No General Descriptions provided.
| Year Range | Early Classic Tikal (gt_tikal_early_classic) was in: |
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Estimates for the population of Tikal vary widely, and have tended to be revised downwards in recent decades. In his monograph on Tikal's population, David Webster draws on the work of Culbert et al. and revisions by Fry to suggest an upper bound of c. 28,000 people for central Tikal and its sustaining area during the Manik phase (250-600 CE). [Webster 2018, pp. 40-41] However, Michael E. Smith uses a much lower figure for Classic Maya Tikal (precise date unspecified), citing a forthcoming book chapter: "I use a new population estimate for Tikal as described in Dennehy et al. (n.d.). Based on the density categories of settlement at Maya cities published by Canuto et al. (2018), we estimate a population of 7,000 for an area of 1,127 hectares that comprises the urban core, urban, and periurban zones (rural and vacant areas are not included). This area is much smaller than traditional estimates, of which 12,000 hectares (120 square kilometers) is typical (Culbert 1991)." [Smith 2023, p. 251]