearby town to be reused. Work conducted at Tulum
con tinued with that of Sylvanus Morley and George P. Howe beginning in 1913. The
work was continued by the Carnegie Institution from 1916 to 1922, Samuel Lothrop
in 1924 who also mapped the site, Miguel Angel Fernandez in the late 30s and
early 40s, William Sanders in 1955, and then later in the 1970s by Arthur G.
Miller. Through these investigations done by Sanders and Miller it has been
determined that Tulum was occupied by the late Postclassic around AD 1200. The
site continued to be occupied until contact with the Spanish was made in the
early 16th century with the site being abandoned completely by the end of the
16th century.[
To view in larger format click on photograph
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
To view photography of other
ancient Mexican Sites click here
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