Maya civilization developed in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, and Honduras in the eastern part of Central America, the part of the word that archaeologists refer to as Eastern Mesoamerica.6 The Maya cultural heartland encompassed a number of different environments and ecologies, from the lowland and dry northern Yucatan Peninsula to the much more rainy forested southern Maya lowlands of northern Guatemala (the department of Peten) and Belize to the cooler highlands of Guatemala and Chiapas (and Honduras) to parts of the hot and fertile Pacific Coast of Guatemala (and neighboring Chiapas in Mexico to the north and coastal El Salvador to the south, all called the Soconusco area) (Figure 1.1; Table 1.1).
Although other parts of Mesoamerica were first occupied earlier in time (12000-10000 BC), evidence for human hunter-gatherers in the Maya lowlands (particularly, Belize) is dated to circa 5000-3400 BC (Zeitlin and Zeitlin 2000; Rosenswig and Masson 2001; Lohse 2010; Lohse et al. 2006; Hammond 2007). Microfossil and pollen studies (Pohl et al. 1996, 2007; Wahl et al. 2006) have revealed that initial burning of the forests in the southern Maya lowlands and the first appearance of maize and manioc co-occurred between 3000 and 2500 BC. However, no sedentary human settlements (or pottery) have been discovered for these first agriculturalists during the fourth or third millennium BC, and this remains a mystery. One possible explanation is that even though the earliest Maya were experimenting with agriculture, they may have maintained a highly mobile lifestyle. Another possible explanation is that climate and/or cultural changes may have erased or covered these earliest sites (Lohse et al. 2006, 210). Whatever the explanation, sedentism together with agriculture and pottery-making finally took root in the Maya lowlands between 1200 and 1000 BC, 600 years later than in other parts of Mesoamerica (Hammond 1991b, 2007; Lohse et al. 2006; Estrada-Belli 2011). Small to large villages appeared all over the southern Maya lowlands, including Colha, Cuello, K’axob, Blackwater Eddy and Cahal Pech in Belize and Tikal, Altar de Sac-rificios, Ceibal, and central Peten lakes sites in Guatemala. Residents of these villages also made the first pottery of the Maya lowlands, but there are a number of styles (called Cunil, Swasey, Eb, and Xe), which show some cultural distinctions between the inhabitants of these zones (Ball and
Figure 1.1. Map of the Maya region. After Willey 1986, Figure 2.1.
Taschek 2003; Cheetham 2005; Cheetham et al. 2003; Garber, Brown, and Hartman 2002; Garber et al. 2004; but see Lohse 2010).
Significant social, economic, and political inequality increased rapidly at specific sites, so that by 900-700 BC (or the beginning of the Middle Preclassic period), we see public architecture, including open raised platforms, temple-pyramids, astronomically associated E-Groups and ball courts at such sites as Komchen in northern Yucatan, Nakbe in northern Peten, and Kaminaljuyu in the southern Maya highlands, to name the most famous (Andrews and Robles 2004; Clark and Hansen 2001; Hansen 1998; Hatch 1997; Valdes and Hatch 1996).7 For example, Nakbe had an 18-meter-high temple-pyramid by 600 BC and exhibited differential access to prestige goods and significant differences in residential mound sizes (Hansen 1998), all markers of considerable socioeconomic inequality and centralized control of human labor, typical features of chiefdoms (Clark and Hansen 2001). Excavations at Cival in eastern Peten also revealed the massive scale of plaza construction, which involved the leveling of a hilltop during the Middle Preclassic, circa 800 BC, a process that required over 1.3 million cubic meters of boulders (Estrada-Belli 2011, 75-77). Even though this type of construction is not as impressive or as visible as the temple pyramids of later times, it involved major amounts of human labor. In spite of these increasing social distinctions, pottery styles across the northern and southern Maya lowlands (the Mamom ceramic sphere) were much more similar than they had been in earlier time periods, suggesting a more unified cultural vision for all Maya sites.
