Universidade de Brasília – UnB Depto. de Línguas Estrangeiras – LET No. de Identificação da Disciplina: 146064

Instituto de Letras – IL Professor: Dr. João Sedycias Civilização Hispano-Americana

Observação importante: Ao visitarem esta página de novo, não se esqueçam de acionar o dispositivo de "reload, recarregar" (no Netscape Navigator) ou "refresh, atualizar" (no Microsoft Internet Explorer) dos seus browsers para que a informação no cache dos mesmos seja atualizada e vocês possam visualizar os novos dados colocados na página. Caso contrário, verão apenas informação antiga e desatualizada.

¡OJO! – Esta página está actualizada hasta el: 22 de septiembre de 2003.

Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica

Pre-Columbian Civilizations

The aboriginal American Indian cultures that evolved in Meso-America (part of Mexico and Central America) and the Andean region (western South America) prior to Spanish exploration and conquest in the 16th century. The pre-Columbian civilizations were extraordinary developments in human society and culture, ranking with the early civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China. Like the ancient civilizations of the Old World, those in the New World were characterized by kingdoms and empires, great monuments and cities, and refinements in the arts, metallurgy, and writing; the ancient civilizations of the Americas also display in their histories similar cyclical patterns of growth and decline, unity and disunity.

In the New World the roots of civilization lay in a native agricultural way of life. These agricultural beginnings go back several millennia, to early post-Pleistocene times (c. 7000 BC) and to the first experimentations by the early Americans with plant cultivation. The domestication of successful food plants proved to be a long, slow process, and it was not until much later that a condition of permanent village farming life was achieved in the tropical latitudes of the two continents.

Sedentary village farming in Meso-America came into being by about 1500 BC. Corn (maize), beans, squashes, chili peppers, and cotton were the most important crops. These early villagers wove cloth, made pottery, and practiced other typical Neolithic skills. It appears that such villages were economically self-contained and politically autonomous, with an egalitarian social order. But rather quickly after this--between about 1200 and 900 BC--the building of large earthen pyramids and platforms and the carving of monumental stone sculptures signaled significant changes in this heretofore simple social and political order. These changes first appeared in the southern Gulf coast region of what is now Mexico; and the sculptures, rendered in a style now called Olmec, are presumed to depict chiefs or rulers. From these and other archaeological indications it has been inferred that a class-structured and politically centralized society developed. There appeared subsequently other large capital towns and cities in neighbouring regions that also displayed a similar Olmec art style. This Olmec horizon (i.e., a cultural diffusion that is contemporaneous at widely scattered sites) represents the first climax, or era of "unification," in the history of Meso-American civilization.

After about 500 BC the Olmec "unification" gave way to an era (consisting of the Late Formative and Classic periods) of separate regional styles and kingdoms. These lasted until c. AD 700-900. Among these are the well-known Maya, Zapotec, Totonac, and Teotihuacán civilizations. While sharing a common Olmec heritage, they also displayed many differences. For example, the Maya excelled in the intellectual pursuits of hieroglyphic writing, calendar making, and mathematics, while the Teotihuacán civilization placed its emphasis on political and commercial power. Teotihuacán, in the Valley of Mexico, was an urban centre of some 150,000 people, and the influence of its civilization eventually radiated over much of Meso-America. As such, Teotihuacán constituted a second grand civilizational climax or "unification" (AD 400-600). Teotihuacán power waned after about 600, and a "time of troubles" ensued, during which a number of states and nascent empires competed for supremacy. Among these competitors were the Toltecs of Tula, in central Mexico, who held sway from perhaps 900 to 1200 (the Early Postclassic Period). After their decline (in the Late Postclassic Period), another interregnum of warring states lasted until 1428, when the Aztec defeated the rival city of Azcapotzalco and emerged as the dominant force in central Mexico. This last native Meso-American empire was conquered by Hernán Cortés (or Cortéz) and the Spaniards in 1521.

In the Andean area, the threshold of a successful village agricultural economy can be placed at c. 2500 BC, or somewhat earlier than was the case in Meso-America. The oldest primary food crops there were the lima bean and the potato, which had long histories of domestication in the area, although corn appeared soon after the beginnings of settled village life. Indications of a more complex sociopolitical order--huge platform mounds and densely populated centres--occurred very soon after this (c. 1800 BC); however, these early Andean civilizations continued for almost a millennium before they participated in a shared stylistic "unification." This has become known as the Chavín horizon, and Chavín sculptural art has been found throughout the northern part of the area.

The Chavín horizon disappeared after about 500 BC, and it was replaced by regional styles and cultures that lasted until about AD 600. This period of regionalization (called the Early Intermediate Period) saw the florescence of a number of large kingdoms both on the Pacific coast and in the Andean highlands; among them were the Mochica, Early Lima, Nazca, Recuay, and Early Tiahuanaco. The period was brought to an end by the Tiahuanaco-Huari horizon (Middle Horizon) (600-1000), which was generated from the highland cities of Tiahuanaco (in modern northern Bolivia) and Huari (in central highland Peru). There is evidence--such as the construction of new centres and cities--that this Tiahuanaco-Huari phenomenon, at least in many regions, was a tightly controlled political empire. The horizon and its influences, as registered in ceramics and textiles, died away rather gradually in the ensuing centuries, and it was replaced by the several regional styles and kingdoms of what has become known as the Late Intermediate Period (1000-1438).

The terminal date of the Late Intermediate Period marked the beginning of the Inca horizon and of the Inca conquests, which spread from the Inca capital, Cuzco, in the southern highlands of modern Peru. By 1533, when Francisco Pizarro and his cohorts took over the empire, it extended from what is now the Ecuador-Colombia border to central Chile.

The synchroneity of horizon unifications and alternating regionalizations in Meso-America and the Andean region is striking and prompts the question of communication between these two areas of pre-Columbian high civilization. Although it is known that there were contacts--with the result that knowledge of food plants, ceramics, and metallurgy was shared between the two areas--it is also highly unlikely that political or religious ideologies were so spread. Rather, the peoples of each of these major cultural areas appear to have responded to their own internally generated stimuli and to have followed essentially separate courses of development. There are fundamental differences between the two cultural traditions. Thus, in Meso-America there was, from early on, a profound interest in hieroglyphic writing and calendar making. Religious ideology, judged from art and iconography, was more highly developed in Meso-America than in the Andean region. In Meso-America the market was a basic institution; it does not appear to have been so in the Andes, where the redistributive economy of the Inca empire--with such features as its government warehouses and a system of highways--must have had deep roots in the past. On the other hand, in the early development and deployment of metallurgy and in governmental institutions and empire-building, the ancient Peruvians were much more efficient than their Meso-American contemporaries. Mesoamerican Civilizations

The complex of aboriginal cultures that developed in parts of Mexico and Central America prior to Spanish exploration and conquest in the 16th century. In the organization of its kingdoms and empires, the sophistication of its monuments and cities, and the extent and refinement of its intellectual accomplishments, this civilization, along with the comparable Andean civilization farther south, constitutes a New World counterpart to those of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China.

Archaeologists have dated human presence in Mesoamerica to as early as 21,000 BC. By 11,000 BC, hunting-and-gathering peoples occupied most of the New World south of the glacial ice cap covering northern North America. The cooler climate of this period as compared with that of today supported a grassland vegetation, especially in the highland valleys, that was ideal for large herds of grazing animals. The shift toward sedentary agriculture apparently began after about 7000 BC, when a dramatic global warming caused the glaciers to retreat and tropical forests to overtake the Mesoamerican grasslands.

The gradual domestication of successful food plants--most notably a mutant corn (maize) with husks--over succeeding millennia gave rise to more or less permanent village farming life by about 1500 BC. In addition to corn, crops included beans, squashes, chili peppers, and cotton. As agricultural productivity improved, the rudiments of civilization emerged during the period designated by archaeologists as the Early Formative (1500-900 BC). Pottery, which had appeared in some areas of the region as early as 2300 BC, perhaps introduced from Andean cultures to the south, took on varied and sophisticated forms. The idea of the temple-pyramid seems to have taken root during this period.

Corn cultivation in one area--the humid and fertile lowlands of southern Veracruz and Tabasco, in Mexico--was sufficiently productive to permit a major diversion of human energy into other activities, such as the arts and commerce. Struggles for control of this rich but limited farmland resulted in a dominant landowning class that shaped the first great Mesoamerican civilization, the Olmec .

San Lorenzo, the oldest known Olmec centre, dates to around 1150 BC, a time when the rest of Mesoamerica was at best on a Neolithic level. The site is most noted for its extraordinary stone monuments, especially the "colossal heads" measuring up to 9 feet (nearly 3 m) in height and possibly representing players in a sacred rubber-ball game.

The period known as the Middle Formative (900-300 BC), during which the La Venta urban complex rose and flourished, was one of increased cultural regionalism. The Zapotec people, for example, attained a high level of development at Monte Albán, producing the first writing and written calendar in Meso-America. However, at this site, as well as in the Valley of Mexico, the Olmec presence can be widely detected.

In the subsequent Late Formative and Classic periods, lasting until about AD 700-900, the well-known Maya, Zapotec, Totonac, and Teotihuacán civilizations developed distinctive variations on their shared Olmec heritage. The Maya, for example, brought astronomy, mathematics, calendar making, and hieroglyphic writing, as well as monumental architecture, to their highest expression in the New World. At the same time, Teotihuacán, in the Valley of Mexico, became the capital of a political and commercial empire encompassing much of Mesoamerica.

