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Calakmul lies deep within the Calakmul Biosphere Reserve in the southern Mexican state of Campeche, only about 35 kilometres from the Guatemalan border, in one of the largest tracts of tropical forest remaining in Mesoamerica. Its modern name means "two adjacent mounds" in Yucatec Maya, after its two great pyramids; in antiquity the city was associated with the toponym Ox Te' Tuun and was the seat of the Kaan or "Snake" dynasty, whose royal emblem glyph was a serpent head.
Calakmul was one of the two most powerful Maya kingdoms of the Classic period, the other being Tikal in the Petén of Guatemala, roughly 100 kilometres to the south. For much of the 6th and 7th centuries CE the Snake kings of Calakmul built a far-reaching network of alliances and vassal states that encircled and repeatedly defeated Tikal, making Calakmul the dominant hegemon of the central Maya lowlands. The rivalry between the two superpowers — fought through proxy wars, dynastic marriages, and direct conflict — structured much of Classic Maya geopolitics. Tikal eventually turned the tables, defeating Calakmul's king Yuknoom Yich'aak K'ahk' in 695 CE, after which Calakmul's power waned.
The city is enormous. Surveys have mapped thousands of structures, and its largest pyramid, Structure II, rises about 45 metres and is among the most massive of all Maya buildings; from its summit, on a clear day, the distant pyramids of other cities can be seen above the forest canopy. Calakmul has yielded one of the greatest concentrations of carved stelae of any Maya site — well over a hundred — recording its rulers and their deeds, though many are badly eroded by the humid climate. Excavations have also uncovered elite tombs with jade masks and, remarkably, painted murals depicting ordinary people engaged in commerce and the consumption of food and drink, a rare glimpse of Maya daily life.
The peak population of the city and its surrounding territory has been estimated in the tens of thousands. Calakmul declined along with the rest of the southern lowland Maya cities during the 9th-century collapse and was swallowed by forest, rediscovered from the air in 1931.
