Old Church archaeological zone

In the last century it was known simply as "Ruina de Tonalá", but the inhabitants of the region considered that the great platform of the main building was a foundation of an old church, so it was traditionally called "Iglesia Vieja".

The archaeological zone of Iglesia Vieja is located 4 km north of the city of Tonalá, it sits on the plateaus, with more than 700 m of altitude of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas. The pre-Hispanic city was built on three plateaus divided by a series of streams and more than 80 structures; it is distributed in 5 architectural groups, of which groups B and C are open where you can see more than 10 intervened structures.

The highlight of Iglesia Vieja is the megalithic architecture that uses granite stone blocks of extraordinary size, some of them over 3 meters or 2 tons, which is only seen in this site within all Mesoamerican construction.

More than 30 sculptural monuments are also reported, for example, Altar 1 can be seen in the front of structure C-3 with a zoomorphic face, possibly a turtle, with three anthropomorphic faces.

The megalithic city of Iglesia Vieja functioned as the capital of the Zoques in the Isthmus area from the Gulf to the Pacific, taking advantage of its strategic position located in the middle of the communication route between the Mayan groups, and the Zapotecs or Mixtecs of Oaxaca and played a very important role in the geopolitical panorama of the early Classic of Mesoamerica.