Teotihuacán power diminished after about 600, and for the next several centuries numerous states vied for supremacy. The Toltecs of Tula (see Toltec), in central Mexico, prevailed from about 900 to 1200 (the Early Postclassic Period). Following Toltec decline, a further period of unrest in the Late Postclassic Period lasted until 1428, when the Aztec defeated the rival city of Azcapotzalco and became the dominant force in central Mexico. This last native Mesoamerican empire fell to the Spaniards, led by Hernán Cortés (or Cortéz), in 1521.

The Olmec

The first elaborate pre-Columbian culture of Mesoamerica, and one that is thought to have set many of the fundamental patterns evinced by later Indian cultures of Mexico and Central America.

The Olmec people lived in hot, humid lowlands along the Gulf Coast in what is now southern Veracruz and Tabasco states in southern Mexico. The first evidences of their remarkable art style appear at about 1150 BC in their oldest known building site, San Lorenzo. This site is remarkable for its many stone monuments, prominent among which are colossal carved heads that have characteristic flat faces, thickened lips, and helmetlike headgear . A later Olmec ceremonial centre, La Venta, is marked by great mounds, a narrow plaza, and several other ceremonial enclosures. The Olmecs developed a wide trading network, and between 1100 and 800 BC their cultural influence spread northwestward to the Valley of Mexico and southeastward to parts of Central America. It is clear that later Mesoamerican native religions and iconography, from all parts of the area, can be traced back to Olmec beginnings. Besides monumental architecture and sculpture, Olmec art is expressed in small jade carvings, pottery, and other media. Its dominant motif is the stylized figure of a god that is a hybrid between a jaguar and a human infant.

From the Olmecs' constructions and monuments, as well as from the sophistication and power of their art style, it is evident that their society was complex and nonegalitarian. Olmec stylistic influence disappeared after about 800 BC. Not all of the Olmec sites were abandoned, but Olmec culture gradually changed, and the region ceased to be the cultural leader of Mesoamerica. See also Mesoamerican civilization.

The rise of Olmec civilization

It was once assumed that the Formative stage was characterized only by simple farming villages. It is now realized, however, that coexisting with these peasantlike cultures was a great civilization, the Olmec, that had arisen in the humid lowlands of southern Veracruz and Tabasco, in Mexico.

The Olmec were perhaps the greatest sculptors of ancient Meso-America. Whether carving tiny jade figures or gigantic basalt monuments, they worked with a great artistry that led a number of archaeologists to doubt their considerable antiquity, although radiocarbon dates from the type site of La Venta showed that Olmec civilization was indeed Formative, its beginning dating to at least 1,000 years before the advent of Maya civilization.

San Lorenzo is now established as the oldest known Olmec centre. In fact, excavation has shown it to have taken on the appearance of an Olmec site by 1150 BC and to have been destroyed, perhaps by invaders, around 900 BC. Thus, the Olmec achieved considerable cultural heights within the Early Formative, at a time when the rest of Meso-America was at best on a Neolithic level. The reasons for its precocious rise must have had something to do with its abundant rainfall and the rich alluvial soil deposited along the broad, natural levees that flank the waterways of the southern Gulf coast. Thus, the ecological potential for corn farmers in this counterpart of Mesopotamia's Fertile Crescent was exceptionally high. The levee lands, however, were not limitless, and increasingly dense populations must inevitably have led to competition for their control. Out of such conflicts would have crystallized a dominant landowning class, perhaps a group of well-armed lineages. It was this elite that created the Olmec civilization of San Lorenzo.

In appearance, the San Lorenzo site is a compact plateau rising about 160 feet above the surrounding plains. Cutting into it are deep ravines that were once thought to be natural but that are now known to be man-made, formed by the construction of long ridges that jut out from the plateau on the northwest, west, and south sides. Excavations have proved that at least the top 25 to 35 feet of the site was built by human labour. There are about 200 small mounds on the surface of the site, each of which once supported a dwelling house of pole and thatch, which indicates that it was both a ceremonial centre, with political and religious functions, and a minuscule town.

San Lorenzo is most noted for its extraordinary stone monuments. Many of these, perhaps most, were deliberately smashed or otherwise mutilated about 900 BC and buried in long lines within the ridges and elsewhere at the site. The monuments weighed as much as 44 tons and were carved from basalt from the Cerro Cintepec, a volcanic flow in the Tuxtla Mountains about 50 air miles to the northwest. It is believed that the stones were somehow dragged down to the nearest navigable stream and from there transported on rafts up the Coatzacoalcos River to the San Lorenzo area. The amount of labour involved must have been enormous and so would have the social controls necessary to see the job through to its completion.

Most striking are the "colossal heads," human portraits on a stupendous scale . Several of these are now known from San Lorenzo, the largest of which is nine feet high. The visages are flat-faced, with thickened lips and staring eyes. Each has a headgear resembling a football helmet, and it is entirely possible that these "helmets" were in fact protective coverings in a rubber-ball game that is known from Olmec figurines to have been played at San Lorenzo.

The central theme of the Olmec religion was a pantheon of deities each of which usually was a hybrid between jaguar and human infant, often crying or snarling with open mouth. This "were-jaguar" is the hallmark of Olmec art, and it was the unity of objects in this style that first suggested to scholars that they were dealing with a new and previously unknown civilization. There is actually a whole spectrum of such were-jaguar forms in Olmec art, ranging from the almost purely feline to the human in which only a trace of jaguar can be seen.

These Olmec monuments were generally carved in the round with great technical prowess, even though the only methods available were pounding and pecking with stone tools. Considerable artistry can also be seen in the pottery figurines of San Lorenzo, which depict nude and sexless individuals with were-jaguar traits.

Exotic raw materials brought into San Lorenzo from distant regions suggest that the early Olmec controlled a large trading network over much of Meso-America. Obsidian, used for blades, flakes, and dart points, was imported from highland Mexico and Guatemala. Most items were obviously for the luxury trade, such as iron ore for mirrors and various fine stones like serpentine employed in the lapidary industry. One material that is conspicuously absent, however, is jade, which does not appear in Olmec sites until after 900 BC and the fall of San Lorenzo.

There is evidence that the Olmec sent groups from their Gulf coast "heartland" into the Meso-American highlands toward the end of the Early Formative, in all likelihood to guarantee that goods bound for San Lorenzo would reach their destination. San Lorenzo-type Olmec ceramics and figurines have been found in burials at several sites in the Valley of Mexico, such as Tlapacoya, and in the state of Morelos. The Olmec involvement with the rest of Meso-America continued into the Middle Formative and probably reached its peak at that time.

San Lorenzo is not the only Olmec centre known for the Early Formative. Laguna de los Cerros, just south of the Cerro Cintepec in Veracruz, appears to have been a large Olmec site with outstanding sculptures. La Venta, just east of the Tabasco border, was another contemporary site, but it reached its height after San Lorenzo had gone into decline.

Olmec colonization in the Middle Formative

From the Middle Formative there are important Olmec sites located along what appears to have been a highland route to the west to obtain the luxury items that seemed to have been so desperately needed by the Olmec elite; e.g., jade, serpentine, iron ore for mirrors, cinnabar, and so forth. Olmec sites in Puebla, the Valley of Mexico, and Morelos are generally located at the ends of valleys near or on major passes; they were perhaps trading stations garrisoned by Olmec troops. The largest of these sites is Chalcatzingo, Morelos, a cult centre located among three denuded volcanic peaks rising from a plain. On a talus slope at the foot of the middle peak are huge boulders on which have been carved Olmec reliefs in La Venta style. The principal relief shows an Olmec woman, richly garbed, seated within the mouth of a cave; above her, cumulus clouds pour down rain.

Similar Olmec reliefs, usually narrative and often depicting warriors brandishing clubs, have been located on the Pacific plain of Chiapas (Mexico) and Guatemala. Since about 1960, spectacular Olmec cave paintings have been found in Guerrero, offering some idea of what the Olmec artists could do when they worked with a large spectrum of pigments and on flat surfaces.

Olmec culture or civilization did not spread eastward from its Veracruz-Tabasco centres into the Maya lowlands, but occasional Olmec artifacts have been found in Formative Maya contexts, such as at Seibal, in southern Petén, Guatemala. Maya Formative Period occupations, represented by settled farming villages and well-made ceramics, date to c. 1000 BC in the lowlands of Guatemala and Belize. It seems reasonably certain, however, that at this early date great ceremonial centres, comparable to those of Olmec San Lorenzo or La Venta, were never constructed in the Maya lowlands.

It was formerly thought that the Olmec worshiped only one god, a rain deity depicted as a were-jaguar, but study has shown that there were at least 10 distinct gods represented in Olmec art. Surely present were several important deities of the later, established Meso-American pantheon, such as the fire god, rain god, corn god, and Feathered Serpent. Other aspects of mental culture are less well-known; some Olmec jades and a monument from La Venta have non-calendrical hieroglyphs, but none of this writing has been deciphered.

To sum up the Olmec achievement, not only was this the first high culture in Meso-America--one that had certainly achieved political statehood--but either it or cultures influenced by it lie at the base of every other Meso-American civilization.

The Valley of Mexico in the Middle Formative

The cultures of central Mexico tended to lag behind those of southern Mexico in the development of political and religious complexity. The presence of Olmec figurines and ceramics in Early Formative burials in the Valley of Mexico has been noted, but the local communities of that time were of a modest village sort, as were those of the succeeding Middle Formative. On the western shores of the great lake filling the Valley of Mexico, for instance, remains of several simple villages have been uncovered that must have been not unlike small settlements that can be found in the Mexican hinterland today. The people who lived at El Arbolillo and Zacatenco had simply terraced off village refuse to make platforms on which their pole-and-thatch houses were built. Metates and manos are plentiful; pottery is relatively plain--featuring the abundant hard, white-slipped ware of the Middle Formative--and small female figurines are present by the thousands. Subsistence was based upon corn farming and upon hunting. In some Middle Formative sites, however, such as Tlatilco, there is evidence of Olmec influence, as in the previous Early Formative Period. There are also indications that ceremonial pyramid construction began in the latter part of the Middle Formative at Cuicuilco, a site in the southern part of the valley, which was to become a major centre in the succeeding Late Formative Period.

