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Grand Ceremonial Centers
Some of the finest lowland Maya architecture was built in the Petin region of Guatemala. It shows the classic features preferred by sophisticated people. There is little evidence of rigid planning and houses of lower class must have clustered around the impressive complexes of palaces, courtyards, and pyramids.
Mayan temple-pyramids are tall and steep. They rise as high as 65m and are embellished with masonry roof combs to emphasize height. Rooms in the official temple were roofed with overlapping stones forming a corbelled fault. The Temple of the Giant Jaguar at Tikal is a good example. It was built around 700 a.d. over an immensely rich tomb with the entire surface painted in vigorous colors but used for ritual purposes rather than as a mausoleum (The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Latin America and the Caribbean, 416).
