This is one of about 20 stelae depicting King 18 Rabbit at Copan.
One of the more important of hundreds of rock carvings at the site. This altar shows 16 of the Mayan Kings of Copan.
King carving close up
Temple? Aqueduct? amphitheatre? No, this is actually a soccer pitch - for the original Mayan version of football. After each match, one of the players was bumped off... no one knows if it was an outstandingly good player being sacrificed to the gods, or an outstandingly bad player being punished for his poor performance. Either way, its not surprising there aren´t so many Mayan soccer players anymore.
There are several theories about why the Mayan civilization collapsed - At Copan, the city and surrounding areas went from a thriving population of around 20,000 people with highly advanced culture etc, to within 100 years almost no-one remaining in the valley, the jungle gradually taking over and the city left to crumble.
The most popular theory is that the high population reached some kind of important threshold at about 20,000 people. Over exploitation of the natural resources of the Copan Valley, and expansion of the city area into prime (but limited) agricultural land resulted in excessive deforestation, removal of nutrients from the soils and various other environmental problems. Simply, the valley couldn´t produce enough food, and the civilization effectively starved to death.
Right now environmentalists are getting a bit upset by the amount of unchecked land clearing occurring in the region, as poor and desperate people try to maximise the profitability of their land. Recently the population of the Copan valley, for the first time since the Maya collapse, again reached 20,000 people. Umm... guys... Is there are lesson to be learnt here?
While most of the ruins and carvings are highly intricate and detailed, and no doubt should be taken very seriously by some lab coat wearing anthropologists type, there are quite a few that really just make you want to crack up laughing.
Maybe this was the kindergarten rock carving effort. And you thought Walt Disney was original. 
A Scarlet Macaw, close up. The Mayans carved lots of versions of these heads.... 
Las Sepulturas, the working class living quarters of Copan. No one knows why a death metal band named themselves after this.....
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