Late Formative Period (300 BC-AD 100)

Principal sites of Meso-American civilization. Probably the most significant features of the Late Formative are: (1) the transformation of Olmec civilization in southeastern Meso-America into something approaching the earliest lowland Maya civilization and (2) the abrupt appearance, toward the end of the Late Formative, of fully urban culture at Teotihuacán in the Valley of Mexico. Most of the distinctive cultures that were to become the great Classic civilizations began to take shape at this time. There was no unifying force in the Late Formative comparable to the earlier Olmec; rather, regionalism and local cultural integration were the rule. There were, however, horizon traits, particularly in pottery, that were almost universal. Ceramics became elaborate in shape, often with composite or recurved outlines, hollow, bulbous feet, and flangelike protrusions encircling the vessel. The use of slips of a number of different colours as pottery decoration at times approached the elaborate polychromes of Classic times.

The idea of constructing temple-pyramids was probably also a general trait. It was a Meso-American custom to bury a dead person beneath the floor of his own house, which was often then abandoned by the bereaved. As an elite class of noble lineages became distinguished from the mass of the people, the simple house platforms serving as sepulchres might have become transformed into more imposing structures, ending in the huge pyramids of the Late Formative and Classic, which surely had funerary functions. The deceased leader or the gods from which he claimed descent, or both, would then have been worshiped in a "house of god" on the temple summit. These pyramids became the focal point of Meso-American ceremonial life, as well as the centres of settlement.

Olmec civilization at La Venta

La Venta was located on an almost inaccessible island, surrounded at that time by the Tonalá River; the river now divides the states of Veracruz and Tabasco. As San Lorenzo's fortunes fell, La Venta's rose, and between 800 and 400 BC it was the most important site in Meso-America.

At the centre of La Venta is a 100-foot-high mound of earth and clay that may well house the tomb of a great Olmec ruler. Immediately north of the Great Mound is a narrow north-south plaza flanked by a pair of long mounds. Beyond the plaza is a ceremonial enclosure surrounded by a "fence" made entirely of upright shafts of columnar basalt. A low, round mound on the north side of the ceremonial enclosure contained several tombs, one of which was surrounded and covered by basalt columns. In this tomb were found the bundled remains of two children, accompanied by magnificent ornaments of jade. Offerings were not only placed with the dead but were also deposited as caches in the site, especially along the north-south axis of the ceremonial centre.

Among the most beautiful objects manufactured by the Olmec were the concave mirrors of iron ore, which were pierced to be worn around the neck. These could throw pictures on a flat surface and could probably start fires on hot tinder. Olmec leaders at La Venta, whether they were kings or priests, undoubtedly used them to impress the populace with their seemingly supernatural powers. Olmec sculptors continued to produce the basalt monuments, including colossal heads and "altars," that have been found at La Venta. Significantly, an increasing number of monuments were carved in relief, and some of these were stelae with rather elaborate scenes obviously based upon historical or contemporary events.

Veracruz and Chiapas

La Venta suffered the fate of San Lorenzo, having been destroyed by violence around 400 BC. Olmec civilization subsequently disappeared or was transformed into one or more of the cultures of the southeastern lowlands.

One centre that retained a strong Olmec tradition, however, was Tres Zapotes, near the Tuxtla Mountains in the old Olmec "heartland." Its most famous monument, the fragmentary Stela C, is clearly epi-Olmec on the basis of a jaguar-monster mask carved in relief on its obverse. On the reverse is a column of numerals in the bar-and-dot system, which was read by its discoverer, Matthew W. Stirling, as a date in the Maya calendar corresponding to 31 BC; this is more than a century earlier than any known dated inscription from the Maya area itself. Thus, it is highly probable that this calendrical system, formerly thought to be a Maya invention, was developed in the Late Formative by epi-Olmec peoples living outside the Maya area proper.

Southern Veracruz

On the southern Gulf coast plain, Olmec traditions seemed to have lasted into the Early Classic and merged with Teotihuacán artistic canons to produce new kinds of art. Cerro de las Mesas, lying in the plains of the Papaloápan River not far from the coast, is one of these hybrid sites. Dozens of earthen mounds are scattered over the surface in a seemingly haphazard manner, and the archaeological sequence is long and complex. The site reached its apogee in the Early Classic, when the stone monuments for which it is best known were carved. Most important are a number of stelae, some of which are carved in a low-relief style recalling Late Formative Tres Zapotes, early lowland Maya, and Cotzumalhuapa (on the Pacific coast of Guatemala).

Cerro de las Mesas pottery, deposited in rich burial offerings of the Early Classic, is highly Teotihuacanoid, with slab-legged tripods predominating. At this and other sites in southern Veracruz, potters also fashioned large, hollow, handmade figures of the gods. An especially fine representation of the Old Fire God was found at Cerro de las Mesas. The most spectacular discovery, however, was a cache of some 800 jade objects. Many of the specimens in this treasure trove are of Olmec workmanship, obviously heirlooms from the much earlier Olmec civilization, while some are clearly Early Classic Maya.

The entire coastal plain from Cerro de las Mesas north to the borders of Classic Central Veracruz culture is famed for Remojadas-style pottery figurines, which must have been turned out in incredible quantity for use as burial goods. The Remojadas tradition dates to the Late Formative and lasts until the Early Postclassic. Figurines are hollow and largely mold-made in the Late Classic, while they were fashioned by hand in the Early Classic. The best-known Classic representations are the "smiling figures" of grinning boys and girls wearing loincloths, skirts, or nothing at all. All kinds of genre scenes are represented, including even lovers in swings, as well as more grim activities such as the heart sacrifice of victims tied down in what look like beds.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The outstanding cultural achievements of the pre-Columbian civilizations are often compared with those of Old World civilizations. The ancient Mayan calendar, which surpassed Europe's Julian calendar in accuracy, was, for example, a great accomplishment demonstrating the extraordinary degree of knowledge of astronomy and mathematics possessed by the Maya. Equally impressive are the sophistication of the Inca's calendar and their highway construction, the development of the Maya's complex writing system, and the magnificent temples of the Aztec. It is unfortunate that archaeological findings and written documents hardly shed sufficient light upon education among the Maya, Aztec, and Inca. But from available documents it is evident that these pre-Columbian civilizations developed formal education for training the nobility and priests. The major purposes of education were cultural conservation, vocational training, moral and character training, and control of cultural deviation.

The Maya

also called MAYAN, Meso-American Indians occupying a nearly continuous territory in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and northern Belize. Before the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Central America, the Maya possessed one of the greatest civilizations of the Western Hemisphere. They practiced agriculture, built great stone buildings and pyramid temples, worked gold and copper, and made use of a form of hieroglyphic writing that has now largely been deciphered.

As early as 1500 Bc the Maya had settled in villages and had developed an agriculture based on the cultivation of corn (maize), beans, and squash. They began to build ceremonial centres, and by Ad 200 these had developed into cities containing temples, pyramids, palaces, courts for playing ball, and plazas. They also developed a system of hieroglyphic writing and highly sophisticated calendrical and astronomical systems. The ancient Maya quarried immense quantities of building stone, which they cut using harder stones such as volcanic glass. They practiced mainly slash-and-burn agriculture, but they also used advanced techniques of irrigation and terracing. The Maya made paper from the inner bark of wild fig trees and wrote their hieroglyphs on books made from this paper; surviving books are called codices. They also developed an elaborate and beautiful tradition of sculpture and relief carving. Architectural works and stone inscriptions and reliefs are the chief sources of knowledge about the Maya. Early Mayan culture showed the influence of the earlier Olmec civilization.

The rise of the Maya began about 250 C.E., and what is known to archaeologists as the Classic period of Mayan culture lasted until about Ad 900. At its height Mayan civilization consisted of more than 40 cities, each with a population of from 5,000 to 50,000. Among the principal cities were Tikal, Uaxactún, Copán, Bonampak, Palenque, and Río Bec. The peak Mayan population may have reached 2,000,000 people, most of whom were settled in the lowlands of what is now Guatemala. After Ad 900, however, the classical Mayan civilization declined precipitously, leaving the great cities and ceremonial centres vacant and overgrown with jungle vegetation. The causes of this decline are uncertain; some scholars have suggested that armed conflicts and the exhaustion of agricultural land were responsible. During the Post-Classic period (900-1519), cities such as Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, and Mayapán in the highlands of the Yucatán Peninsula continued to flourish for several centuries after the great lowland cities had become depopulated. By the time the Spaniards conquered the area in the early 16th century, most of the Maya were mere village-dwelling agriculturists who practiced the religious rites of their forebears.

The major extant Mayan cities and ceremonial centres feature a variety of pyramidal temples or palaces overlaid with limestone blocks and richly ornamented with narrative, ceremonial, and astronomical reliefs and inscriptions that have ensured the stature of Mayan art as premier among Indian cultures. But the true nature of Mayan society, the meaning of its hieroglyphics, and the chronicle of its history remained unknown to scholars for centuries after the Spaniards discovered the ancient Mayan building sites.

