Between the Puuc ancient cities, Kabah distinguish themself because was occupied for a long period of time, by his estrategic location, and for the excelent quality in carved stone that gave relevant signification to this site.

Kabah is located 120 km from Merida in the old road to Campeche (via ruinas). Is 22 km south from Uxmal, another of the important sites in the Puuc region, and 8 km from Santa Elena community.

Kabah is located on the south end of a Sacbe, white road, who connect this archeological site with Uxmal and Nohpat, another great city who was builted in a the top of a fertile hill, the most fertile of the entire region. Walking in that Sacbe, 800 m from the urban downtown, is a small habitional conjunction, with a central building who mark the site entrance. From this place, the building concentration grows and finish with a great arch, the entrance of the monumental area, just beside of the the great pyramid Nohoch Mul.

They will need some more work seasons and a good economic investment to restore buildings, like this pyramid or the interesting central quadrangle, scenic area, actually cover with a leafy vegetation and hidden to the visitors.

Crossed by a federal highway like an arrow in their hart, between the great pyramid still in ruins and the splendid sanctuary of the Codz Pop, Kabah all years see thousands of tourist who come and get astonish with the magnificent fecades of masks or with their representation of Kinich Ahau, master of the solar eye.

Since the last century Kabah, kepth the attention of travellers like Stephens y Catherwood, who carry a big wood lintel and two jambs of carved rock to show in an exposition in New York, but the exposition finish with a fire. In 1928 a inspection of the National Institute of Antropology and History noted the high archeological value of this city, but have to wait to the fifties when the archeologist Alberto Ruz Lhuillier and Ponciano Salazar came with theit team to began the excavations and the valoration of the site. The result of this work was the oppening to the public of the building named Codz Pop "the volute mat", and the monumental arch.

In 1990, the INAH implement a program of restoration and archeological investigation in Kabah, and during four seasons (11 months of field work), archeologist, workers, and the owners of the land restored a big part of one of the magnificent conjunctions of this urban center. Thanks to this works now we can see the restored fecades and the consolidated vaults of a part of Kabah, and the visitor can understand in a dimamic way the estetic evolution of the mayan culture on this peninsular region. Besides, the parallel investigations and the study of ceramics allowing to know with more accuracy the historic development, know more abouth the society-nature relation of the ancient inhabitants, abouth how they can use the local resources y the technology used to resolv the basic problems of their organization.

The work made on the east side of the Codz Pop was in the visible work, the most important of this period of investigations in this site. The discovery of seven bulk sculptures who represent scarify warriors, the carved jambas restoration where you can see scenes of ritual dances and seize characters and the restitution of the tiled cross walls who make the big extended mats, simbols of the stablished power, gave to the Codz Pop a human dimension and historic.

In 1993, the goverment of Yucatan, by the Ecology Secretary, decree the archeological site of Kabah a state park. This decree, product of an academic interest in the Kabah Proyect (INHA), and for the possibilities of social development in the Santa Elena village and for the politic rules for the ecologic conservation of Mexico, reflex a new valoration of this ancient maya city abandoned 800 years ago. Actually, they are working in a management plan for this protected area, arise of the interest to foment the interdiscipline investigation and for valorate the benefits for the inhabitants of Santa Elena village, ancient Nohcacab, the land where born the defender of the maya origin Mr. Loreto Bak.

On the east group of Kabah, were found evidence of occupation since the year 300 a. C (Preclassic Medium in the mesoamerican cronology) until the 1200 d. C., when it suppose the interetnic problems in the north Yucatan between itzaes, xiues y cocomes affect the basis of their own organization system.

In the beginin, the inhabitants of Kabah was probably a group of families dedicated to an incipient agriculture, hunt for subsitence and a technological development directed basicly to the recolection of rain water and the carved of rock.
After that, in a more recient fase (Late Classic and Terminal 600-1000 d.C.), those groups succeed in the application of their knowledge building a big net of Chultunes over artificial nivelation of the soil and finding the way to use the art of rock carving on a sofisticated system of construction (the write history with symbols and the great vaulted spaces).

When you walk through the archeological zone of Kabah you can feel the prescence of a complex organization society, in politics and in their belief.

Kabah is located on the bottom part of a valley or karstic depresion, surrounded of middle size hills, more of them with small temples on the top, where you can see the tall buildings of Nohpat and Uxmal.
Kabah is cover by a tipical vegetation of the region (middle forest subperenfolia), with trees of 50 years of ancientness just aside of the ruins and with akahuales (forest of secundary vegetation) who cover the rest of the site.
The vegetation denote a continuos use of the ecosystem obviously related to the human occupancy in the ancient times and with a continuos agricultural development.

In the 1000 hectares of extension of the Kabah State Park, there are some botanical and faunistic species used by the inhabitants of the zone in various forms. Exist by an example, wood, roots and weed used for the quack doctors of the community for medicines. There is plants used for food condiments and aromatizants of local cuisine, and a speciffic rattan used to protect themself of any serpent bite.

The fauna of Kabah are rich on ophiand, from the feathered serpent of the cornice of the Codz Pop, simbol of knowledge of venusian cycle, to the dreaded Holpoch who bites in both ends. Those animal are in Kabah a danger charming. Besides y you walk in the forest and had look, maybe you can see a jabali or jungle pork who move the bushes to find a meal or a deer white tail drinking water from the haltunes, hollows in the mother rocks with water, a natural recipent of rain water. The jungle turkeys walk without fear and proud, with them the inhabitants make the "relleno negro", cook for the important moments.

The Kabah ruins are rocks with simbols who telling us abouth a old story and send a misterious feeling of the past. If we look to undestand and respect our identiti, if we see in the archeological zones documents of the history and a different way to have a relation with nature, Kabah offers us an ancient experience and a modern possibilities.

See our stelae catalog from Kabah

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