The Maya civilization (/ˈmaɪə/) is a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished from antiquity to the early modern period. It is known for its ancient temples and glyphs (script). The Maya script is the most advanced and highly developed writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas. The civilization is also famous for its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system.
It arose in the Maya Region-an area that today comprises the southeastern part of Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador-including the northern lowlands of the Yucatán Peninsula and the Guatemalan Highlands of the Sierra Madre, the Mexican state of Chiapas, southern Guatemala, El Salvador, and the southern lowlands of the Pacific littoral plain. The current generation of their descendants can count themselves in excess of 6 million, which all speak more than twenty-eight surviving Mayan languages and live in nearly the same area as their ancestors do today.
During the Classic period, the Maya civilization adhered to rules centered around the concept of the “divine king”, believed to mediate between the mortal realm and the supernatural world. Kingship was generally patrilineal, with power typically passing to the eldest son, although exceptions occurred. A future king was expected to excel as both a war leader and a ruler.
Maya political systems relied heavily on closed patronage networks, but the impact of patronage on the political structures varied significantly across city-states. In the Late Classic period, the aristocracy expanded, diminishing some of the king’s formerly exclusive privileges. Maya art reached remarkable heights during this period, showcasing works in both perishable and non-perishable materials, including wood, jade, obsidian, ceramics, sculpted stone monuments, stucco, and intricately painted murals.
Maya cities grew organically and irregularly and featured ceremonial and administrative complexes at their centers. There were always residential districts in these sprawling cities, with causeways connecting them in many places. Architecturally, the Maya cities involved palaces, pyramid-temples, ceremonial ballcourts, and structures to be used for astronomical observation.
The Maya elite were literate and developed an advanced hieroglyphic writing system, most advanced in pre-Columbian Americas. They had written history and ritual knowledge in screenfold books, although only three uncontested examples of these books remain, since most were destroyed during the Spanish conquest. Maya texts also abound on stelae and ceramics.
Their culture included a highly complex system of interlocking ritual calendars and advanced mathematics, notable for one of the earliest explicit uses of zero in human history. In their religious practice, the Maya practiced human sacrifice.
Etymology
Maya cities grew organically and irregularly and featured ceremonial and administrative complexes at their centers. There were always residential districts in these sprawling cities, with causeways connecting them in many places. Architecturally, the Maya cities involved palaces, pyramid-temples, ceremonial ballcourts, and structures to be used for astronomical observation.
The Maya elite were literate and developed an advanced hieroglyphic writing system, most advanced in pre-Columbian Americas. They had written history and ritual knowledge in screenfold books, although only three uncontested examples of these books remain, since most were destroyed during the Spanish conquest. Maya texts also abound on stelae and ceramics.
Their culture included a highly complex system of interlocking ritual calendars and advanced mathematics, notable for one of the earliest explicit uses of zero in human history. In their religious practice, the Maya practiced human sacrifice.
Geography
The Maya civilization inhabited a vast territory covering southeastern Mexico and northern Central America. It encompassed the entire Yucatán Peninsula, plus modern-day Guatemala and Belize, as well as Honduras’ and El Salvador’s western areas.
Most of the Yucatán Peninsula is generally very low lying, with few hills or mountains, and an otherwise generally low-lying coastline. The Maya region covered about one-third of Mesoamerica. The Maya, in their dynamic relationships, maintained active relationships with other neighboring cultures, such as the Olmecs, Mixtecs, Teotihuacan, and Aztecs.
During the Early Classic, the Maya cities of Tikal and Kaminaljuyu were significant centers in a network extending into central Mexican highlands. A strong Maya presence in the Tetitla compound of Teotihuacan also has been documented.
The city of Chichen Itza, as a Maya city, enjoyed an unusually close relationship with the Toltec capital of Tula, in a distant land, but this was testimony to cultural and political linkages between these two important civilizations.
The Petén area is covered by a densly forested, low-lying limestone plain. Throughout the central drainage basin of Petén, a stretch of fourteen lakes exists. To the south, this plain rises gradually toward the Guatemalan Highlands. Northern Petén, Belize, and most of Quintana Roo, as well as parts of southern Campeche and southern Yucatán state, are also covered by the dense Maya forest. Further north still, the vegetation becomes reduced to lower forests made of dense scrub.
The Soconusco littoral zone lies south of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas and includes a narrow coastal plain and foothills of the Sierra Madre. To the east, the Highlands of the Maya stretch into Guatemala and attain their greatest altitude in the Sierra de los Cuchumatanes. The largest highland valleys hosted major pre-Columbian Maya population centers, for example, the Valley of Guatemala and the Quetzaltenango Valley. Along the southern highlands there runs parallel to the Pacific coast a strip of volcanic cones, while northwards into Verapaz the highlands trend, gradually falling to the east.
