page_title: Chunchucmil
section_title: Environment and ecology
hierarchical_section_title: Chunchucmil / Site characteristics / Environment and ecology
caption_attribution_description: English: Salt evaporation ponds of the Celestún Peninsula.
context_page_description: Chunchucmil was once a large, sprawling pre-Columbian Maya city located in the western part of what is now the state of Yucatán, Mexico.
  Although the famous explorer and author John Lloyd Stephens traveled within a few kilometers of Chunchucmil during his historic journey across the Yucatán Peninsula, the archaeological site went relatively unnoticed by Maya scholars for more than a century because virtually no monuments or other grand sculptures have been found there. The lack of royal monuments, combined with other archaeological data, may indicate that Chunchucmil was not a city ruled by a single divine king, as most other Maya polities. Instead, it may have been a commercial center, organized by various lineages and focused upon funneling goods between regions—such as the trade between the Gulf of Mexico and the interior of the Yucatán Peninsula.
  Chunchucmil was most populous in the Middle Classical Period,
context_section_description: The site of Chunchucmil is located on a narrow band of semi-arid terrain that parallels portions of the western and northern coastlines in Yucatán and Campeche.  This particular environmental zone is considered the driest in all of the Maya area, with less than 800 mm (31.5 in) of annual rainfall.  Compounding these harsh conditions, nearly fifty percent of the surface around Chunchucmil is exposed limestone bedrock.  Even when soils are encountered, they are rarely more than a few centimeters in depth.  Vegetation in this region is generally considered scrub forest dominated by acacia and other drought-resistant species (similar to the European heathland).  One of the mysteries surrounding Chunchucmil is how such a large city could have sustained itself in one of the poorest regions for agriculture.
  However, the ancient city was situated at the edge of this semi-arid ecological zone, exactly where the dry Yucatecan plains dip and fracture into vast wetlands (see map).  Immediately to the west of Chunchucmil are found the seasonally inundated savannas, fresh water petenes (or ojos de agua), and eventually the brackish mangrove estuary where the Yucatán aquifer empties into the Gulf of Mexico near the ancient Maya coastal site of Canbalam.  It is likely that ancient Chunchucmil was purposefully situated to take advantage of multiple ecological zones, including coastal resources such as the salt-beds of the Celestún peninsula, and to increase accessibility to the vigorous circum-peninsular canoe trade route of Pre-Columbian times, using Canbalam as its port of entry.
caption: Salt evaporation ponds of Celestún in the Yucatan Peninsula
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