The evolution of the first states marks the major transformation of the Late Preclassic period in the Maya region. Even though scholars have traditionally defined the onset of the Classic period with the appearance of the first Maya states, there is significant archaeological evidence for the emergence of the first cities, writing, and kingship in the last two centuries BC and the first two centuries AD. The site of El Mirador in northern Peten is without doubt the first city in the Maya region and was the capital of a Maya state. At 16 square kilometers and approximately 50,000 residents, it rivaled Late Classic Tikal in overall settlement and population size (Ma-theny 1987; Hansen 1990, 1994, 1998). Its two largest temple-pyramids, the Danta and Tigre Pyramids, rise 72 and 55 meters high, respectively (Hansen 1990; Matheny 1986, 1987), comparable in height to modern 18-story skyscrapers! The scale of these pyramids is incredible. For example, the Danta complex is larger than the combined size of the North Acropolis, the Central Acropolis, and Great Plaza of later Classic Tikal. Furthermore, many of these massive constructions were built in one phase. Ongoing excavations at the site and its periphery have led to increasing hints about its complexity. For example, field systems at the site were enriched with dark soil from the bajos (seasonal wetlands) surrounding El Mirador, and causeways connected the site with other centers such as Nakbe and Tintal, 12 and 18 kilometers away. We also have some clues about the possible causes of El Mirador’s collapse at the end of the Preclassic. Massive use of stucco in construction to make 12-centimeter-thick floors and smooth surfaces on structural terraces and walls may have caused insurmountable deforestation (Hansen 1998; Hansen et al. 2002; Hansen et al. 2007; Wahl et al. 2006). The site was mostly abandoned by AD 150, but we need to further investigate the causes of its disintegration. While the production of stucco may have contributed, at the same time, climatic changes caused water sources in northern and eastern Peten to diminish, impacting agricultural systems in the bajo swamps surrounding El Mirador (Hansen et al. 2002; Wahl et al. 2006; Estrada-Belli 2011; Scarborough 1993).
Although El Mirador surpassed other settlements in size (and probably influence; see Clark et al. 2000), there are signs of similarly increasing complexity at other centers in the Maya lowlands, such as Tikal, Uaxac-tun, Cival, and San Bartolo in Peten, Guatemala; Lamanai and Cerros in Belize; Calakmul, Dzibilchaltun, and Komchen in the Yucatan Peninsula; and Kaminaljuyu, Izapa, and Takalik Abaj in the southern Maya highlands and coast. These sites also show monumental temple-pyramids (many decorated with giant stucco masks of different deities), stelae, the first hieroglyphs, and the iconographic symbols associated with Classic Maya rulership (such as the trilobed Jester God and the sign of ajaw, “lord”) (Laporte and Fialko 1995; Valdes 1995; Estrada-Belli 2011; Pendergast 1981; Freidel 1986; Schele and Freidel 1990; Hatch 1997; Schieber de Lavarreda and Orrego Corzo 2001; Saturno 2006, 2009; Saturno, Stuart, and Beltran 2006; Houston and Inomata 2009). Although they are fragmentary and lack glyphs, Late Preclassic stelae include male figures that may be early rulers or deities, and their style and structure make them clear precursors to the Early Classic stone monuments that center on the images of kings.
The most remarkable recent discovery has been the murals at the site of San Bartolo in northeastern Peten, Guatemala. Dating to the first century BC, these brilliant polychrome murals present scenes dealing with the myth of the creation of the Maya cosmos, involving the Maize God and Hunahpu (one of the Hero Twins, the central characters of the Quiche origin mythology called the Popol Vuh written in the sixteenth century by Quiche Mayas; Tedlock 1986), bloodletting, and even the coronation of a human ruler or paramount god (Saturno 2006, 2009; Saturno, Taube, and Stuart 2005; Saturno, Stuart, and Beltran 2006). The sophistication of the cosmology (and glyphic writing) already present in these murals and their similarity to mythological scenes painted in the Postclassic Maya barkpa-per book called the Dresden Codex and to the later Popol Vuh is remarkable: it shows cultural and religious continuity from the Late Preclassic into the Postconquest Colonial period, over almost 2,000 years.