Systematic explorations of the Mayan sites were first undertaken in the 1830s, and a small portion of the writing system was deciphered in the early and mid-20th century. These discoveries shed some light on Mayan religion, which was based on a pantheon of nature gods, including those of the sun, the moon, rain, and corn. A priestly class was responsible for an elaborate cycle of rituals and ceremonies. Closely related to Mayan religion, indeed inextricable from it, was the impressive development of mathematics and astronomy. In mathematics, positional notation and the use of the zero represented a pinnacle of intellectual achievement. Mayan astronomy underlay a complex calendrical system involving an accurately determined solar year (18 months of 20 days, plus an unlucky 5-day period), a sacred year of 260 days (13 cycles of 20 named days), and a variety of longer cycles culminating in the Long Count, based on a zero date in 3114 BC. Mayan astronomers compiled precise tables of positions for the Moon and Venus and were able to predict solar eclipses.

Based on these discoveries, scholars in the mid-20th century mistakenly thought that Mayan society was composed of a priestly class of peaceful stargazers and calendar keepers supported by a devout peasantry. The Maya were thought to be utterly absorbed in their religious and cultural pursuits, in favourable contrast to the more warlike and sanguinary Indian empires of central Mexico. But the progressive decipherment of nearly all of the Mayan hieroglyphic writing has provided a truer if less elevating picture of Mayan society and culture. Many of the hieroglyphs depict the histories of the Mayan dynastic rulers, who waged war on rival Mayan cities and took their aristocrats captive. These captives were then tortured, mutilated, and sacrificed to the Mayan gods. Indeed, torture and human sacrifice were fundamental religious rituals of Mayan society; they were thought to guarantee fertility, demonstrate piety, and propitiate the gods, and if such practices were neglected, cosmic disorder and chaos were thought to result. The drawing of human blood was thought to nourish the gods and was thus necessary to achieve contact with them; hence the Mayan rulers, as the intermediaries between the Mayan people and the gods, had to undergo ritual bloodletting and self-torture.

The present-day Mayan peoples can be divided on linguistic and geographic grounds into the following groups: the Yucatec Maya, inhabiting the Mexican Yucatán Peninsula and extending into northern Belize and northeastern Guatemala; the Lacandones, very few in number, occupying a territory in southern Mexico between the Usumacinta River and the Guatemalan border, with small numbers in Guatemala and Belize; the Quichéan peoples of the eastern and central highlands of Guatemala (Kekchí, Picomohi, Pocomam, Uspantec, Quiché, Cakchiquel, Tzutujil, Sacapultec, and Sipacapa); the Mamean peoples of the western Guatemalan highlands (Mam, Teco, Aguacatec, and Ixil); the Kanjobalan peoples of Huehuetenango in the same region and adjacent parts of Mexico (Motozintlec, Tuzantec, Jacaltec, Acatec, Tojolabal, and Chuj); the Tzotzil and Tzeltal peoples of Chiapas in southern Mexico; the Cholan peoples, including the Chontal and Chol speakers in northern Chiapas and Tabasco and the linguistically related Chortí of the extreme eastern part of Guatemala; and the Huastec of northern Veracruz and adjoining San Luís Potosí in eastern-central Mexico. The chief division in Mayan cultural type is between highland and lowland cultures. Yucatec, Lacandón, and Chontal-Chol are lowland groups. The Huastec are a linguistically and geographically isolated group who never were Mayan culturally, and the other Mayan peoples live in highlands across Guatemala.

The modern Maya are basically agricultural, raising crops of corn, beans, and squash. They live in communities organized around central villages, which may be permanently occupied but more commonly are community centres with public buildings and houses that generally stand vacant; the people of the community live on farm homesteads except during fiestas and markets. Cultivation is with the hoe and, where the soil is tough, the digging stick. The Yucatec usually keep pigs and chickens and, rarely, oxen that are used for farming. Industries are few, and crafts are oriented toward domestic needs. Usually some cash crop or item of local manufacture is produced for sale outside the region in order to provide cash for items not otherwise obtainable.

Dress is largely traditional, particularly for women; men are more likely to wear modern ready-made clothing. Domestic spinning and weaving, once common, is becoming rare, and most clothing is made of factory-woven cloth.

Almost all Maya are nominal Roman Catholics, but their Christianity is generally overlaid upon the native pagan religion. Its cosmology is typically Mayan, and Christian figures are commonly identified with Mayan deities. Public religion is basically Christian, with masses and saint's-day celebrations; but the native pre-Columbian religion is observed in domestic rites.

Emergence of the Maya

After 500 BC an advanced Mayan civilization emerged in the highlands of Guatemala and El Salvador. A large population developed at the city of Kaminaljuyú, on the outskirts of present-day Guatemala City, and other Mayan cities arose from Chiapas southeastward to Nicaragua. Early in the 1st millennium AD, Classic Maya civilization arose in the Petén region of northern Guatemala, as well as in Belize and Honduras; this probably was the result of migration from the highlands, although Pre-Classic Mayan cultures had also developed in this lowland region contemporaneously with such highland centres as Kaminaljuyú. Large new cities arose at Uaxactún, Tikal, Quiriguá, Copán, and elsewhere, characterized by great stone temples, pyramids, and markets. Although the highlands remained heavily populated, these lowland cities became the centres for a higher civilization. Overcrowding, famine, climatic change, or major geologic catastrophes may have contributed to migration, but contact between the highland and lowland peoples continued as merchants carried cultural, economic, and social traits from one place to another. Tazumal, for example, in western El Salvador, was influenced by Copán, the Maya scientific centre in northwestern Honduras. Influence from as far away as Teotihuacán in the present-day Valley of Mexico and El Tajín in Veracruz also continued.

The lowland Mayan cities were located in an area that the Europeans thought of as uninhabitable because of the hot, humid climate and the accompanying insects and diseases. But the Maya developed the highest culture of pre-Columbian America, which reached its height between 600 and 900 C.E. Maya priests made discoveries in astronomy and mathematics comparable to similar advancements in ancient Egypt. They developed an advanced system of writing, and their hieroglyphs on stone monuments (stelae), erected throughout the Maya lands, recorded their history. Brilliant Mayan artistic and scientific achievements in ceramics, sculpture, weaving, and painting, some of which were more advanced than European accomplishments of the same era, all showed remarkable artistic sensitivity. They developed an accurate calendar and complex systems of agricultural and water management. The Maya could not match their European counterparts in technology, however. Their architectural works were also less impressive than those of ancient and medieval European civilizations. The Maya were unable to develop energy-saving machines, the wheel being employed on children's toys but not adapted to any practical application. Animals were not domesticated, and all work was done by human hand labour directed by an elite group.

Major Mayan Sites

While there are some important differences between the architecture of the Central and Northern subregions during the Late Classic, there are many features shared between them. A major Maya site generally includes several types of masonry buildings, usually constructed by facing a cement-and-rubble core with blocks or thin slabs of limestone. Temple pyramids are the most impressive, rising in a series of great platforms to the temple superstructure above the forests. The rooms, coated with white stucco, are often little more than narrow slots because of the confining nature of the corbeled vaults, but this was probably intentional, to keep esoteric ceremonies from the public.

The so-called palaces of Maya sites differ only from the temple pyramids in that they are lower and contain a great many rooms. Their purpose still eludes discovery; many scholars doubt that they really served as palaces, for the rooms are damp and uncomfortable, and there is little or no evidence of permanent occupation. The temples and palaces are generally arranged around courts, often with inscribed stelae and altars arranged in rows before them. Leading from the central plazas are great stone causeways, the function of which was probably largely ceremonial. Other features of lowland sites (but not universal) are sweathouses, ball courts, and probably marketplaces.

There are more than 50 known sites that deserve to be called major. Most are in the Central Subregion, with probably the greatest concentration in northern Petén, where Maya civilization had its deepest roots. Tikal is the largest and best-known Classic site of the Central Subregion. It is dominated by six lofty temple pyramids, one of which is some 230 feet high, the tallest structure ever raised by the Meso-American Indians. Lintels of sapodilla wood still span the doorways of the temple superstructures and are carved with reliefs of Maya lords enthroned amid scenes of great splendour. Some extraordinary Late Classic tombs have been discovered at Tikal, the most important of which produced a collection of bone tubes and strips delicately incised with scenes of gods and men. Ten large reservoirs, partly or entirely artificial, supplied the scarce drinking water for the residents of Tikal.

Other important sites of northern Petén include Uaxactún, Naranjo, Nakum, and Holmul, of which only the first has been adequately excavated. To the southeast of Petén are two Maya centres – Copán and Quiriguá – that show notable differences with the Petén sites. Copán is located above a tributary of the Motagua River in western Honduras in a region now rich in tobacco. Its architects and sculptors had a ready supply of a greenish volcanic tuff far superior to the Petén limestone. Thus, Copán architecture is embellished with gloriously baroque figures of gods, and its stelae and other monuments are carved with an extraordinary virtuosity. Copán also has one of the most perfectly preserved ball courts in Meso-America. Quiriguá is a much smaller site 30 miles north of Copán. While its architectural remains are on a minor scale, it is noted for its gigantic stelae and altars carved from sandstone.

The principal watercourse on the western side of the Central Subregion is the Usumacinta River, originating in the Guatemalan highlands and emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. For much of its course the Usumacinta is lined with such great Maya ceremonial centres as Piedras Negras and Yaxchilán. Even more renowned is Bonampak, a satellite of Yaxchilán located on a tributary of the Usumacinta. The discovery in 1946 of the magnificent murals embellishing the rooms of an otherwise modest structure astounded the archaeological world. From floors to vault capstones, its stuccoed walls were covered with highly realistic polychrome scenes of a jungle battle, the arraignment of prisoners, and victory ceremonies. These shed an entirely new light on the nature of Maya society, which up until then had been considered peaceful.

