Tikal, Guatemala — Exploring ancient history

TIKAL, Guatemala — The jungle rises 100 feet into the air, a rainforest of ceibas and mahogany and cedar trees. But the ancient stone pyramids rise even higher.

The Temple of the Jaguar Priest. The Temple of the Two-Headed Serpent. Their flat tops poke through the canopy, into the vast and misty sky. It is a scene so otherworldly that filmmakers used it in a "Star Wars" movie.

This is Tikal, in the tropics of Guatemala. It is one of the largest Mayan ruins in the world and is even more otherworldly in reality than it is on the screen. You can spend several days walking through Tikal — walking where the Maya walked, trying to imagine yourself back in time.

Tikal was a premier trading and ceremonial center during the Classic period of Mayan culture, inhabited as a city from 200 B.C. to A.D. 900. At its peak, it was home to about100,000 people. Out of thousands of structures, about 500 buildings have been excavated and studied, and about 300 have been restored.

When you visit, you will walk in a few square miles, only a small part of the 25 square miles Tikal must have covered. You'll see many green mounds. Unexcavated buildings abound.

You'll see that some of the roads were major avenues, 30 feet across. Since the Maya didn't have wheels, you must imagine the roads without carts, but full of people — peasants, priests, slaves, craftsmen, traders bearing seashells, herders with their animals.

As you walk, you breathe the jungle air, heavy with the scents of growth and decay. You see orchids and philodendron and bromeliads. You hear frogs, toucans, doves and madly squawking parrots.

With luck, you will see the male howler monkeys fighting and screeching in the treetops. Don't be surprised if the females remain unimpressed by the males' display. The females like to doze in the branches while the males spar. (Hint: Never stand directly under a monkey in a tree. Monkeys tend to spray urine when defending their territory.)

Tikal gets more than a million visitors a year, half of them Europeans. While you wander down the trails and across the plazas, you'll hear Italian, French, perhaps Swedish or Norwegian. You may also hear your guide speaking Mayan to one of the other guides.

As it turns out, descendents of the ancient Maya still live in this part of the world and still speak one of several dozen Mayan dialects. Some remember a few ceremonies and farming practices — bits and pieces of the long-ago culture. The national park service allows the Maya to conduct ceremonies at Tikal. So they come, regularly, to pray for rain, to give thanks for the harvest.