The cultural splendor of the Late Preclassic states in the Maya lowlands was disturbed to some degree as some sites were abandoned, possibly as a domino effect of the collapse of the much larger El Mirador (Hansen et al. 2007; see also an excellent discussion of the Preclassic Maya civilization in Estrada-Belli 2011). However, certain sites benefited; Calakmul, Tikal, Holmul, Rio Azul, and other sites in central-eastern Peten and Campeche (zones that surrounded El Mirador) exploded in the Early Classic period (250-600 AD).
The Early Classic was as tumultuous as the earlier periods. One major political transformation was the centering of public art and writing on the ruler. While monumental art during the Late Preclassic generally depicted different deities8 that were important in Maya cosmology (e. g., the Sun Jaguar God, the Venus God, and the Principal Bird Deity or Itzamnaaj)9 as large-scale stucco masks on the facades of temple-pyramids, monumental art in the Early Classic shifted to stelae in which the kings are depicted emblazoned with symbols of supernaturals. These signs of change point to the centralization of the ruler’s power: While his claim to power in the Late Preclassic was drawn entirely from the religious sphere, by the Early Classic, he had gained sufficient power that he could depict himself as the intercessor with these supernatural forces. Also noteworthy is that evidence for royal tombs in the Late Preclassic is rare, although this may be caused by the undersampling of such monumental contexts or by a pattern of burial in residences rather than in temples or pyramids (Houston and Inomata 2009; Hansen 1998; Estrada-Belli 2011, 55-64). There is no scarcity of rich royal tombs during the Early Classic period. The most famous ones are those located deep in the North Acropolis at Tikal and the looted painted tombs of Rio Azul (Coggins 1975; Martin and Grube 2008; Adams 1999; see also Krecji and Culbert 1995 for a discussion of Early Classic burials and the significant differentiation between elite and commoner interments that arose in the middle of the Early Classic). Both the art and the tomb evidence highlight that there was a qualitative change in the institution of Maya kingship from the Late Preclassic to the Early Classic. From that point on, Classic Maya art in the southern lowlands (and to a lesser degree in the northern lowlands) was all about the “doings” of the “rich and famous” (Miller 1999).
The role of Teotihuacan (a major city in central Mexico and possibly the capital of a highland Mexican empire; Smith and Montiel 2001; White et al. 2002) at Tikal, Copan, El Peru-Waka, La Sufricaya, Kaminaljuyu, and other Maya sites during the Early Classic has sparked an intense debate among Mesoamerican archaeologists (Braswell 2003; Stuart 2000; Estrada-Belli et al. 2009). The nature of the historical events remains unclear but the story begins with the arrival at Tikal on January 16 in AD 378 of a noble warrior named Sihyaj K’ahk’ (Smoking Frog), who wore a costume reminiscent of the attire of Teotihuacan warriors and who had the title of kaloomte’, or “great king” On that same day, Tikal’s king, Chak Tok Ich’aak I (or Great Jaguar Paw), died (Schele and Freidel 1990; Martin and Gr-ube 2000, 2008; Estrada-Belli et al. 2009, 241). It is unlikely that this was pure coincidence, and thus most scholars attribute the death of Chak Tok Ich’aak I to Sihyaj K’ahk’, the newly arrived “great king” However, we still don’t know who the latter individual was or where he came from. Contact between the Maya and Teotihuacan civilizations occurred both before and after this day, as reflected in the adoption of the architectural style of Teotihuacan for some structures at certain Maya sites, the use of Teotihuacan symbols and ceramic forms at some Maya sites, and the importation of a few Teotihuacan prestige items (such as green obsidian, Thin Orange and stuccoed pottery, censers and figurines from Teotihuacan) (Demarest and Foias 1993). Scholars debate whether this contact was based on interaction among elites and emulation triggered by intense competition within and between Maya royal houses or whether it involved an actual conquest of Tikal by a Teotihuacan contingent led by Sihyaj K’ahk’ (Braswell 2003; Demarest and Foias 1993; Stuart 2000; Estrada-Belli et al. 2009). The solution may be that Sihyaj K’ahk’ was accompanying a contender to Tikal’s throne, a child named Yax Nuun Ayiin I (or Curl Snout), who became the next ruler of the city (Braswell 2003; Martin and Grube 2000; Laporte and Fialko 1990; Estrada-Belli 2011, 122-26). Most important, though, there is no cultural fracture at Tikal; Yax Nuun Ayiin I married a Maya woman, and his son, Sihyaj Chan K’awiil (or Stormy Sky), became the next ruler and marked himself as the sixteenth dynast in a long line of Tikal kings (Martin and Grube 2000). Furthermore, stable strontium isotope analysis of the
Multiple skeletons of Burial 10 (the royal tomb of Yax Nuun Ayiin I) has revealed that they are all local individuals, not foreigners (Wright 2005).