In the hills just above the floodplain of the Usumacinta lies Palenque, the most beautiful of Maya sites. The architects of Palenque designed graceful temple pyramids and "palaces" with mansard-type roofs, embellished with delicate stucco reliefs of rulers, gods, and ceremonies. The principal structure is the Palace, a veritable labyrinth of galleries with interior courts; over it looms a four-story square tower that may have served as both lookout and observatory. A small stream flowing through the site was carried underneath the Palace by a long, corbel-vaulted tunnel. The temples of the Cross, Foliated Cross, and Sun were all built on the same plan, the back room of each temple having a kind of sanctuary designed like the temple of which it was a part. It can be supposed that all three temples served the same cult. The most extraordinary feature of Palenque, however, was the great funerary crypt discovered in 1952 deep within the Temple of the Inscriptions. Within a sarcophagus in the crypt were the remains of an unusually tall ruler, accompanied by the richest offering of jade ever seen in a Maya tomb. Over his face had been fitted a mask of jade mosaic, while a treasure trove of jade adorned his body.

Northward from the Central Subregion, in the drier and flatter environment of the Yucatán Peninsula, the character of lowland Maya civilization changes. Just north of Petén is the Río Bec zone, as yet little explored but noted for temple pyramids and palaces with flanking false towers fronted by unclimbable "stairways" reaching dummy "rooms" with blank entrances. Río Bec structures are carved with fantastic serpents in deep relief, a feature that becomes even more pronounced in the Chenes country to the northwest, in the modern state of Campeche. At Chenes sites, Maya architects constructed frontal portals surrounded by the jaws of sky serpents and faced entire buildings with a riot of baroquely carved grotesques and spirals.

This elaborate ornamentation of buildings is far more restrained and orderly in the style called Puuc, so named from a string of low hills extending up from western Campeche into the state of Yucatán. The Puuc sites were for the Northern Subregion what the Petén sites were for the Central, for they are very numerous and clearly were the focal point for Maya artistic and intellectual culture. Uxmal is the most important Puuc ceremonial centre and an architectural masterpiece. It has all of the characteristics of the Puuc style: facings of thin squares of limestone veneer over a cement-and-rubble core; bootshaped vault stones; decorated cornices around columns in doorways; engaged or half-columns repeated in long rows; and lavish use of stone mosaics in upper facades, emphasizing sky-serpent faces with long, hook-shaped noses, as well as frets and latticelike designs of crisscrossed elements.

The nearby centre of Kabah, connected to Uxmal by a ceremonial causeway, has an extraordinary palace completely faced with masks of the Sky Serpent. Other major Puuc sites are Sayil, with a multistoried palace, and Labná. The Puuc style reaches east across the Yucatán Peninsula, for at Chichén Itzá, a great site that was to occupy centre stage during the Toltec occupation of the Northern Subregion, there are several buildings strongly Puuc in character.

Puuc sites may be said to represent a lowland Maya "New Empire" in the sense that their apogee occurred in the 9th and 10th centuries, a time during which the great Petén, or Central Subregion, centres were in decline or had collapsed. Just how late Puuc sites remained active, with major constructions being dedicated, remains something of a question. In about 1000 a major change took place in northern Yucatán. It was marked by the construction of a number of Toltec-style temples and palaces at Chichén Itzá, a site that also has many Puuc-style edifices. It is not known if Toltec Chichén Itzá existed contemporaneously with such Puuc sites as Uxmal and Labná, and if so, for how long. Eventually, Chichén Itzá appears to have dominated northern Yucatán, lasting well into the Postclassic Period (about 1250). Questions also surround the bringers of Toltec-style architecture to Chichén Itzá. They may have been either central Mexican Toltecs or Gulf coast peoples who probably were Maya-speakers and who had adopted central-Mexican ways. In this connection, it should be noted that Puuc sites were under several influences from Gulf-coast Mexico, particularly from central Veracruz.

The Maya in the Middle Formative Period

In the Maya highlands, the key archaeological region has always been the broad, fertile Valley of Guatemala around present-day Guatemala City. The earliest occupation is known as the Arevalo phase, a village culture of the Early to Middle Formative. It was followed by Las Charcas, a Middle Formative culture known largely from the contents of bottle-shaped pits found dug into the subsoil on the western edge of the modern city. Extremely fine ceramics have been excavated from them, including red-on-white bowls with animal figures, effigy vessels, three-footed cups, and peculiar three-pronged incense burners. Solid female figurines are also present.

The earliest Middle Formative cultures of the Maya lowlands are called, collectively, the Xe horizon. They apparently developed from antecedent Early Formative cultures of the Maya lowlands that have been discussed above. The problem of the origin of the Mayan-speaking people has not been solved. It may be that they were Olmec people who had been forced out of their homeland to the west by the collapse of San Lorenzo. There were already peoples in the Maya lowlands in Early Formative times, however, and if the early Maya were Olmec, they brought little of their Olmec culture with them. Another hypothesis is that the earliest Maya descended to their lowland homelands from the Guatemalan highlands.

In the Maya lowlands the Mamom cultures developed out of those of Xe times. Mamom shares many similarities with the highland Maya at Las Charcas: pottery is almost entirely monochrome – red, orange, black, and white – and figurines are female with the usual punched and appliquéd embellishments. Toward the end of the Middle Formative, or after about 600 BC, Mamom peoples began building small ceremonial centres and modest-sized pyramidal platforms.

The Maya in the Late Formative Period

The Earliest Maya Civilization of the Lowlands

By the Late Formative, the lowland Maya had begun to shape a civilization that was to become the greatest in the New World. The Petén-Yucatán Peninsula lacks many raw materials and has a relatively low agricultural potential. But what it does have in limitless quantities is readily quarried limestone for building purposes and flint for stonework. Cement and plaster could easily be produced by burning limestone or shells.

The heart of the Maya civilization was always northern Petén, in Guatemala, where the oldest dated Maya stelae are found, although this presents something of a problem in cultural-historical interpretation, since the earliest prototypes for these stelae – as mentioned above – have been found in Pacific-littoral and highland Guatemala. The Late Formative culture of Petén is called Chicanel, evidence of which has been found at many Maya centres. Chicanel pottery includes dishes with wide-everted and grooved rims, bowls with composite silhouette, and vessels resembling ice buckets. Figurines are curiously absent.

Architecture was already quite advanced and had taken a form peculiar to the Maya. Temple platforms were built by facing a cemented-rubble core with thick layers of plaster. At the site of Uaxactún, Structure E-VII-sub affords a good idea of a Chicanel temple-platform. It is a four-sided, stucco-covered, stepped pyramid with pairs of stylized god masks flanking stairways on each side. On its summit was a thatched-roof temple. At Tikal, the giant among Maya ceremonial centres, the so-called Acropolis was begun in Chicanel times, and there was a great use of white-stuccoed platforms and stairways, with flanking polychromed masks as at Uaxactún. Most importantly, there is evidence from Tikal that the Maya architects were already building masonry superstructures with the corbel vault principle; i.e., with archlike structures the sides of which extend progressively inward until they meet at the top. The large sizes of Chicanel populations and the degree of political centralization that existed by this time are further attested to by the discovery in the 20th century of the huge site of El Mirador, in the extreme northern part of Petén. The mass of El Mirador construction dwarfs even that of Tikal, although El Mirador was only substantially occupied through the Chicanel phase.

Chicanel-like civilization is also known in Yucatán, where some temple pyramids of enormous size are datable to the Late Formative. An outstanding site is the cave of Loltún in Yucatán, where a relief figure of a standing leader in pure Izapan style is accompanied by a number of unreadable hieroglyphs as well as a notation in the 260-day count. This inscription raises the question of writing and the calendar among the lowland Maya in the Late Formative. On the whole, the evidence is negative and suggests that several important intellectual innovations considered to be typically Mayan were developed beyond the Maya area proper and appeared there only at the close of the Formative. Izapan civilization appears to have played the crucial role in this evolutionary process.

Definition of the Mayan Classic Period (100-600 C.E.)

In the study of the Classic stage, there has been a strong bias in favour of the Maya; this is not surprising in view of the fact that the Maya have been studied far longer than any other people in Meso-America. But the concept of a "Classic" period is a case of the Maya tail wagging the Meso-American dog, since the usual span given to that stage – 250-900 C.E. – is the period during which the Maya were erecting dated stone monuments. This brackets the Maya apogee, but for most areas of non-Maya Meso-America only the first half of the period may be accurately called a "golden age." While the famous and yet mysterious Maya collapse took place at about 900 C.E., in many other regions this downfall occurred almost three centuries earlier.

Qualitatively, there is little to differentiate the Classic from the Late Formative that preceded it. Various tendencies that were crystallizing in the last centuries before the Christian era reached fulfillment in the Classic. Two cultures stand out beyond all others. One is that of Teotihuacán, which during the Early Classic played a role in Meso-America similar to that which Olmec had performed in the Early Formative. The second is the lowland Maya civilization, which during its six centuries of almost unbroken evolution in the humid forests reached cultural heights never achieved before or since by New World natives. The contrast between the two – one urban and expansionist, the other less urban and non-expansionist – exemplifies well the cultural results of the ecological possibilities offered by highland and lowland Meso-America.

Classic Civilization in the Maya Lowlands: Tzakol Phase

Archaeologists have divided the entire area occupied by speakers of Mayan languages into three subregions: (1) the Southern Subregion, essentially the highlands and Pacific Coast of Guatemala, (2) the Central Subregion, which includes the department of Petén in northern Guatemala and the immediately adjacent lowlands to the east and west, and (3) the Northern Subregion, consisting of the Yucatán Peninsula north of Petén proper. Between 250 and 900 the most brilliant civilization ever seen in the New World flourished in the forested lowlands of the Central and Northern subregions.

