Tenam bridge.

Tenam comes from the Nahuatl voice tenamitl which means "fortification", "Wall" or "defense". The Tojolabal – Spanish dictionary records the same word as “olla delgada, tinaja”. For his part, Franz Bloom mentions that the name Tenam is assigned to a group of ruins in the Comitán region, preferably located in the upper part of the mountains. The second name corresponds to the old El Puente farm, located in what is currently the Francisco Sarabia neighborhood. Around the region there are several sites registered with the Tenam prefix and the corresponding farm or ranch assignment, for example: Tenam Rosario and Tenam Soledad. The ancient city of Tenam Puente was built on spectacular platforms with retaining walls, on a mountain that dominates the entire Comiteca plain and represents one of the least studied stages of Chiapas archaeology. To get to know this archaeological zone, it is convenient to get to Comitán de Domínguez, a pleasant city with a mild climate in the middle of a region abundant in water resources and large plains spread between hills of pine and oak forests. It is advisable to take a tour of its historic center that today shows us a beautiful colonial image, distinguishing itself as one of the most beautiful in the Mexican southeast. The ancient city of Tenam Puente was built on spectacular platforms with retaining walls, on a mountain that dominates the entire Comiteca plain and represents one of the least studied stages of Chiapas archaeology. The great fortification A few kilometers south of Comitán is the Tenam Puente archaeological site. The main period of occupation of the site corresponds to the Classic and Early Postclassic periods, when in fact the Maya sites in the central zone (Petén, Guatemala) were abandoned. Tenam Puente was mentioned for the first time in the book Tribes and Temples edited by Frans Blom and Olivier La Farge, in 1928. The territorial extension is calculated at 2 square kilometers, on which various constructions of a civic, religious and residential nature were built. The archaeological zone rises on large and spectacular platforms with retaining walls that were accommodated in five levels, thus forming open and closed squares, on which the main buildings were distributed, some of which have ramps as buttresses as a characteristic element. . Frans Blom (1893-1963) explains that when they went up a hill they reached the ruins of Tenam Puente and that on the south side of this hill a small valley stretched out, partly surrounded by the ruins and by a kind of semicircular mountain, like a great natural amphitheater. When noticing the arrangement of the mounds, around open squares towards the small valley, he judges that this "demonstrates that the builders took advantage of the natural landscape." The most important group of buildings is on the north side. There are the upper terraces up to 20 meters high formed by stepped bodies. Another set to the south corresponds to temples and residences of the upper classes, distributed around closed plazas, with shrines and platforms with large rooms on top. In the surroundings of the heart of Tenam Puente are the vestiges of the old population, although highly modified by current agricultural work. The spatial composition of the buildings in the area is very similar to that of other sites in the Central Depression of Chiapas (semi-flat area bordered by the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, the Central Plateau, and the Northern Mountains). On the bed of the Grijalva river and its tributaries there are a large number of sites with very similar architectural characteristics and construction techniques, based on perfectly well-cut limestone blocks. The finishes were applied with stucco, which is still preserved on some walls, floors and stairways, you can also see some stone slab floors. The presence of three ballcourts also stands out. In fact, access to Tenam Puente was through the main ballcourt. On higher platforms, at different levels, there are two other ball games, smaller and possibly intended for use among the upper classes. The layout of the ball games in the architectural space of the place fulfills the function of restricting access to the sacred spaces through the ritual barrier, as mentioned in the narration of the tests to which the precious twins are subjected to defeat the the forces of the underworld in the Popol Vuh. Their footprints speak The strategic location of Tenam Puente allowed its inhabitants to exercise control over the trade route that linked the highlands of Chiapas and Guatemala with the central depression of Chiapas. The ceramic collections coming from the excavations of the place.