There is also a connection between Copan, Tikal, and Teotihuacan. The founder of Copan’s royal dynasty, K’ihnich Yax K’uk’ Mo, is depicted on Altar Q (a monument that portrays the complete dynastic line of Copan with each ruler seated above his name in the order of his succession) with clear Teotihuacan symbols and is recorded as arriving in AD 426, possibly from Caracol (or via Tikal) (Estrada-Belli et al. 2009; Martin and Grube 2000; Stuart 2007). Stuart (2004) stresses the ritual significance of this arrival event, noting that the Copan artists recorded that he arrived from the “Place of the Reeds” (a mythical location) and was accompanied by the lightning god K’awiil, the patron god of Classic Maya kings.
Another issue with the Early Classic in the Maya lowlands is that artifacts from this period are not found at all sites that were occupied earlier in time. Some sites (e. g. Tikal, Uaxactun, and Holmul) have massive amounts of Early Classic construction, pottery, and other cultural remains, especially in central and eastern Peten, but other settlements seem to have been abandoned or retained and used ceramic styles of the previous Late Preclassic period. Whether this means that the Late Preclassic to Early Classic transition was marked by significant cultural disturbance remains to be resolved by further ceramic studies accompanied by more AMS radiocarbon dates.
The transition between the Early and Late Classic periods across the Maya region exhibits major continuities. Although pottery styles changed, and these are the critical archaeological markers of the onset of the Late Classic (AD 600-800), social, economic, and political institutions appear to have continued mostly unchanged. The Late Classic is the Golden Age of pre-Hispanic Maya civilization, with the most dense, most populous, and most complex cities; thousands of artistic masterpieces (large and small) in stone, clay, bone, stucco, and other materials; and thousands of hieroglyphic texts that have now been deciphered to reveal to us what the Maya world was like through the Mayas’ own words (albeit from a very elite perspective) (see recent and excellent overviews in Houston and Inomata 2009; McAnany 2010; Houston, Stuart, and Taube 2006; McKillop 2004; Sharer and Traxler 2006).
