Dos Pilas is a Pre-Columbian site of the Maya civilization, located in what is now Peten, Guatemala. It was founded as a subservient site to the greatcity of Tikal in 629. The king of Tikal installed his brother on the throne of the new city, and the two were quickly allied.
Dos Pilas was later sacked by invaders from the rival city state of Kalakmul, who reinstalled the king as a puppet ruler. It appears that the king then began a protracted war against Tikal, eventually sacking the city.
Following a campaign of conquest, Dos Pilas became a major power. Ongoing conflict in the region soon destabilised the power following the defeat of their Kalakmul allies and in 760 the city was abandoned.
DosPilas was so reviled by its subservient states that together they rose up and attacked and overwhelmed DosPilas, not before the inhabitants were able to dismantle much of the superstructure on the temples and palaces to build a palisade, or defensive wall around the main plaza.
DosPilas was not to be so easily defeated and the nobility escaped to Aguateca, which served as its final capital, a veritable "Masada" fortress atop a mesa surrounded by fault scars in the bedrock up to 250 feet deep.
But the enemies of DosPilas were not to be dissuaded from their task of killing a city, and Aguateca was somehow stormed and taken in a bitter battle.
DosPilas was first established in A.D. 629 as a military stronghold of Tikal.
DosPilas was important to Tikal and later to Calakmul because it strengthened their clout at the southern edge of the Maya lowlands, which was a major gateway for trade.
Demarest thinks the warfare described in the DosPilas inscriptions may reflect a period when the Maya civilization was on the verge of moving to a higher level of organization and consolidating into a single empire.
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