and those of its allies place great emphasis upon single male rulers while the monuments of Calakmul and its allies gave greater prominence to the female line and often the joint rule of king and queen. Preclassic Calakmul was already a large city in the Preclassic period. The early history of Calakmul is obscure, although a dynastic list has been pieced together that extends back into an ancestral past. This dynasty has been reconstructed in part from Late Classic ceramics from the region of great Preclassic cities of El Mirador and Nakbe. This may mean that Calakmul ultimately inherited its political authority from one of these cities, with its dynasty originating in the Late Preclassic in the Mirador Basin and relocating itself to Calakmul in the Classic period after the collapse of these cities. Early Classic Both Calakmul and Tikal were sizeable Preclassic cities that survived into the Classic Period. Early hieroglyphic texts from stelae found in Structure 2 record the probable enthronement of a king of Calakmul in AD 411 and also records a non-royal site ruler in 514. After this there is a gap in the hieroglyphic records that lasts over a century, although the Kaan dynasty experienced a major expansion of its power at this time. The lack of inscriptions recording the events of this period may be either due to the fact that the Kaan dynasty was located elsewhere during this time or perhaps that the monuments were later destroyed. The earliest legible texts referring to the kings of the Kaan dynasty come from excavations of the large city of Dzibanche in Quintana Roo, far north of Calakmul. A hieroglyphic stairway depicts bound captives, their names and the dates they were captured together with the name of king Yuknoom Che'en I, although the exact context of the king's name is unclear - the captives may have been his vassals captured by an enemy or they may have been rulers captured by the king of Calakmul. The dates are uncertain but two of them may fall within the 5th century AD. The nearby Quintana Roo site of El Resbalón has a jumbled hieroglyphic text, including a date in 529, that indicates that the city was within the control of the Kaan dynasty. By the middle of the 6th century AD Calakmul was assembling a far-reaching political alliance, activity that brought the city into conflict with the great