Located in the surroundings of the town of Comitán, in the central region of the state of Chiapas, this ancient Mayan capital stood out for its important activity and commercial exchange. Explore it!
The ancient city of Tenam Bridge It was built on spectacular platforms with retaining walls, on a mountain that dominates the entire Comiteca plain and represents one of the least studied stages of Chiapas archeology.
To know this archaeological zone it is convenient to arrive at Committee of Domínguez, a pleasant city with a benign climate in the middle of a region abundant in water resources and large plains stretched between hills of pine and oak forests. It is advisable to take a tour of its historic center that today shows us a beautiful colonial image, distinguishing itself as one of the most beautiful in the Mexican southeast. Its cobbled streets with well-kept period mansions, its gardens and the central kiosk speak for themselves. In the main square, the alleys with wooden arches make up unique spaces and in the portals, the locals taste the excellent Chiapas coffee.
In front of the kiosk stands out the beautiful temple of Santo Domingo. Its construction in the Plateresque style began in the last decade of the 16th century and ended in the early 17th century. On one side stands a beautiful tower of a later construction that stands out from the façade, it has Gothic and Islamic features, characteristic of the Mudejar style, on its wall Roman arches stand out. One block to the south of the main square is the house that Belisario Domínguez inhabited, built in Seville style with wooden portals, placed around a flowery patio.
The great fortification
A few kilometers south of Comitán is the Tenam Puente archaeological site. The main period of occupation of the site corresponds to the Classic and Early Postclassic periods, when in fact the Mayan sites of the central zone (Petén, Guatemala) were abandoned. Tenam Puente was mentioned for the first time in the book Tribes and Temples edited by Frans Blom Y Olivier La Farge, in 1928. The territorial extension is calculated in 2 square kilometers, on which various constructions of a civic, religious and residential nature were built.
The archaeological zone rises on large and spectacular platforms with retaining walls that were arranged in five slopes, thus forming open and closed squares, on which the main buildings were distributed, some of which have ramps as buttresses as a characteristic element. . Frans Blom (1893-1963) explains that when climbing a slope they came to the ruins of Tenam Puente and that on the south side of this hill there was a small valley, surrounded in part by the ruins and by a kind of semi-circular mountain like a great natural amphitheater. Noticing the arrangement of the mounds, around open squares towards the small valley, he judges that this "shows that the builders took advantage of the natural landscape."
The most important group of buildings is on the north side. There are the upper terraces up to 20 meters high formed by stepped bodies. Another group to the south corresponds to temples and residences of the upper classes, distributed around closed squares, with shrines and platforms with large rooms in the upper part. In the surroundings of the heart of Tenam Puente are the vestiges of the old town, although much modified by current agricultural work.
The spatial composition of the buildings in the area is very similar to that of other sites in the Central Depression of Chiapas (semi-flat area bordered by the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, the Central Plateau and the Northern Mountains). On the riverbed Grijalva river and its tributaries are distributed in a large number of sites with very similar architectural characteristics and construction techniques, based on perfectly well cut limestone blocks. The finishes were applied with stucco, which is still preserved in some walls, floors and stairways, you can also see some floors of stone slabs.
Also noteworthy is the presence of three ball courts, in fact the access to Tenam Puente was through the major ball court. On higher platforms, at different levels, there are two other ball games, smaller in size and possibly intended for use among the upper classes. The arrangement of the ball courts in the architectural space of the place fulfills the function of restricting access to the sacred spaces through the ritual barrier, as mentioned in the narration of the tests that the precious twins are subjected to to defeat the forces of the underworld in the Popol Vuh.
Their footprints speak
The strategic location of Tenam Puente allowed its inhabitants to exercise control over the trade route that linked the highlands of Chiapas and Guatemala with the central depression of Chiapas. The ceramic collections from the excavations of the place, denote a very active trade with other very remote areas of the Comitán region, such as snails from the Gulf of Mexico.
On the other hand, the burials discovered give part of the presence of great figures to whom numerous offerings were deposited such as vessels, green stone objects, ornaments made of shell and stingray thorn. Thanks to all these excavations, burials and explorations carried out until today, we begin to know more and more about the cultural development reached by this Mayan site. With the findings it has been possible to confirm that Tenam Puente participated in the last stage of the classic Mayan culture that represents the transition to the early Postclassic, a moment in which metallurgy gains greater strength and objects made of alabaster appear.
Comitan's past
The ancient Balum Canan, “Place of the nine stars”, is founded in a swamp by Tzeltal Indians, who still call it that. In 1486 the community changed its name to Komitlan, Nahuatl word that means “Place of fevers”. In 1528 it was conquered by Pedro de Porto Carrero; and in 1556 Diego Tinoco moved and founded the town in the place where it is today.