Lowland Maya civilization falls into two chronological phases or cultures: Tzakol culture, which is Early Classic and began shortly before 250 C.E., and the Late Classic Tepeu culture, which saw the full florescence of Maya achievements. Tepeu culture began about 600 and ended with the final downfall and abandonment of the Central Subregion about 900. (These dates, based on the correlation of the Long Count system of the Maya calendar with the Gregorian calendar, are the most generally accepted; but there is a slight chance that a rival correlation espoused by the American archaeologist Herbert J. Spinden may be correct, which would make these dates 260 years earlier.)

One of the earliest objects inscribed with the fully developed Maya calendar is the Leiden Plate, a jade plaque, now housed in the National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden, Neth., depicting a richly arrayed Maya lord trampling a captive underfoot. On its reverse side is a Long Count date corresponding to 320. Although it was found in a very late site on the Caribbean coast, stylistic evidence suggests that the Leiden Plate was made at Tikal, in the heart of northern Petén. In the mid-20th century the University of Pennsylvania's ambitious field program at the Tikal site produced Stela 29, erected 28 years before, in 292. Both objects and, in fact, almost all early Tzakol monuments draw heavily upon a heritage from the older Izapan civilization of the Late Formative, with its highly baroque, narrative stylistic content.

Because of the Maya penchant for covering older structures with later ones, Tzakol remains in the Central Subregion have to be laboriously dug out from their towering Late Classic overburdens. Nevertheless, it is clear that at sites like Tikal, Uaxactún, and Holmul, Maya civilization had reached something close to its final form. Enormous ceremonial centres were crowded with masonry temples and "palaces" facing onto spacious plazas covered with white stucco. The use of the corbel vault for spanning rooms – a trait unique to the lowland Maya – was by this time universal. Stelae and altars (a legacy from Izapa) are carved with dates and embellished with the figures of men and perhaps gods. Polychrome pottery, the finest examples of which were sealed in the tombs of honoured personages, emphasizes stylized designs of cranes, flying parrots, gods, and men. These often occur on bowls with a kind of apron or basal flange encircling the lower vessel. Along with these purely Maya ceramics are vessels that show the imprint of distant Teotihuacán: the cylindrical vase supported by three slab legs, the "cream pitcher," and the florero ("flower vase").

Wall painting had already reached a high degree of perfection in the Central Subregion, as attested by an extremely fine mural at Uaxactún depicting a palace scene in which two important lords confer with each other. This mural art is quite different from that of Teotihuacán, being very naturalistic instead of formal and including a definite interest in portraiture. Nonetheless, excavations in Petén sites have shown that Teotihuacán influence was quite pervasive. From Tikal, for example, comes Stela 31, depicting a richly garbed Maya lord, festooned with jade ornaments, standing between two warriors from Teotihuacán. These foreigners carry shields that bear the visage of the Teotihuacán rain god, Tlaloc. It is certain that there was a three-way trading relationship between Tikal, Kaminaljuyú, and Teotihuacán in Early Classic times.

Thus, the Teotihuacán involvement with Tikal and the Central Subregion may have taken, as at Kaminaljuyú, the form of pochteca trading colonies that exerted some control over the lowland Maya. The lord on Stela 31 may have been a puppet ruler manipulated by tough merchant-warriors. Teotihuacán as a city and capital of an empire began to weaken toward the close of the 6th century. It could therefore be expected that the disruptions that effectively ended the life of the great Mexican capital would be reflected in the Maya area. This is exactly the case. In the Guatemalan highlands, Kaminaljuyú declined rapidly after 600 C.E., and the entire Southern Subregion was to play little part in Maya culture until the Late Postclassic. The lowland Maya suffered some temporary reverses; few stelae were erected between 534 and 692, and there is evidence that existing monuments were mutilated.

Mayan Society and Political Life

There is a vast gap between the lavishly stocked tombs of the Maya elite who ran the ceremonial centres and the simple graves of the peasantry. Careful measurements of the skeletons found in tombs and graves have also revealed that persons of the Maya ruling class were much taller than the tillers of the soil who provided them tribute. It is likely that this gulf was unspannable, for throughout Meso-America the rulers and nobility were believed to have been created separately from commoners.

The most revealing testimony to this royal cult is the temple pyramid itself, for almost every one explored has a great tomb hidden in its base. On death, each ruler might have been the object of ancestor worship by members of his lineage, the departed leader having become one with the god from whom he claimed descent. Ancestor worship, in fact, seems to be at the heart of ancient and modern society and religion among the Maya.

The ordinary folk may have participated in the ceremonies of even the greatest Maya centres. The modern highland Maya have a complex ceremonial life in which a man advances through a series of cargos, or "burdens," each one of which brings him greater prestige, costs him a great deal of money, and requires that he reside in the otherwise nearly empty centre for a year at a time carrying out his religious duties. The same may have prevailed in Classic times, though all activities were then under the direction of a hereditary and divine elite class, long since destroyed by the Spaniards.

Warfare apparently was a continuing preoccupation of the Maya lords. Translations of hieroglyphic inscriptions show that in some cases such warfare led to territorial aggrandizement and the domination of one centre or polity by another; however, the principal purpose of war appears to have been to gain captives for slavery and sacrifice.

It has often been said that the Maya realm was a theocracy, with all power in the hands of the priests. That this is a misconception is apparent from the monuments themselves, which show kings, queens, heirs, and war prisoners, but no figures surely identifiable as priests. In 16th-century Yucatán, the priesthood was hereditary, and it is reported that younger sons of lords often took on that vocation. Quite probably such a class was also to be found among the LateClassic Maya, but neither for the Maya nor for any other Classic civilization of Meso-America can the term theocracy be justified.

Late Classic Non-Maya Meso-America (600-900 C.E.)

The cultural situation in Late Classic Meso-America is the reverse of that prevailing in the Early Classic: Central Mexico now played only a minor role, while the lowland Maya reached their intellectual and artistic heights. In contrast to the old Teotihuacanos, however, the Maya were not expansionistic. It is true that Maya cultural influence has been detected along the Gulf coast and in the states of Morelos and Tlaxcala – as in the painted murals of Cacaxtla in the latter state – but it is unlikely that this was the result of a military takeover. The outcome of this state of affairs, with no one people powerful enough or sufficiently interested in dominating others, was a political and cultural fragmentation of Meso-America after 600. It was not until the great Toltec invasions of the Early Postclassic that anything approaching an empire was to be seen again.

The decline in fortunes of the Valley of Mexico, and especially of Teotihuacán, cannot now be explained. Climatic deterioration, resulting in drier conditions and thus a diminished subsistence potential, may have been a factor.

Nevertheless, Teotihuacán was never completely abandoned, even though its great palaces had been burned to the ground and its major temples abandoned. People continued to live in some sections, but their houses were mere hovels compared to the dwellings of the Early Classic. In general, the Valley of Mexico was a cultural and political vacuum in Late Classic times.

One of the very few centres of the Late Classic in central Mexico that amounted to much was Xochicalco, in Morelos. Strategically located on top of a hill that was completely reworked with artificial terraces and ramparts, Xochicalco was obviously highly defensible, an indication of the unsettled times then prevailing in central Mexico. The site shows a bewildering variety of cultural influences, particularly Maya. The principal structure of Xochicalco is a temple substructure of masonry that is completely carved in relief with undulating Feathered Serpents, indicating that it was dedicated to the cult of Quetzalcóatl. All indications are that Xochicalco was a cosmopolitan and very powerful centre, perhaps the most influential west of Veracruz and northwest of the Maya area. It was literate and civilized at a time when most other parts of central Mexico were in cultural eclipse.

The Late Classic occupation of Oaxaca, especially of the Valley of Oaxaca, is designated as Monte Albán III-B (450-700). The Mixtec invasions of the valley probably began in earnest around 900. The Mixtec occupied the hilly, northern part of Oaxaca; their records, which extend to the 7th century, show them to have been organized into a series of petty states headed by aggressive, warlike kings. By the Postclassic, they had become the dominant force throughout Oaxaca and in part of Puebla.

The tendencies in central Veracruz art and architecture that began in the Late Formative culminated in the Late Classic at the great centre of El Tajín, placed among jungle-covered hills in a region occupied by the Totonac Indians, whose capital this may well have been. Its most imposing structure is the Pyramid of the Niches, named for the approximately 365 recesses on its four sides. In this and other buildings at El Tajín, the dominant architectural motif is the step-and-fret. There are a number of other temple pyramids at the site, as well as palacelike buildings with flat, concrete roofs, a tour de force of Meso-American engineering knowledge. El Tajín's three major ball courts are remarkably important for the reliefs carved on their vertical playing surfaces, for these give valuable information on the religious connotations of the sacred game. Like Xochicalco, El Tajín was in some way linked to the destiny of the lowland Maya, and the collapse of Maya civilization around 900 may have been reflected in the demise of the Veracruz centre.

Further down the Gulf coast plain, the Remojadas tradition of hollow pottery figurines continued to be active in the Late Classic, with a particularly large production of the mysterious smiling figures of dancing boys and girls, which were intended as funerary offerings. But in addition, there was a great deal of pottery and figurines that were fashioned under very strong Maya influence. In fact, much of southern Veracruz at this time was a cultural extension of the lowland Maya. There is no indication, however, that these peoples had any acquaintance with Maya literacy or with Maya building techniques.

Mayan Art of the Late Classic Period

Maya art, at the height of its development, was fundamentally unlike any other in Meso-America, for it was highly narrative, baroque, and often extremely cluttered, unlike the more austere styles found elsewhere. It is essentially a painterly rather than sculptural tradition, and it is quite likely that even stone reliefs were first designed by painters. Much of this art has disappeared for all time because of the ravages of the wet, tropical environment on such perishable materials as wood, painted gourds, feathers, bark, and other substances. There must have been thousands of bark-paper codices, not one of which has survived from Classic times.