History
The history of Maya civilization is divided into three major periods: the Preclassic, Classic, and Postclassic. These periods are preceded by the Archaic Period, in which the first settled villages and early agricultural developments came to be. Modern scholars regard these periods as somewhat arbitrary divisions in Maya chronology rather than as indicators of cultural evolution or decline. Start and end dates for these periods vary by up to a century depending on the scholar.
| Period | Division | Dates | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Archaic | 8000–2000 BC | ||
| Preclassic | Early Preclassic | 2000–1000 BC | |
| Middle Preclassic | Early Middle Preclassic | 1000–600 BC | |
| Late Middle Preclassic | 600–350 BC | ||
| Late Preclassic | Early Late Preclassic | 350–1 BC | |
| Late Late Preclassic | 1 BC – AD 159 | ||
| Terminal Preclassic | AD 159–250 | ||
| Classic | Early Classic | AD 250–550 | |
| Late Classic | AD 550–830 | ||
| Terminal Classic | AD 830–950 | ||
| Postclassic | Early Postclassic | AD 950–1200 | |
| Late Postclassic | AD 1200–1539 | ||
| Contact period | AD 1511–1697 | ||
Preclassic period (c. 2000 BC – 250 AD)
The Maya’s first civilization was developed during the Preclassic period. Scholars are still debating when this period of Maya civilization began. Carbon dates for Maya occupation at Cuello (modern Belize) have been set at around 2600 BC. Settlements had been established around 1800 BC in the Soconusco region of the Pacific coast, and the Maya were already growing maize, beans, squash, and chili pepper crops, which were staples in many Mesoamerican societies. During this period, sedentary communities emerged and the usage of pottery and fired clay figurines began.
Kaminaljuyu, in the highlands, and El Mirador, in the lowlands, were both important cities in the Late Preclassic.
During the Middle Preclassic Period, small villages started growing into cities. Nakbe in the Petén department of Guatemala is the earliest well-documented city in the Maya lowlands where large structures have been dated to about 750 BC. The northern lowlands of Yucatán were extensively settled by the Middle Preclassic.
Early Maya rulers were raising stelae by about 400 BC. By the 3rd century BC, a developed script was already in use in Petén. In the Late Preclassic Period, El Mirador expanded to around 16 square kilometers (6.2 sq mi) of area. Though much smaller, Tikal had already become a substantial city around 350 BC.
In the highlands, Kaminaljuyu became a principal center in the Late Preclassic. Takalik Abaj and Chocolá were among the most important cities on the Pacific coastal plain, and Komchen grew to become an important site in northern Yucatán. The Late Preclassic cultural florescence collapsed in the 1st century AD and many of the great Maya cities of the epoch were abandoned; the cause of this collapse is unknown.
Classic period (c. 250–900 AD)
The Classic period is generally defined as the period when the lowland Maya erected dated monuments based on the Long Count calendar. This was the time when large-scale construction and urbanism reached their peak, when monumental inscriptions were recorded, and when intellectual and artistic development flourished, especially in the southern regions of the lowlands.
This kind of political landscape between Classic period Maya city-states was often described as somewhat comparable to that of Renaissance Italy or Classical Greece-with scores of city-states involved in complex networks of alliances and ennemies. The largest cities housed populations of 50,000 to 120,000 inhabitants, linked by networks of subsidiary sites.
In the Early Classic, cities across the Maya region were touched by the distant metropolis of Teotihuacan in the Valley of Mexico. In AD 378, Teotihuacan intervened at Tikal and other local cities, overthrew their rulers, and established a new dynasty under the influence of Teotihuacan.
This was headed by Siyaj Kʼakʼ (“Born of Fire”), who reached Tikal in early 378. The king of Tikal, Chak Tok Ichʼaak I, died on the same day, indicating that this was a violent coup. A year later, Siyaj Kʼakʼ saw the installation of a new king, Yax Nuun Ahiin I, and this marked a period of political supremacy when Tikal became the most powerful city in the central lowlands.
A major rival of Tikal was Calakmul, another powerful city in the Petén Basin. Both Tikal and Calakmul developed elaborate systems of allies and vassals; lesser cities that entered one of these networks gained prestige from their association with the top-tier city, and maintained peaceful relations with members of the network.
Tikal and Calakmul competed in the manipulation of their alliance networks against each other. At various times in the Classic period, one or the other of these super-powers would win some crucial victory over its super-power rival, and there then follow respective periods of florescence and decline.
