Maya Carvings on El Castillo, Xunantunich, Belize. Taken by Jennifer Robertson
"It lay before us like a shattered bark in the midst of the ocean, her masts gone, her name effaced, her crew perished, and none to tell whence she came, to whom she belonged, how long on her voyage, or what caused her destruction."
John Lloyd Stephens, American lawyer and explorer - comments after discovering something strange in the Honduran jungle, which turned out to be the Maya city of Copan.
Maya Timeline
2600 BC – Maya civilization began as a simple group of farmers (Central America at the time was grassland)
2000 BC – Maya villages, temples, pottery and ceramics began to appear
1500 BC to 300 AD – The “Pre-Classic” period of Maya culture when their language developed. They experienced a population growth and large towns were constructed. The grasslands turned into jungles.
250 to 900 AD – The Maya perfected the most complex writing system in the hemisphere, mastered mathematics and astrological calendars with amazing accuracy. Construction of massive pyramids all over Central America and Mexico appeared. The Maya land was becoming overburdened as a population explosion began to take hold.
750 to 900 AD – The collapse of the empire began around 750 AD. Shortly after 900 AD the Maya as a society ceased to exist.
Who were the Maya?
The image painted for most people about the Maya is one of a lost civilization shrouded in the mist and thick jungles of Central America and Mexico. They left behind vast cities, tombs filled with treasure, cryptic inscriptions few people can decipher, evidence of an advanced society, and the total mystery of where they went. Scholars believed for years they were a peaceful people who worshipped time and were ruled by priests. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
In the 1960’s hieroglyphic discoveries clearly displayed that the dates, which began the majority of inscriptions, were dates in Maya history, not evidence that they were time worshippers. As the enigma of the carvings was unraveled, scientists read stories of kings communicating with gods and ancestors. Ritual sacrifices were commonplace. A picture of fierce kings who lead their warriors gloriously and heroically into numerous battles became clear. It is this time of war and sacrifice, from 750 to 900 AD, that archeologists must examine to find out why this once mighty empire dissolved into virtual extinction.
Maya Society
In order to maintain control over the populace and their borders, Maya rulers were often at war with their neighbors who were also Maya. Imagine feudal Europe, put it in the middle of the jungle and you'd have a classic Maya society. Kings, queens, princesses, and princes ruled the commoners while valiant warriors, who would not hesitate to die for their king, charged into battle.
However, Maya war was based on the constant need for captives, unlike the European kings who fought to expand their kingdom. The reason for this - human sacrifice. Instead of killing one of their own, the Maya would use a captive. If that captive also happened to be a high ranking noble, then the sacrifice would be all the more pleasing to the gods and would give the ruler performing the sacrifice even more prestige.
If a member of the Maya community was sacrificed they would be sent to the Otherworld, one of the three layers of the Maya universe. The upper layer represented the celestial realm of the stars, which the Maya believed were the glorified ancestors. The middle layer was the Earth, in which the living Maya resided. The lower level was the Otherworld. The Maya called it Xibalba or "Place of Awe," and it was filled with gods, ancestors, and other supernatural creatures like dragons. The modern Maya believe everything in Xibalba to be in reverse of how it is here. For instance, when you eat meat there it is raw. It is cold and dark as opposed to Earth, which is warm and full of light. When it is day here, it is night there.
The king, a shaman priest, could access Xibalba. He would manifest the divine in the material world of humans. His power lay not only in his line of descent from the previous ruler, but also was based largely upon how well he could conduct rituals that served to open the portal to the Xibalba. Once he opened the portal, the king could bring gods and glorified ancestors into the world of the living and commune with these supernatural beings.
The method by which the king accessed Xibalba was through bloodletting, a form of self-sacrifice. Picture an immense crowd at the base of the enormous blood red pyramid. They have been standing for hours in the oppressive heat of the Central American jungle. No one moves. The commoners, eyes are fixed on the building's summit, where the king, his head adorned with feathers, is about to emerge from a sacred chamber with instructions from his ancestors. The crowd sees no movement but they know what’s happening. In the chamber, the king is lifted into the next world by hallucinogenic drugs. He will take an obsidian blade or the spine of a stingray, pierce his own penis, and then draw a rope through the wound, letting the blood drip onto bits of bark paper. Then he will set the bark on fire, and out of the rising smoke a vision of a serpent will appear.
When the king finally emerges and reveals himself to the crowd, on the verge of collapse, he reaches under his loincloth, shows his bloodstained hand and announces the ancestors' message. It is the same message he has received many times in the past: "Prepare to go to war." The crowd erupts in riotous cheers.
It is this message from the ancestors that would take a large role in the ultimate demise of this civilization.
Where did they go?
In recent years many Mayanists have come to agree that the breakdown of the Maya society was in a large part because of water shortages and overpopulation. But it was uncontrolled warfare that was the main cause of their downfall. Towards the end of their existence, around 900 AD, skirmishes that were common among competing city-states escalated into full-fledged, vicious wars that turned the imposing cities into ghost towns. Any remaining Maya fled to the mountains to live solitary lives, once again as simple farmers.
As they excavate deeper into the Maya past, archaeologists and other scientists still struggle to make sense of this legacy of triumph and self-destruction. But instead of seeing a sad existence that ended in self-destruction, David Freidel, anthropologist at Southern Methodist University, prefers to see it like this: "When I see their past, what I see are not just the failures of human effort, of human imagination, but that unquenchable desire to make of life a meaningful thing." And that’s just what the Maya did. Although their existence as a civilization failed, their time was one of great progress that still affects the world today. And their proud ancestors are here to tell the tale.
A tourist visiting Palenque, Mexico, stared in awe at the towering pyramids then turned to his guide and said, "The buildings are beautiful, but where did all the people go?" The guide, a descendant of the Maya, shaking his head at the irony said, "We're still here. We never left."
Where you can find them today
Looking at the gray ruins of Mayan architecture today, it is hard to imagine that they were originally painted in bright colors, red, white, yellow and green, inside and out. But you can certainly appreciate the ingenuity and work that went into these ancient cities, built by the hands of stone-age people with little more than tools made of stone. You can see this amazing artistry at extensive sites throughout Central America and Mexico today. Below is a listing of a few, although there are far more, and new sites are being discovered regularly.
Guatemala: El Mirador, Río Azúl, Kaminaljuyú, Tikal Belize: Xunantunich, Lamanai, El Pilar, Caracol, Altun Ha Yucatan: Labna, Sayil, Kabah, Dzibanché, Uxmal, Xlapak Honduras: Copan Mexico: Palenque, Chichen Itza, Tulum, Coba, Chinkultic