Following the downfall of Teotihuacán, Maya artists were free to go their own way. Magnificently carved stelae and accompanying altars are found at most major sites, the greatest achievement in this line being found at Copán, where something approaching three-dimensional carving was the rule. Palenque and Yaxchilán specialized in graceful bas-reliefs placed as tablets or lintels in temple pyramids and palaces. In the Northern Subregion, however, the sculptor's art was definitely inferior in scope and quality and shows strong influence from alien, non-Maya cultures.

A few wooden objects have somehow survived. Particularly noteworthy are the massive wooden lintels of Tikal, with scenes of lords and their guardian deities, accompanied by lengthy hieroglyphic texts. In ancient times, wood carvings must have been vastly more common than sculptures. The wet climate has also destroyed innumerable examples of mural art.

Maya pottery can be divided into two groups: (1) the pots and pans of everyday life, usually undecorated but sometimes with geometric designs, and (2) grave offerings. Vessels meant to accompany the honoured dead were usually painted or carved with naturalistic and often macabre scenes. To achieve polychrome effects of great brilliance, the Maya potters painted in semitranslucent slips over a light background, then fired the vessels at a very low temperature. Relief carving was carried out when the vessels were leather-hard, just before firing.

The most precious substance of all to the Maya was jade, to which their craftsmen devoted great artistry. Jade was mainly fashioned into thin plaques, carved in relief, or into beads. In the absence of metal tools, jade was worked by applying abrasives and water with cane or perhaps other pieces of jade.

The Mayan Calendar and Writing System

It is their intellectual life that established the cultural superiority of the Maya over all other American Indians. Much of this was based upon a calendrical system that was partly shared with other Meso-American groups but that they perfected into a tool capable of recording important historical and astronomical information. Most Maya inscriptions that have been interpreted are calendrical inscriptions. Since the late 1950s, it has been learned that the content of Classic Maya inscriptions was far more secular than had been supposed. For many years specialists believed that the inscriptions recorded little more than the passage of time and that, in fact, the Maya were time worshipers; but it has been shown that certain inscriptions recorded the birth, accession, marriage, and military victories of ruling dynasties. One very significant advance in following dynastic histories and plotting political territoriality was the discovery in 1958 of "emblem glyphs," symbols standing for royal lineages and their domains.

Yet it would be misleading to contend that the hurly-burly of Maya court affairs and conquests was all that mattered, for some texts must have been sacred and god-oriented. At Palenque, in the similar temples of the Cross, Foliated Cross, and Sun, the dates inscribed on the tablets in the sanctuaries fall into three groups. The very latest seem to refer to events in the lives of reigning monarchs. An earlier group must deal with distant but real ancestors of those kings, while the very earliest fall in the 4th millennium BC and apparently describe the birth of important gods to whom the respective temples were dedicated and who may have been regarded as the progenitors of Palenque's royal house.

The meaning of many non-calendrical signs and even of complete clauses is not known, but there is a difference between this and assigning an actual Maya word to an ancient glyph or a sentence to a glyphic clause. While it is certain that the language of the Classic inscriptions was Mayan, it is also certain that it was more archaic than any of the Mayan languages spoken at the time of the conquest, six centuries after the Classic downfall. The three extant Maya codices, none dating earlier than 1100, contain a strong phonetic component, in fact a kind of syllabary, which can be successfully read as Yucatec-Maya, but the Classic peoples of the Central Subregion more likely spoke an ancestor of the Cholan branch of Maya. Furthermore, Maya hieroglyphic writing covers the entire span from about 250 C.E. to the conquest, during which time both the language or languages and the writing system itself must have undergone extensive evolution.

In writing systems in general, there is usually a development from pictographic signs, in which a picture stands for a word or concept, through logographic systems, in which words are still the basic unit but phoneticism is employed to reduce ambiguities (as in Chinese), to phonetic syllabaries, and finally to alphabets. Probably most Classic Maya hieroglyphs are logograms with a mainly ideographic orientation, and it seems that there was a considerable degree of flexibility in how the words and sentences could be written. By the Postclassic, this had been codified into a much more rigid system closely resembling that of Japanese, in which a well-defined syllabary can supplement or even replace logograms. There are approximately 300 to 500 logograms in Classic Maya (the number varies according to how one separates affixes from so-called main signs), but it will probably be many years before the majority of these are satisfactorily deciphered. Great progress, however, may be expected in unraveling their meaning in specific contexts.

Maya mathematics included two outstanding developments: positional numeration and a zero. These may rightly be deemed among the most brilliant achievements of the human mind. The same may also be said of ancient Maya astronomy. The duration of the solar year had been calculated with amazing accuracy, as well as the synodical revolution of Venus. The Dresden Codex contains very precise Venusian and lunar tables and a method of predicting solar eclipses.

Maya chronology consisted of three main elements: a 260-day sacred year (tzolkin) formed by the combination of 13 numbers (1 to 13) and 20 day names; a solar year (haab), divided into 18 months of 20 days numbered from 0 to 19, followed by a five-day unlucky period (Uayeb); and a series of cycles – uinal (20 kins, or days), tun (360 days), katun (7,200 days), baktun (144,000 days), with the highest cycle being the alautun of 23,040,000,000 days. All Middle American civilizations used the two first counts, which permitted officials accurately to determine a date within a period defined as the least common multiple of 260 and 365: 18,980 days, or 52 years.

The Classic Maya Long Count inscriptions enumerate the cycles that have elapsed since a zero date in 3114 BC. Thus, "9.6.0.0.0," a katun-ending date, means that nine baktuns and six katuns have elapsed from the zero date to the day 2 Ahau 13 Tzec (May 9, 751 C.E.). To those Initial Series were added the Supplementary Series (information about the lunar month) and the Secondary Series, a calendar-correction formula that brought the conventional date in harmony with the true position of the day in the solar year.

Both Classic and recent Maya held the tzolkin as the most sacred means of divination, enabling the priests to detect the favourable or evil influences attached to every day according to the esoteric significance of the numbers and the day-signs.

Mayan and Mexican Chronology

The lowland Maya had a 365-day year formed of 18 "months." Each month consisted of 20 days, plus five "nameless" days, which the Maya considered an extremely dangerous and unlucky period and during which activities were kept to a minimum. Leap days were not intercalated.

Reckoning was not by those years but by tuns (360 days) and their multiples of 20: katuns (20 tuns), baktuns (400 tuns), pictuns (8,000 tuns), calabtuns (160,000 tuns), and kinchiltuns (3,200,000). In practice, the last three were seldom used. The tun comprised 18 uinals, each of 20 kins (days), but these did not coincide with the equivalent divisions of the 365-day year. The Maya normally carved or wrote these in descending order; students transcribe them in Arabic numerals – e.g., 9.10.6.5.9 represents nine baktuns, ten katuns, six tuns, five uinals, nine kins.

With this system, current dates were related to the start of the Maya era, which, because of the Maya system of re-entering cycles, marked both the end of 13 baktuns (written 13.0.0.0.0) and the start of another cycle of baktuns and perhaps commemorated a re-creation of the world, the baktun about to enter being numbered 1, not 14. Because of the construction of the calendar, this start of the era happened to be day 4 Ahau falling on the eighth day of the month Cumku.

Such reckonings are called Initial Series, or Long Counts, the former because they usually stand at the start of an inscription. For example, the combination day 8 Muluc, falling on second of Zip (third month), recurs every 52 years, but the Initial Series (here 9.10.6.5.9 8 Muluc 2 Zip) pinpoints its position. The next occurrence, 52 years later, would be 9.12.19.0.9 8 Muluc 2 Zip. Each unit had its own glyph (or symbolic character), with appropriate number (normally a dot for 1 and bar for 5) attached.

A shorter dating system was by "Period Endings" – that is, by recording the ending of the current baktun, katun, or tun. Thus, day 13 Ahau and month position 13 Muan with 13 tuns added is an abbreviation of 9.17.13.0.0 13 Ahau 13 Muan, a combination that will not repeat for over 900 years (949 tuns). A still shorter but less precise method was to give the day and its number ending the current katun.

Several Maya dates were commonly linked to Initial Series or Period Endings by series of additions or subtractions – a glyph signifying count indicated forward or backward by secondary attachments.

Dates were normally reckoned from the 4 Ahau 8 Cumku base, nearly 4,000 years before most inscriptions, but some calculations ranged far into the past and a few into the distant future. One reaches backward nearly 1,250,000 years, but the deepest probings of eternity are embodied in texts that seemingly record positions respectively 90,000,000 and 400,000,000 years ago. Although the interpretation of these last computations is disputable, the Maya certainly thought in millions of years a millennium before Europe discarded the view that the world was only some 6,000 years old.

The Maya conceived of time as a journey through eternity in which each deified number – all time periods and their numbers were gods – carried his period on his back supported by a tump line. Each evening the procession rested. Next morning, carriers whose period was completed were replaced. For instance, if the uinal and kin numbers were 15 and 19 respectively, the new carriers would be the deified 16 and 0 (the latter because kin numbers go no higher than 19). Other period numbers would journey on until it came time to change the tun carrier. Much ritual and imagery grew out of this concept of the march of time; sculpture illustrates bearers lowering their burdens at journey's end.