In 629, Bʼalaj Chan Kʼawiil, a son of the Tikal king Kʼinich Muwaan Jol II, was sent to found a new city at Dos Pilas, in the Petexbatún region, apparently as an outpost to extend Tikal’s power beyond the reach of Calakmul. For the next two decades he fought loyally for his brother and overlord at Tikal. In 648, king Yuknoom Chʼeen II of Calakmul captured Bʼalaj Chan Kʼawiil. Yuknoom Chʼeen II then restituted Bʼalaj Chan Kʼawiil to his throne of Dos Pilas as his vassal. He thereafter served a loyal ally of Calakmul.
In the southeast, the most important city was Copán. Its dynasty of the Classic period was founded by Kʼinich Yax Kʼukʼ Moʼ in 426. The new king had close relations with central Petén and Teotihuacan. In fact, Uaxaclajuun Ubʼaah Kʼawiil had been in power from 695 to 738 at the apex of Copán’s cultural and artistic development. Catastrophic was the final episode of his reign, however; a vassal, King Kʼakʼ Tiliw Chan Yopaat of Quiriguá, seized him as prisoner.
From Quiriguá he was dragged back to the capital city where he met his public death by beheading. It is probable that this coup was supported by Calakmul, to weaken a powerful ally of Tikal. Palenque and Yaxchilan were the two most important cities in the Usumacinta region. In the highlands, Kaminaljuyu in the Valley of Guatemala was already a sprawling city by 300. In the north of the Maya area, Coba was the most important capital.
Classic Maya collapse
In the 9th century AD, the central Maya region experienced significant political collapse, which was manifested in the abandonment of cities, the end of dynasties, and the northward shift of activity. No single theory fully explains this collapse, although it probably had a complex mix of causes, such as endemic internecine warfare, overpopulation with severe environmental degradation, and drought. In the Terminal Classic period, cities of the north at Chichen Itza and Uxmal were bustling. Northern Yucatán cities remained inhabited throughout even though southern lowlands’ cities had stopped constructing monuments centuries earlier.
Classic Maya social organization was based on the ritual authority of the ruler, rather than central control of trade and food distribution. This model was poorly structured to respond to changes, because the ruler’s actions were limited by tradition to such activities as construction, ritual, and warfare. This only served to exacerbate systemic problems. By the 9th and 10th centuries, this resulted in the collapse of this system of rulership.
In the northern Yucatán, individual rule was replaced by a ruling council formed from elite lineages. In the southern Yucatán and central Petén, kingdoms declined; in western Petén and some other areas, the changes were catastrophic and resulted in the rapid depopulation of cities. Within a couple of generations, large swathes of the central Maya area were all but abandoned.
Both the capitals and their secondary centres were generally abandoned within a period of 50 to 100 years. One by one, cities stopped sculpting dated monuments; the last Long Count date was inscribed at Toniná in 909. Stelae were no longer raised, and squatters moved into abandoned royal palaces. Mesoamerican trade routes shifted and bypassed Petén.
Postclassic period (c. 950–1539 AD)
Even greatly diminished, a significant Maya population persisted into the Postclassic period, following the abandonment of the major cities of the Classic period; the population was strongly concentrated near permanent sources of water. Unlike during other phases of contraction, lands that were abandoned in the Postclassic did not quickly get repopulated.
Activity shifted to the northern lowlands and the Maya Highlands; this may have involved migration from the southern lowlands because many Postclassic Maya groups had migration myths. Chichen Itza and its Puuc neighbors declined dramatically in the 11th century, and this may represent the final episode of Classic Period collapse. After the fall of Chichen Itza, there was no central power in the Maya region until the rise of the city of Mayapan during the 12th century. New cities sprouted on the Caribbean and Gulf coasts and new trade networks were built.
The Postclassic Period was characterized by alterations from the preceding Classic Period. Once a great city, Kaminaljuyu in the Valley of Guatemala was abandoned after nearly 2,000 years of continuous occupation. Throughout the highlands and adjacent Pacific coast, cities in exposed locations that had been occupied for millennia were moved, apparently due to an increase in warfare.
Cities came to occupy more-easily defended hilltop locations surrounded by deep ravines, with ditch-and-wall defenses sometimes supplementing the natural terrain. One of the most important cities in the Guatemalan Highlands at this time was Qʼumarkaj, the capital of the aggressive Kʼicheʼ kingdom.
The government of Maya states, from the Yucatán to the Guatemalan highlands, was often organized as joint rule by a council. However, in practice, one member of the council could be a supreme ruler, while the other members served him as advisors.
Mayapan was abandoned around 1448 after a period of political, social, and environmental turmoil that in many ways repeated the Classic period collapse in the southern Maya region. The abandonment of the city ushered in a period of protracted war, diseases, and natural disasters to the Yucatán, which only ceased a couple of years before the time of Spanish contact in 1511.
