Although not as vast as the Copan or Tikal ruins, there is something magical about Palenque.
It's believed that Palenque began as a farming hamlet. Over the Early Classic Period (300 - 600 AD) the village grew, and its development peaked in the Late Classic (600 - 900 AD) when it became the city which ruled much of what is now the states of Chiapas and Tabasco.
No one knows exactly why the Mayan civilization collapsed, but one of the theories is that high population density and overexploitation caused a decline in natural resources leading to political and economic collapse. The site was progressively abandoned and slowly taken over by the jungle. The area was very sparsely populated when the Spanish first arrived in the 1520s. They gave it the name 'Palenque' meaning 'fortification'.
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