Correlation of the Maya calendar with ours depends on several factors. First, the 260-day almanac still functions in some Maya villages in the Guatemalan highlands. As there is excellent evidence it has neither gained nor lost a day since the Spanish conquest, despite strong Spanish efforts to suppress it, one may reasonably assume no break under the more favourable pre-Columbian conditions. Lunar and other data support such a view. Second, month positions in Yucatán and southern Petén at the Spanish conquest also are reliably correlated to the day with the present Western calendar. Third, the combined day and month parts of the Maya calendar are in day-for-day agreement with the present Western calendar within a 52-year span (after that given day and month positions repeat). The katun (specifically, 13 Ahau) current at the Spanish conquest is, however, known, thereby fixing any day and month position in a longer range of 260 years because a named katun repeats only after 260 tuns. Those conditions produce a correlation of the two calendars that is either correct to the day or is 260 or even 520 years wrong, since historical evidence does not specify which particular katun 13 Ahau coincided with the Spaniards' arrival. Fourth, such factors as astronomy (Maya records of heliacal risings of Venus and of many dates with moon age stated), pottery sequences, architectural changes (less reliable), and data from neighbouring areas govern choice of the applicable katun 13 Ahau. Weight of evidence led to wide acceptance of the Goodman-Martínez-Thompson correlation that equates 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 8 Cumku, start of the Maya era, with August 10, 3114 BC, and the Classic period with 300 C.E. to 900. Fifth, when the carbon-14 dating technique was first applied to the problem, various difficulties attendant on the use of new techniques and failure to take into account that a tree dies year by year from its centre outward (so that a sample from the core might give a date well over a century before felling) distorted readings, producing results favourable to the correlation making Maya dates 260 years earlier. Now, with better technique and averaging of many "runs" of samples of latest growth from beams at Tikal with secure Maya dates, carbon-14 readings overwhelmingly support the Goodman-Martínez-Thompson correlation.

The only other Middle American calendar with a known era is that of the Cakchiquel of highland Guatemala. The system was vigesimal: kih, day; uinak, 20 days; a, 400 days; and may, 8,000 days. The 400-day "year" ran concurrently with the 260-day almanac, which, in turn, synchronized with all other Maya almanacs. Like the 360-day tun of the lowlands, the 400-day a was the counting unit, for reckoning was always in multiples of the a, never by days, as in our Julian calendar. May signifies twenty, and is so named because it comprised 20a. At the arrival of the Spaniards, reckoning was from a revolt in 1493 C.E. Earlier eras may be postulated, but inscribed calendrical texts are lacking in Cakchiquel territory.

Classic Mayan Religion

It has been denied that there was any such thing as a pantheon of deities in Classic times, the idea being that the worship of images was introduced by the Toltec or Itzá invaders, or both, in the Postclassic. Several gods who played significant roles in the Postclassic codices, however, can be identified on earlier Maya monuments. The most important of these is Itzamná, the supreme Maya deity, who functioned as the original creator god, as well as lord of the fire and therefore of the hearth. In his serpent form he appears on the ceremonial bar held in the arms of Maya rulers on Classic stelae. Another ophidian deity recognizable in Classic reliefs is the Feathered Serpent, known to the Maya as Kukulcán (and to the Toltecs and Aztecs as Quetzalcóatl). Probably the most ubiquitous of all is the being known as Bolon Tzacab (first called God K by archaeologists), a deity with a baroquely branching nose who is thought to have functioned as a god of royal descent; he is often held as a kind of sceptre in rulers' hands.

The Classic Maya lavished great attention on their royal dead, who almost surely were thought of as descended from the gods and partaking of their divine essence. Many reliefs and all of the pictorial pottery found in tombs deal with the underworld and the dangerous voyage of the soul through that land. Classic Maya funerary ceramics show that this dark land was ruled by a number of gods, including several sinister old men often embellished with jaguar emblems, the jaguar being associated with the night and the nether regions.

The Classic, as well as the Postclassic, Maya practiced human sacrifice, although not on the scale of the Aztecs. The victims were probably captives, including defeated rulers and nobles. Self-sacrifice or self-mutilation was also common; blood drawn by jabbing spines through the ear or penis, or by drawing a thorn-studded cord through the tongue, was spattered on paper or otherwise collected as an offering to the gods.

The four main categories of documents that provide knowledge of the Maya civilization and its religion are: archaeological remains; native books in hieroglyphic writing; books in native languages written in Latin script by learned Indians; and early accounts written in Spanish by conquerors or priests.

From surviving temples, tombs, sculpture, wall paintings, pottery, and carved jades, shells, and bone, a significant amount of valuable information can be gained; e.g., representations of godheads and ritual scenes. Perhaps the most important archaeological source, however, is the hieroglyphic texts carved on stone monuments or stone or bone artifacts and painted on pottery. These, insofar as they can be translated, provide descriptions of ceremonies and beliefs.

Three native hieroglyphic books of pre-Columbian date survived the Spanish conquest: the Dresden, Madrid, and Paris codices, named for the cities in which they are now housed. Written on bark paper, they deal with astronomical calculations, divination, and ritual. They appear to be Postclassic copies of earlier Classic originals.

After the Spanish conquest, books were written by learned Indians who transcribed or summarized hieroglyphic records. Such is the case of the Books of Chilam Balam, in Yucatec Maya, and of the Popol Vuh, in Quiché, a highland Maya language. The former consist of historical chronicles mixed with myth, divination, and prophecy, and the latter (which shows definite central Mexican influences) embodies the mythology and cosmology of the Postclassic Guatemalan Maya. The Ritual of the Bacabs covers religious symbolism, medical incantations, and similar matters.

The most important of the early accounts written by the Spanish themselves is Diego de Landa's Relación de las cosas de Yucatán ("On the Things of Yucatán"), which dates to about 1566. It describes Postclassic rather than Classic religion, but given the deeply conservative nature of Maya religion, it is highly probable that much of this description is pertinent for the earlier period. Landa's account is also an excellent description of other aspects of Maya life in 16th-century Yucatán.

To these archaeological, ethnohistorical, and historical sources may be added the observations of modern ethnologists about the present-day Maya. Thus, in the Guatemalan highlands, the 260-day calendar still survives, as do ancient prayers to and information about Maya gods.

It is likely that a simpler religion of nature worship prevailed in Early Formative times. This probably began to undergo modification during the Middle Formative, as astronomical knowledge became more precise. Certainly by the Late Formative (300 BC, if not earlier), with the appearance of major centres and pyramid and temple constructions, an elaborate worldview had evolved. Deified heavenly bodies and time periods were added to the earlier-conceived corn and rain gods. Concepts derived from priestly speculation were imposed upon the simpler religious beginnings. Religion became increasingly esoteric, with a complex mythology interpreted by a closely organized priesthood.

Education in Mayan Society

Being a highly religious culture, the Maya regarded the priesthood as one of the most influential factors in the development of their society. The priest enjoyed high prestige by virtue of his extensive knowledge, literate skills, and religious and moral leadership, and high priests served as major advisers of the rulers and the nobility. To obtain a priesthood, which was usually inherited from his father or another close relative, the trainee had to receive rigorous education in the school, where priests taught history, writing, methods of divining, medicine, and the calendar system.

Character training was one of the salient features of Mayan education. The inculcation of self-restraint, cooperative work, and moderation was highly emphasized in various stages of socialization as well as on various occasions of religious festivals. In order to develop self-discipline, the future priest endured a long period of continence and abstinence, and, to develop a sense of loyalty to community, he engaged in group labour.

Decline of the Maya

Maya civilization began to decay after 900 C.E., perhaps owing to stresses in the social structure, overpopulation, and deforestation. A number of important cities emerged in the late Classic period, mostly on the periphery of the classic Mayan region, in present-day Chiapas or Yucatán. The peoples of these cities, much influenced by invaders from central Mexico, built striking stone architectural monuments, but their scientific and artistic achievements were less remarkable than the earlier advances of the Classic period. Their economies remained underdeveloped, however. In the meantime, internal civil war and intervention from central Mexico sapped Maya strength and vitality. By the time of the Spanish conquest, Maya civilization was thoroughly in decline, yet they resisted subjugation longer than either the Aztec of Mexico or the Inca of Peru. Returning to northern Guatemala, where they established the city of Tayasal as a place of refuge, some Maya maintained their autonomy until 1697. Not far away, the Lacandón Maya defied pacification throughout the Hispanic period, resisting from remote jungle and mountain refuges along the Usumacinta River. Disease and the social disruption brought with the Spanish conquest annihilated a large part of the native population during the 16th century. Although estimates of the pre-Columbian population of Central America vary widely, it is generally agreed that the region's population did not again reach its pre-Columbian level until the 20th century.

The Collapse of Classic Mayan Civilization

In the last century of the Classic period, Maya civilization went into a decline from which it never recovered. Beginning about 790 in the western edge of the Central Subregion, such ceremonial activity as the erection of stelae virtually came to a standstill. During the next 40 years this cultural paralysis spread gradually eastward, by which time the great Classic civilization of the Maya had all but atrophied. A date in the Maya calendar corresponding to 889 is inscribed on the last dated monuments in the Central Subregion; soon after the close of the 9th century it is clear that almost all of this region was abandoned.

For this event, which must have been one of the greatest human tragedies of all time, there are few convincing explanations. It now seems that the Classic Maya civilization in the region of its greatest development went out "not with a bang but a whimper." Massive foreign invasions can be discounted as a factor, but non-Maya elements did appear in the west at the same time as ceremonial activity terminated. These became the inheritors of whatever was left of the old civilization of the Central Subregion after 900 C.E., having established trading colonies and even a few minor ceremonial centres on its peripheries.

Whatever incursions did take place from the west were piecemeal and probably the result of the general decline, rather than its cause. Similarly, there is little reason to believe that there were peasant revolts on a general scale. The only real fact is that most of the inhabitants of the Central Subregion went elsewhere. Probably some were absorbed by such still flourishing ceremonial centres of the Northern Subregion as Uxmal and Kabah, while others might have migrated up into the congenial highlands of Chiapas and Guatemala. Although a population explosion and severe ecological abuse of the land must have played their role in the tragedy, the full story of the decline and fall of this brilliant aboriginal civilization remains to be told.

Voltar ao começo da página

Voltar à página principal