Even so, without a dominant capital at the regional level, rich coastal cities and active mercados were described by the early Spanish explorers. Late in the Postclassic period, the Yucatán Peninsula was made up of several independent provinces with similar high culture but divergent interior sociopolitical organizations.
On the eve of conquest by the Spanish, various powerful Maya states dominated Guatemala’s highlands. There Kʼicheʼ had created a small empire that covered a significant western part of the Guatemalan Highlands and the neighbouring Pacific coastal plain. Yet during the decades preceding the Spanish conquest, the Kaqchikel kingdom had been relentlessly eroding the kingdom of the Kʼicheʼ.
Contact period and Spanish conquest (1511–1697 AD)
In 1511, a Spanish caravel was wrecked in the Caribbean, and about a dozen survivors made landfall on the coast of Yucatán. They were seized by a Maya lord, and most were sacrificed, though two escaped. From 1517 to 1519, three separate Spanish expeditions explored the Yucatán coast and engaged in a number of battles with the Maya inhabitants. After the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan fell to the Spanish in 1521, Hernán Cortés despatched Pedro de Alvarado to Guatemala with 180 cavalry, 300 infantry, 4 cannons, and thousands of allied warriors from central Mexico; they arrived in Soconusco in 1523.
The Kʼicheʼ capital, Qʼumarkaj, fell to Alvarado in 1524. Shortly afterwards, the Spanish were invited as allies into Iximche, the capital city of the Kaqchikel Maya. Good relations did not last, as the Spanish were demanding too much gold as tribute, and the city was abandoned a few months later. This was followed by the loss of Zaculeu, Mam Maya capital, in 1525.
Francisco de Montejo and his son, Francisco de Montejo the Younger, set off a long series of campaigns against the polities of the Yucatán Peninsula in 1527, and finally completed the conquest of the northern part of the peninsula in 1546. This left only the Maya kingdoms of the Petén Basin independent. In 1697, Martín de Ursúa attacked the Itza capital Nojpetén, and the last independent Maya city fell to the Spanish.
Persistence of Maya culture
The Spanish conquest stripped away most of the defining features of Maya civilization. However, many Maya villages remained remote from Spanish colonial authority, and for the most part continued to manage their own affairs. Maya communities and the nuclear family maintained their traditional day-to-day life. The basic Mesoamerican diet of maize and beans continued, although agricultural output was improved by the introduction of steel tools.
Traditional crafts such as weaving, ceramics, and basketry continued to be practiced. Community markets and trade in local products continued long after the conquest. At times, the colonial administration encouraged the traditional economy in order to extract tribute in the form of ceramics or cotton textiles, although these were usually made to European specifications.
Maya beliefs and language proved resistant to change, despite vigorous efforts by Catholic missionaries. The 260-day tzolkʼin ritual calendar continues in use in modern Maya communities in the highlands of Guatemala and Chiapas, and millions of Mayan-language speakers inhabit the territory in which their ancestors developed their civilization.
Investigation of Maya civilization
The agents of the Catholic Church wrote detailed accounts of the Maya, in support of their efforts at Christianization and absorption of the Maya into the Spanish Empire. A myriad of other Spanish priests and colonial officials then followed up on writing descriptions of ruins they had visited in Yucatán and Central America.
In 1839, American traveler and writer John Lloyd Stephens went to visit a number of Maya sites with English architect and draftsman Frederick Catherwood. Their illustrated accounts of the ruins sparked strong popular interest and brought the Maya to world attention. The later 19th century saw the recording and recovery of ethnohistoric accounts of the Maya, and the first steps in deciphering Maya hieroglyphs.
The last two decades of the 19th century were the birth of modern scientific archaeology in the Maya region, thanks to the meticulous work of Alfred Maudslay and Teoberto Maler. By the early 20th century, the Peabody Museum was sponsoring excavations at Copán and in the Yucatán Peninsula.
It is during the first two decades of the 20th century that advances were made in deciphering the Maya calendar, identification of deities, dates, and religious concepts. Since the 1930s, archaeological exploration had dramatically increased, with large-scale excavations across the Maya region.
In the 1960s, Mayanist J. Eric S. Thompson promoted the concept that Maya cities were almost empty ceremonial centers serving a dispersed population in the forest, and that the Maya civilization was governed by pacific astronomer-priests. These ideas have begun to collapse with important advances in the decipherment of the script in the final decades of the 20th century, pioneered by Heinrich Berlin, Tatiana Proskouriakoff, and Yuri Knorozov.
Since the 1950s, breakthroughs in understanding of Maya script had been made, and it revealed the warlike activities of the Classic Maya kings, which undermined the view of the Maya as being peaceful.
Continue in the Next Part
