Home»Images by Location»Mexico»Quintana Roo»Cancún»San Miguelito

San Miguelito, Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico. March 2017.

The archaeological site at San Miguelito was named after a coconut ranch that stood in its location in the 1950s when Cancún was a small fishing village. The original name is unknown; however, it is known that it was a major Maya settlement during the Late Postclassic Period of the Maya Prehispanic history (1250-1550 A.D.).

Along with the site of El Rey (The King), San Miguelito was part of a large complex of temples, shrines, palaces and houses made from wood and palm leaves arranged along a road that ran parallel to the dune line that runs along the coast. These dunes, now occupied by hotel buildings, protected the inhabitants of the community of San Miguelito from hurricanes and erosion as well as providing them with highly valueable plants and animals for their subsistence.

In the 15th century San Miguelito was part of a province (or kuchkabal) known to historians as Ekab ("black earth" in Mayan) which was a territory ruled by several lineages, each of which had control of a smaller territory called a batabil whose lands had changing borders according to the alliances and confrontations of each place. Therefore it is quite possible that the island of Cancún once had its own independent batab.