Signs of increasing social, political, and economic complexity from the Early Classic to the Late Classic have come to the surface, but these may be due to larger-scale archaeological explorations of the latter time period and the impressive size of Late Classic cities and towns. The institution of kingship developed to its fullest as the Maya rulers of the Early Classic, named ajaw, became k’uhul ajaw (divine lords) in the Late Classic. Monuments and texts glorify these divine rulers and record their births, accessions, and deaths; their descent from gods in mythological time; their rituals of bloodletting, incense burning, and human sacrifice; and their conquests on the battlefield (Schele and Miller 1986; Schele and Freidel 1990; Freidel, Schele and Parker 1993; Miller and Martin 2004). Socioeconomic differences expanded as the palaces of the rulers of major cities encompassed whole complexes of courtyards and multistoried stone buildings such as the Central Acropolis at Tikal, the palace at Palenque, or the Caana Complex at Caracol. In contrast, farmers in small rural villages lived in small courtyards with houses made of adobe or perishable materials. A middle class of merchants, craft specialists, or low elites may have developed as A. Chase and D. Chase (1996) have suggested for Caracol in Belize. Although disagreements about the nature of Classic economies abound, scholars agree that markets probably existed, as they have been recently identified through archaeological and geochemical soil analyses at Chunchucmil, a major city dating mostly to the Early Classic in northwest Yucatan (Hutson et al. 2006; Dahlin and Ardren 2002; Dahlin et al. 2007, 2009); Sayil, in the Puuc area of northwest Yucatan (Smyth and Dore 1992, 1994; Smyth, Dore, and Dunning 1995); Calakmul (Carrasco Vargas, Vasquez Lopez, and Martin 2009; Boucher and Quinones 2007); and Motul de San Jose and its port of Trinidad (Dahlin et al. 2009; Bair and Terry 2012).
The three centuries of the Late Classic also show a slow process of political fragmentation. The elite class grew in numbers and prerogatives as hieroglyphic texts and monuments that had previously been exclusively associated with Early Classic royals became more widespread, especially at the end of this time. More and smaller sites declared themselves independent seats of royal power with their own emblem glyphs (essentially symbols of political independence; see Chapter 4). The extensive noble class and the increasing number of royals must have felt intense competition as areas of possible expansion diminished over time and as warfare continued and intensified (Demarest 2004, 2006; Inomata 2007).
These political processes finally came to a head, causing the Classic Maya collapse in the southern Maya lowlands. We have to use the term “collapse” carefully because we do not see evidence of a complete abandonment and cultural dissolution (Aimers 2007; McAnany and Yoffee 2010; Demarest, Castillo, and Earle 2004). Rather, a great number of political centers and regions in the southern Maya lowlands were generally abandoned, but not all and not completely. For example, some sites such as Ceibal and Altar de Sacrificios in southwest Peten and Uxmal, Kabah, Sayil, and other Puuc sites in the northwest Peten flourished during the ninth to tenth centuries AD, the period generally identified as the Terminal Classic (AD 800-950). In Belize, Lamanai was never abandoned and continued into the Postclassic period (AD 950-1542). The northern Maya lowlands did not suffer such a collapse; although some sites (mostly in the Puuc region) were abandoned, others were founded and grew in the rest of the peninsula.
The Classic Maya “collapse” did not happen suddenly; it was an uneven domino-like dissolution that took place over a century or two. The long duration of the collapse disproves theories that involve sudden epidemics or earthquakes. The collapse entailed the disintegration of the general political system in place during the Classic period-divine kingship and the elaborate rituals and constructions that sustained it. There is little consensus about the causes of the Maya collapse in the southern lowlands. Demarest (2004, 2006) and others support social causes for this political disintegration, while others point to environmental change and degradation, including droughts and/or deforestation, as the primary forces (Gill 2000; see also discussion in Aimers 2007, Lucero 2002). The reason why we cannot point to one cause is that different factors contributed to collapse in the distinct zones of the lowlands. Drought and deforestation may have been important in some regions (such as Copan and Calakmul) but not in all (see the absence of evidence for deforestation or declining health status among Petexbatun populations in Wright and White 1996; Wright 2006). In several recent contributions, Aimers (2007), Demarest et al. (2004), and Lopez Varela and Foias (2005) provide a comprehensive overview of the variability and complexity of the processes involved in the collapse across the Maya lowlands.
Although the southern Maya lowlands were not completely abandoned, the center of activity and power shifted to the northern Maya lowlands and southern Maya highlands during the Postclassic.10 It is possible that population movements from the southern Maya lowlands into the Yucatan and highlands were part of this transition, as myths about migrations by different ethnic groups are common among the Postclassic Mayas (see, for example, the migrations of the Peten Itza in Jones 1998; Rice and Rice 2009). Furthermore, rapid population growth at both Uxmal and Chichen Itza in Yucatan support such migrations (Dunning 1992; Schmidt 2007).
