Preclassic Maya collapse: El Mirador is abandoned

El Mirador, in the far north of the Petén in Guatemala, flourished from about the 6th century BC to the 1st century AD and was at its height from the 3rd century BC, according to the English article; the Russian article places its greatest flowering between the late 2nd century BC and the 2nd century AD. Its builders raised some thirty-five triadic complexes — platforms crowned by three pyramids — among them El Tigre, 55 m high, and La Danta, about 72 m high. Raised causeways (sacbeob) 20–50 m wide linked the city with Nakbe, El Tintal and other centres of the basin, and the archaeologist Richard Hansen believes that the sites of the Mirador Basin may have formed the earliest well-defined state in Mesoamerica.

Then the lowland Maya world went through a crisis. Before the end a wall 3–8 m high was built along the north, east and south sides of the West Group of El Mirador, which suggests a perceived threat. The city and nearly all the other large sites of the area were abandoned — by about 150 according to the English article on El Mirador, while the Russian article speaks of its decline by 200–250. Proposed causes include deforestation to burn lime for the plaster that coated buildings, which caused erosion that buried the fertile muck of the swamps (bajos), the basis of farming, under sterile clay, and competition from rising centres such as Tikal, Uaxactun and Calakmul; there is no consensus. The recovery of the lowlands is marked by the Classic period, from about 250, when rulers began to raise monuments with Long Count dates. A small population returned to El Mirador around 700, and by about 900 it was deserted again.