First things first
I cannot make a perfect 1:1 scale for several reasons. Most of the structures at El Mirador have not (yet) been excavated and/or not been photographed. Also, the city is over 2000 years old and is therefore in a ruined condition (mainly due to the tropical environment). As such, I have to work with the few bits of data I can get my hands on. The few maps I have are not extremely detailed and the models and reconstructions are themselves also hypothetical representations of what it might have looked like. Moreover, different sources give different measurements, with height of structures being by far the most diverse.
Regarding the details of the buildings, many walls contained art, such as decorated panels and masks, of extraordinary complexity; the iconography of the Preclassic Maya was phenomenal. Yet with 1 block being 1 cubic metre, detailed art on buildings is almost impossible to recreate. This is just the nature of reconstructing a ruin with Minecraft.

History and description of the site
In northern Guatemala and southern Campeche lies a depression in the karstic landscape, surrounded by a ridge of hills on all sides. This area, called the Mirador Basin, has been one of the focal points in uncovering the development of the Maya before the so-called Classic Period (200 to 900 CE). Pollen records have indicated that this region was already occupied by horticulturalists as early as 2600 BCE. Real cultural complexity, however, did not start to develop until around 1000 BCE, when sedentary villages began to grow. By this time, cultures elsewhere in Mesoamerica were already developing on for example the Gulf Coast (Olmec) and in Oaxaca (Zapotec). Compared to their neighbours the Maya were relatively late, part of which likely has to do with the harshness of living in dense tropical forest. In the Basin, full-fledged masonry architecture would not begin until around 900-800 BCE, at sites like Nakbe and Yaxnohcah. Only a few centuries later another city emerged which would soon outshine its neighbours and become the capital of a regional state-level society.

The first monumental architecture at El Mirador was established somewhere around 600 BCE and the oldest part of the city seems to be the Cascabel group to the north, which may have functioned as a small necropolis for the city’s elite. Yet over the course of the following centuries, power seems to have been drawn from neighbouring regions and into El Mirador. Yet this crescendo must have been, at least to some extent, a regional-wide effort, because during this time a large network of raised causeways was built that connected cities far and wide across the Basin. Architectural programs at El Mirador soon swelled to monumental scales, with perhaps the most ambitious project being the construction of the La Danta complex east of the city core, starting around 300 BCE. Archaeological surveys have indicated that, apart from several structures later added on the first platform, the entire complex was planned and built in a single effort, requiring an estimated 8000 labourers to work for approximately 30 years. During the city's prime time (300 BCE – 150 CE) more and more monumental complexes, such as the El Tigre and Monos pyramids were constructed Recent LIDAR surveys have put the size of El Mirador at approximately 52 km², providing a home for at least 100.000 individuals.

The economic drive behind this amazing human saga are the seasonal swamps - called bajos – located in the Mirador Basin. Instead of using (solely) slash-and-burn agriculture, the people of the Basin imported fertile muck from the swamps and placed it onto terraces where they farmed crops like maize, squash, beans, cotton, cacao and palm trees. Access to sustainable sources of drink water formed a major obstacle. Because the Mirador Basin lacks rivers and lakes, the inhabitants relied solely on rainwater. To counter this apparent shortage, the Maya used their architecture to capture water in large reservoirs; buildings, plazas and causeways were all paved with limestone cement (stucco), facilitating the runoff of water.
In the end, however, this ingenuity and the economic and demographic boom would become the main culprit in the collapse of the state. Stucco production is a very costly process, which requires the burning of limestone. The fires were fuelled with green, living wood to maintain stable temperatures required for the stucco production. With the demand for stucco exploding, deforestation became rampant in the region. Sediments, heretofore retained by the vegetation, eroded away by rain water and flowed into the bajos, covering the fertile muck with metres of sterile clay. This restricted access to the main source of agricultural productivity induced a regional wide demographic collapse. Other factors such as external threats are currently still under investigation. Defensive works, such as palisades, stone walls and moats, have been found at several sites in the Basin, suggesting at least some concern with physical threats. Many cities, including El Mirador, were abandoned around 150 CE.

In terms of cultural complexity and achievements of the Preclassic Maya, we should not see them as lesser developed than the Maya of the Classic and Postclassic periods. Many of the trairs appointed to the Classic period were already present in the Preclassic. New developments were made in the Classic and Postclassic period that outshine the Preclassic, just like outstanding developments in the Preclassic were never duplicated in subsequent periods.


The progress of the project
Pictures will be updated regularly after most new constructions. My way of working is rather chaotic, as I tend to switch back and forth between construction sites. This is just my way of working and thusfar everything worked out fine.


Final comments
If you have questions, suggestions, or other comments, feel free to pm me or leave a comment on this page. A diamond, subscription or favouring would be very much appreciated!


Additional credits:
Soartex Fanver resource pack
Chocapic shaders