Two Yucatan cities appear to have dominated the politics of the Postclassic (Chichen Itza and Mayapan), although other sizeable centers in the northern lowlands flourished from the Terminal Classic to the Postclassic (including the Puuc centers and Ek Balam, Coba, and Dzibilchaltun). Chichen Itza became the dominant city from the end of the Late Classic-Terminal Classic (AD 750-950) through the Early Postclassic (AD 950-1100) (Milbrath and Peraza Lope 2003; Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007; Cobos 2004), although it was in competition with the other major cities mentioned above (Ringle et al. 2004; Cobos 2004).11 Traditionally archaeologists thought that Mayapan followed Chichen Itza by a century or so, but recent excavations at Mayapan and chronological reinterpretations of the ethnohistorical documents have pushed the occupation of this site back to the eleventh century AD, thus contemporary with the collapse of Chichen Itza (Milbrath and Peraza Lope 2003; Masson, Hare, and Peraza Lope 2006).
A great deal of debate has surrounded Chichen Itza because of similarities in architecture, art, and layout with the highland Mexican city of Tula (generally placed between AD 900 and 1200) and because of references in ethnohistorical documents written after the Spanish Conquest to the conquest of Chichen Itza by the foreign Itzas and Toltec warriors (Thompson 1970; Schele and Freidel 1990). This interpretation of Chichen Itza as Tula’s outpost has been revised by more recent archaeological excavations since the 1980s (for syntheses, see Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007; and Boot 2005). Chichen Itza is now seen as a cosmopolitan city that had far-ranging relationships, including with Tula, and therefore produced architecture and art that were more international than the art and architecture of the previous Late Classic period. Furthermore, Mayapan (AD 1050-1100 to 1450), which is often named as an example of the “decadent” Maya culture during the Late Postclassic, is now described as exhibiting innovative art styles similar to the art of Chichen Itza for similar reasons. Milbrath and Peraza Lope (2003) write that “newly discovered murals and sculptures reveal Mayapan’s role at the crossroads of cultural contact between the Central Mexican and Mayan areas” (1).12 Kowalski (2007) suggests that the use of foreign symbols in Terminal Classic to Postclassic Yucatan centers is due to political forces. New elites appear to have founded these cities in the aftermath of the collapse of the southern Maya states and to have searched for new symbols of power as a way of legitimating themselves.
Political structures also shifted during the Postclassic. While Classic Maya art extolled the political and ritual power of one individual, the k’uhul ajaw, or “divine ruler” who also built massive temple-pyramids, Postclassic rulers are rarely depicted in art and are even more rarely named, and monumental construction diminished. Instead, large, open, colonnaded halls that hosted reunions of elite lineages or lineage councils were preferred, and Postclassic art became a compendium of humans, gods, processions, warriors, and battles and rarely centered on one larger-than-life ruler (see more discussion in Ringle and Bey 2001; Kowalski 2007; Milbrath and Peraza Lope 2003; and Chapters 4 and 5). The absence of elaborate tombs at Mayapan and Chichen Itza supports this theory of a political shift (Schele and Freidel 1990; Schmidt 2007). Even though there may have been a paramount ruler, elite lineages or houses counterbalanced his power through councils (see more discussion in Chapters 5 and 6).
Although Chichen Itza and Mayapan may have been contemporary, they were not friendly with each other. Instead, there is evidence (albeit ambiguous evidence) that these cities were enemies. The Books of Chilam Balam of Mani state that the ruler of Mayapan, Hunac Ceel, fought and defeated the ruler of Chichen Itza, Chac Xib Chac (Roys 1967, 177-79), but it is unclear when this occurred: “Many scholars now place [the event] . . . early in Mayapan’s history and contemporary with Chichen Itza’s decline” (Milbrath and Peraza Lope 2003, 37). If this dating is correct, it argues that the fall of Chichen Itza was caused by Mayapan, but since both sites were dominated by Itza families, the political upheaval was an internal struggle between competing “blue-blood” families. Milbrath and Peraza Lope hypothesize that the original founders of Mayapan may have included three groups: Maya groups from Yucatan’s east coast, Xius from western Yucatan, and a small contingent from Chichen Itza (38).
