page_title: El Mirador
section_title: Today
hierarchical_section_title: El Mirador / Today
caption_attribution_description: English: Stonework at the Maya site of El Mirador, Petén, Guatemala. Photo taken in 2000. Español: Estructura de piedra en el sitio maya de El Mirador, Petén, Guatemala. Foto tomada en 2000.
context_page_description: El Mirador is a large pre-Columbian Maya settlement, located in the north of the modern department of El Petén, Guatemala.
context_section_description: Richard D. Hansen, an archaeologist from Idaho State University, is the current director of the Mirador Basin Project, and according to his discoveries here, he thinks that the more than 45 mapped sites in the Mirador Basin may have formed the earliest well-defined political state in Mesoamerica.
  Although containing striking examples of Preclassic Maya civilization, the remote location of El Mirador has prevented it from becoming a popular tourist site. Major plans by the current government of Guatemala include El Mirador as an important center of the Cuatro Balam Conservation and Development project.
caption: Exposed stonework at El Mirador in 2000
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