Honduras

Centuries before the Spanish conquer, Central America served as a bridge between North and South American Indians, as well as a meeting ground for great and small cultures alike. The area became sort of a huge station that stretched out all the way to northern Mexico. This isthmus used to harbor both socially developed immigrants moving southbound and more scattered groups of primitive dwellers climbing up north.Located in western Honduras, the Mayan metropolis of Copan turned out to be one of the greatest cities this civilization ever had. During the golden years from 250 to 900 AD, Copan’s achievements in such fields as sculpture and architecture made it the artistic heart of the Mayan world.Copan’s ruins were unearthed by the Spaniards in early colonial times, and despite the fact that they were already abandoned, they managed to raise eyebrows, especially the beauty and majestic nature of all constructions. In his magna Geography of the Indies back in the 17th century, Vazquez de Espinosa wrote enthusiastically about Copan with praises galore only to wind up saying that, “... these ruins make you understand that these regions were inhabited by people of great reason, industrious and valuable natives, as well as large crowds that long ages either wore out or turned them into what our Spaniards discovered. These ruins are very similar to those we found in Yucatan.”Copan is one of the geographical boundaries of the Mayan people’s territorial expansion, a people that usually inhabited the highlands. Honduras’s ceremonial hub is part of a cultural and tourist complex made up of Tikal, Palanque, Piedras Negras and Bonampak, among other sites. Mayan people belonged to the quichés and kept a clan-based social structure through blood linkages. Regardless of the city-state formation this system was based upon, Mayan families practiced monogamy. They collected enormous knowledge in astronomy and their writing was relatively advanced as seen in steles and codex found there in which ideograms and phonemes were combined. During his last voyage to the Americas in 1502, Christopher Columbus landed on the island of Guanaja that belongs to the Islands of the Bay Archipelago in Honduras. Columbus sailed on and touched down on American soil for the first time ever in Punta Castilla in the Bay of Trujillo. In 1508, Vicente Yañez and Juan Diaz Solis followed Columbus to the New World. They also landed in Punta Castilla. However, they were unaware that Columbus had already christened the location and they went on to call the site Cabo de Honduras. Conquistadors referred to the region known as the Province of Cabo de Honduras. Since then, the name was shortened to Honduras. The Spanish Empire settled down permanently in Honduras in 1524 when Hernan Cortes ordered Cristobal de Olid to found Triunfo de la Cruz near what it’s today known as the city and port of Tela. Other explorers followed suit and founded communities of their own, thus starting one of the fiercest power tug-of-wars the world has ever known. Natives fought against the Spanish colonization with a well-organized army led by Great Chief Lenca Lempira. Many were the battles the Spaniards lost before finally subduing the indigenous guerrilla fighter. Nevertheless, the Indians’ resistance came to a close after Lempira’s death.