Warfare permeates Terminal Classic to Postclassic art in the northern Maya lowlands more than in the south during earlier times (Ringle et al. 2004, 506-11). At Chichen Itza, murals and carvings show battles in progress or processions of warriors. For example, the dozens of warriors carved on the stone columns that allowed entrance into the Temple of the Warriors record processions following victories by Chichen’s army (Schele and Freidel 1990) and murals in the Upper Temple of the Jaguars and in Las Monjas show sieges of walled settlements (Ringle et al. 2004). At Mayapan, skeletal figures, some with niches where human skulls would have been placed, have been recently uncovered on an earlier temple within the Castillo, the largest pyramid at the site (Milbrath and Peraza Lope 2003). Defensive perimeter walls are also more common in the northern Maya lowlands; they have been found at Ek Balam, Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Mayapan, Tu-lum, Yaxuna, Cuca, Chacchob, and Muna, among others (Ringle et al. 2004; Webster 1978; Kurjack and Garza T. 1981), and although their function is
Not completely clear (Ringle et al. 2004), they may suggest that Postclassic Maya society was increasingly bellicose (Schele and Freidel 1990). The flourishing traffic in slaves (see below) during the Postclassic may be one impetus for this escalation in militarism.
Economic pursuits also appear to be more at the forefront in the Postclassic at Chichen Itza and Mayapan, leading to suggestions that these cities were part of a world system that encompassed most of Mesoamerica during the Postclassic (Kepecs et al. 1994; Kowalski 2007). Chichen Itza was connected to the port of Isla Cerritos and the salt flats along the north coast of Yucatan Peninsula (Andrews et al. 1988), and a similar control over salt production has been suggested for Mayapan (Tozzer 1941; Andrews 1983; Milbrath and Peraza Lope 2003). The white salt produced on these north coast flats was especially desired by the Aztecs (Kepecs et al. 1994). Apart from salt, the Yucatan Peninsula was famous for a number of other goods or raw materials that were highly prized by the rest of Mesoamerica, including blue pigment (found only in the zone of Mayapan), honey, cotton, and slaves (Milbrath and Peraza Lope 2003, 30; Kepecs, Feinman, and Boucher 1994, 149; Tozzer 1941). Both Chichen Itza and Mayapan have revealed evidence of foreign imports from afar, such as obsidian from Veracruz, highland Guatemala, western Mexico, and central Mexico; metalwork from Michoacan; turquoise discs from northwestern Mexico; Tohil Plum-bate from highland and coastal western Guatemala; jadeite from eastern Guatemala; and cultural influences from central Mexico (Toltec, Aztec), Oaxaca (Mixteca-Puebla), and eastern Yucatan (Milbrath and Peraza Lope 2003; Kowalski and Kristan-Graham 2007; Cobos 2007; Braswell 1997). As a matter of fact, the cause of the collapse and burning of Mayapan around AD 1430-50 was trade: Bishop Diego de Landa writes that Mayapan was burned and abandoned when the Xiu nobles rebelled against the dominant Cocom rulers; the Cocoms were accused of desiring more wealth through trade with the “Mexicans” (presumably Aztecs) through their allies the Canuls (or “Mexicans”), whom they brought in from Tabasco and Xicalango, a known Aztec trade center and garrison, probably located at the western end of the Laguna de Terminos, Campeche (Tozzer 1941, 32, 36; Scholes and Roys 1968). Thus, Mayapan and probably Chichen Itza were international cities where multiple languages were spoken, including Chol Maya, Yucatec Maya, and probably the Nahuatl language of the Aztecs (Milbrath and Peraza Lope 2003). After Mayapan was burned, the noble families returned to their original provinces or territories, where the Spanish conquistadores encountered them in the sixteenth century. The
Cocoms lived in Sotuta, the Cupuls in the territory around Chichen Itza, the Chels (a third powerful aristocratic family) in the province called Ah Kin Chel, the Tutul Xius at Mani, and so forth (Roys 1957, 1943).
