Tikal in Guatemala

Tikal, located in the north of the Petén region of Guatemala, was a major Maya city, flourished between roughly 300 BCE and 900 CE. Starting out as a modest series of hamlets, it became a great Maya city-state with more than two dozen major pyramids.

Tikal was first occupied as a small village in the Middle Formative Period (900–300 BCE); subsequently, in the Late Formative Period (300 BCE–100 CE),

Starting in the first century A.D., the city began to flourish culturally and politically, overtaking the city of El Mirador to the north in terms of power and influence within the Mayan empire, which stretched as far north as the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.

Like people of other Maya cities, Tikal's residents used a system of glyptic writing inscribed both on stone and on a perishable material made from the bark of trees.

Most of the city’s edifices were built during what is called the Classic period of Maya history, from 250 CE to 900 CE.

Historians believe that the more than 3,000 structures on the site are the remains of a Mayan city called Tikal, which was the capital of one of the most powerful kingdoms of the ancient empire. At its peak from 682 CE to 909 the city spread over at least 50 square miles (130 square kilometers).

The city's prosperity was based on exploitation of natural resources such as cedar wood, dye from brazil wood, copal resin, flint, and cultivating maize in cleared areas of rainforest and fertile swamp areas.

By 900 CE., the city, like much of the Mayan empire, was in sharp decline. Decades of constant warfare started to take their toll.
Tikal in Guatemala

City of Chan Chan in Peru

According to history, Chan Chan was the imperial capital of Chimor, an expansive imperial power of the Chimú culture that ruled the northern coast and central coasts of Peru beginning around 850 and ending around 1470.

The ancient city walls of Chan Chan encompass more than 20 km2 , with a 6 km2 urban nucleus of monumental architecture dominated by large, high walled enclosures built of adobe.

It was believed that the city has been constructed around 850 AD. Chan Chan is large prehistoric urban center in the Lower Moche Valley on the north coast of Peru.

The city of Chan Chan is believed to have housed between 20,000 and 40,000 people at its zenith in the Late Chimú Period between 1300 C.E. and 1470 C.E.

The early kings consistently invested labor in programs of agrarian and territorial expansion. The role of the bureaucracy was extended to encompass rural construction.

The kings maintained their position of power by centralizing that wealth within their palaces, by centralizing the bureaucracy within the palace, and by gradually uniting religious and administrative forms within the place.

From the early beginnings on the Moche Valley, the Chimu gradually extended their control over a strip of coastal desert and river valley over 1000 km in length from the Gulf of Guayaquil to the environs of present-day Lima.
City of Chan Chan in Peru

Ancient city of Machu Picchu in south-central Peru

The mysterious Inca city and ceremonial center of Machu Picchu lies high in the Peruvian Andes, fifty miles northwest of Cuzco, capital of the Inca Empire.

The name Machu Picchu means “old peak” in Quechua, the language of Inca. The dwellings at the site were probably built and occupied from the mid-1400s to the early or mid-1500s.

The city of Machu Picchu was surrounded by high mountain peaks and rushing waters. It was divided into large sectors – the urban sector and the agricultural sector.

Research suggests that Machu Picchu may have transformed over the period of its occupation from a defensive outpost near a frontier, in the early years of its founding, to serve in its heyday as the showpiece of a ruler’s royal estate.

The ruins are substantial an extensive, including houses, a temple plaza and granaries. There are 140 structures in Machu Picchu, most built of polished dry-stone walls which are more earthquake resistant.

Machu Picchu remained hidden from the Spanish when they conquered the Inca in the 1500s. The world learned of Machu Picchu when a local farmer led a US archeologist, Hiram Bingham III to the ruin in 1911.
Ancient city of Machu Picchu in south-central Peru

Ancient city of Cholula

Cholula, at one time, had been one of the most important pre-Colombian cities on the continent.

It was rising from being a village to being a city of some importance. Cholula was founded by the Toltecs sometime round 1500 BC.  For Toltecs the city was a place for commerce, worship and burial.

It has been continuously occupied and has been a major religious center. The Great Pyramid, Tlachihualtepetl, is the largest pre-Hispanic structure in The World in the terms of volume of construction material.  As the city became a place of power, many of the powerful cultures of Mexico had their turn to rule it - the Olmecs, Toltecs, and later the Aztecs, with whom the city had some alliance.

For centuries, Cholula was considered to be the Tollan or Place of the Tules, from which the various groups of origin had been expelled and to where they return (Cholollan-Tollan).

By the time Cortes passed through Mexico and through Cholula in 1519, the town was already old and fairly large.
Ancient city of Cholula