El Mirador, capital of the Preclassic Maya
The Maya built giants centuries before Tikal
In the jungle of northern Guatemala the city of El Mirador flourished from roughly the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD. Its La Danta pyramid, about 70 metres high, is by volume one of the largest in the world, and paved causeways, the sacbeob, linked the city to its neighbours. Finds here overturned the view that complex Maya civilisation arose only in the Classic period; the city declined around AD 150.
Wikipedia (Russian) · Wikipedia (English) · 3rd century BC
Meanwhile around the world (±25 years)
Middle East
- 323 BC Death of Alexander the Great — 23 years earlier
Africa
- c. 285 BC Library of Alexandria — 15 years later
Asia
- c. 322 BC Founding of the Maurya Empire — 22 years earlier
Alive at the time
- Mencius (aged 72)
- Chandragupta Maurya (aged 40)
- Euclid (aged 25)
- Ashoka (aged 4)
- Zhuangzi (aged 69)
- Ptolemy I Soter (aged 67)
- Pytheas (aged 50)
- Qu Yuan (aged 40)
- Arsinoe II (aged 16)