Although Chichen Itza and Mayapan were not unique in size or population, they are seen as special cities in the Postclassic history of Yucatan because they exercised some dominance over parts or most of the northern lowlands (Ringle et al. 1998, 2004; Kepecs, Feinman, and Boucher 1994). How they were able to become such dominant capitals is still debated. Some (e. g., Ringle, Gallereta Negron, and Bey 1998) see the religious role of Chichen Itza as a pilgrimage and cult center for a new international religion centered on the Feathered Serpent (Quetzalcoatl in Nahuatl, and Kukulcan in Maya) as critical:
Chichen asserted itself as a transcendent spiritual center. . . . Such ideological authority is one way in which claims of Itza dominion in Yucatan may be understood, as exerting not direct political control but rather conveying legitimacy and, not incidentally, access to the riches confirming authority. Chichen’s increasing success as the fount of legitimacy directly challenged the basis for monumental architecture elsewhere, and one by one these [other centers] . . . were abandoned. (Ringle et al. 2004, 513-14)
Other archaeologists stress the economic role of both Chichen Itza and Mayapan in long-distance pan-Mesoamerican trade networks (Andrews 1990; Freidel 1986; Kepecs, Feinman, and Boucher 1994), but as Ringle and colleagues state above, these two roles may have been intertwined. For example, the island of Cozumel, off the east coast of Yucatan, served such a double duty when the Spanish arrived in the sixteenth century: it was both a well-known trade center, where large canoes heavy with trade goods stopped on their way around the peninsula, and a religious pilgrimage center that was home to a famous oracle.
The Spanish Conquest of the Maya region occurred in several waves known as entradas. Instead of envisioning the Conquest as a rapid event, we now see these multiple entradas, which covered some 20 years, and the continued resistance by some Maya groups over the next centuries as a slower process (Restall 1998, 2003). The Spanish left us important records from their conquest of Central America. Among these, the most famous are Cortes’s account of his travels through the southern Maya lowlands (Cortes 1908) and Bishop Diego de Landa’s Relaciones de las Cosas de Yucatan (Tozzer 1941). The Mayas themselves preserved their histories in the
Books of Chilam Balam that were written in a number of cities in Yucatan (Chumayel, Mani, Tizimin, and so on) and in other types of records and accounts, such as the Popol Vuh, that describes the origins, myths, and history of the Quiche Mayas who flourished in the Guatemalan highlands during the Postclassic (Tedlock 1986). Unfortunately, these varied sources do not always agree, and some give no dates or different dates for Maya historical events (Milbrath and Peraza Lope 2003).
Early explorations of the Yucatan peninsula by the Spaniards Francisco Hernandez de Cordoba and Juan de Grijalva in the first two decades of the sixteenth century revealed impressive cities that were comparable to Seville, but the explorers had little luck in establishing a foothold as the local Mayas resisted them (Restall 1998). Because of the failure of these early explorations, the next attempts began in the northwestern part of Yucatan. These, called the first and second entradas, in 1527-28 and 1531-34, respectively, failed (Restall 1998, 9-13). Not until the third entrada in the early 1540s were the Spanish able to gain control in the northern Maya lowlands, where they established the Spanish town of Merida in 1542 (Restall 1998, 2003). By this time, European diseases that the conquistadores brought had already swept through the Maya region, killing thousands (Jones 1989, 1998; Restall 1998, 2003). The fragmentation of the Yucatan peninsula into small kingdoms after Mayapan’s collapse also did not help because the Mayas could not present a unified front against the Spanish. Thus, the Spanish found willing allies among the native states, some of which fought alongside the conquistadores against other Maya kingdoms (Restall 1998).
World History
