Mound 60

14.9000°N, 92.1500°W.

Mound 60 is one of the principal earthen pyramidal mounds at Izapa, on the Pacific coastal plain of southern Chiapas near the Guatemala border. The mound was built between approximately 700 BCE and 100 CE during the Late Preclassic, of compacted earth and stone fill rising about 10 metres above the surrounding plaza. Izapa is renowned for its more than 250 carved stone monuments — stelae and altars depicting narratives that include scenes from the Popol Vuh creation cycle, a millennium before that text was written down. The site occupies a crucial transitional position between the Olmec heartland to the west and the developing lowland Maya tradition to the east. Excavations by the New World Archaeological Foundation under Gareth Lowe and others from the 1960s onward established the chronology.

Mound 60 is an earthen pyramid in a city whose carved stones tell the same creation story the Maya were still telling two thousand years later.