About El Mirador National Park
During the past two decades, this region of the department of Peten, Guatemala, has gone through investigations at the large Middle and Late Preclassic times.
Several sites such as El Mirador, Nakbe, El Tintal, Wakna, the recently discovered sites of Xulnal and El Pesquero, and numerous smaller settlements, dating mostly to the Classic period, such as La Florida, Maaxte, Zacatal, Chan Kan, Tsab Kan, Pedernal, Isla, La Muerta, and La Muralla, are special attractions for tourists around the world.
Dozens of additional sites are dispersed within the Basin, including several extremely large ones such as Naachtun in the northeast corner which is currently under investigation by a team from the University of Calgary in Canada. The primary settlement of the major sites in the basin dates to the Middle Preclassic (ca. 1000 BCE – 350 BCE) and Late Preclassic periods (ca. 350 BCE – CE 150), with relatively little overburden from the large-scale constructions and extensive settlements that characterized the Classic periods (CE 250-900) of the Mayan civilization.