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> Homepage > Welcome > Destinations > Riviera Maya > Tulum >   History
 Tulum’s greatest attraction is its location. It stands on a bluff facing the rising sun, commanding views of the Caribbean that are nothing less than spectacular. In Maya, Tulum means “wall,” and the city was christened thus in the early 1900s because it is a walled city and one of the very few the ancients ever built. Research suggests it was called Zama or “to dawn” in its day, which is appropriate given the location.
The earliest date lifted from the site is A.D. 564 (the inscription on a stela). This places Tulum within the Classic period, though we know that its heyday was much later – A.D. 1200-1521 – during the late Post-Classic period.
Tulum was a major link in the Maya’s extensive trade network, both maritime and land routes converged here. Artifacts found in or near the site testify to contacts that ranged from Central Mexico to Central America and every place in between: copper rattles and rings from the Mexican highlands; flint and ceramics from all over the Yucatán; jade and obsidian from Guatemala and more.
The first Europeans to see Tulum were probably Juan de Grijalva and his men as they sailed reconnaissance along the eastern coast of the Yucatán in 1518. The Spaniards later returned to conquer the Peninsula, unwittingly bringing Old World diseases which decimated the native population, and Tulum, like so many cities before it, was abandoned to the elements.
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© 2004 Editorial Veras. La guía Oficial del Caribe Mexicano.