Palenque

A municipality in the northern part of present-day Chiapas, Mexico, the city-state of Palenque flourished in the seventh and eighth centuries, becoming one of the great centers of classical Maya civilization.

Palenque, a Hispanic name meaning “fortified place” (the Maya called Palenque B’aakal, or “Bone”), lies among thick tropical rain forest at the junction of a chain of low hills and the green floodplain of the Usumacinta River. The Palenque kingdom maintained cordial relations with other great classic kingdoms such as Tikal but antagonistic ones with Calakmul, Tonina, and Piedras Negras. Palenque prospered during the second half of the classic period of Maya civilization (ca. A. D. 514-784). During this time denizens of Palenque led the Maya world in artistic and architectural accomplishment, particularly stucco work, and possessed a great deal of celestial knowledge as well.

The growth and arrangement of Palenque could only occur after its residents figured out how to solve pressing problems. Palenque Mayans overcame the difficult terrain by constructing an elaborate series of terraces designed to provide buildings with level platforms. They also modified the terrain by diverting a small river that coursed through the site underground through a vault-roofed aqueduct. One notable terrace housed three related temple pyramids that archaeologists have named the Temples of the Sun, Cross, and Foliated Cross, collectively known as the Group of the Cross. These structures served various ideological purposes. Recently, scholars have surmised that the three buildings symbolize the Maya creation myth.

The architectural and political achievements of the Palenque Maya did not insulate them from the dramatic decline in Maya civilization that scholars designate the Great Collapse. Despite the difficulty of reconstructing the complex events that precipitated the decline, scholars agree that by the end of the eighth century the population of the Maya had exceeded the carrying capacity of the land. Over-hunting and deforestation likely contributed to endemic internecine warfare; the final devastating blow may have resulted from a drought that began around 800 and did not end until 1050.

The collapse was remarkably fast. At Palenque the final words written into the classical Maya historical record occur on a small vase found in an ordinary residential apartment, rather than as an inscription on a towering pyramid that the recording of historical memory once required. The vase inscription boasts of a great and powerful king, but scholars have discovered that the vase was made in a town north of Palenque, hardly the sign of a thriving empire. Palenque was entirely abandoned during the early 900s and reoccupied only by wandering tribesmen who lived atop the disintegrating buildings. The ruins at Palenque served as shelter for itinerant travelers for the next millennium.

Further reading: Michael D. Coe, The Maya, 6th ed. (New York: Thames & Hudson, 1999); Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube, Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens: Deciphering the Dynasties of the Ancient Maya (London: Thames & Hudson, 2000); Linda Schele and David Fre-idel, A Forest of Kings: The Untold Story of the Ancient Maya (New York: William Morrow, 1990).

—Kevin C. Armitage