The
Maya are a people of southern
Mexico and northern Central America with some 3,000 years of rich history.
The Maya were part of the Mesoamerican Pre-Columbian cultures. Contrary
to popular myth, the Maya people never "disappeared"; millions still live
in the region, many of them still speak one of the Maya family of languages.
This article will mostly concern itself with their civilization before
the conquest by Spain.
Archaelogical evidence shows the Maya started to build ceremonial architecture
some 3000 years ago. There is some disagreement as to the borders and difference
between the early Maya and their neighboring Pre-Classic Mesoamerican civilization,
the Olmec culture. The Olmec and early Maya seem to have influenced each
other.
The earliest monuments consist of simple burial mounds, the precursors
to pyramids erected in later times.
Eventually, the Olmec culture faded after spreading their influence
into the Yucatan peninsula, present-day Guatemala, and other regions.
The Maya developed the famed cities of Tikal, Palenque, Copán and Kalakmul,
as well as Dos Pilas, Uaxactun, Altun Ha, and many other sites in the area.
They developed an agriculturally intensive, city-centered empire consisting
of numerous independent city-states. The most notable monuments are the
pyramids they built in their religious centers and the accompanying palaces
of their rulers. Other important archaeological remains include the carved
stone slabs usually called stelae (the Maya called them Tetun,
or "Tree-stones"), which depict ruler along with heiroglyphic texts describing
their genealogy, war victories, and other accomplishments.
Art and architecture
Many consider Maya art and architecture of their
Classic Era (c.
200 to 900 a.d.) to be the most sophisticated and beautiful of the ancient
New World. The carvings and stucco reliefs at Palenque and the statuary
of Copan are especially fine, showing a grace and accurate observation
of the human form that reminded early archaeologists of Classical civilization
of the Old World, hence the name bestowed on this era. We have only hints
of the advanced painting of the classic Maya, mostly what has survived
on funerary pottery, and a building at Bonampak where the ancient murals
survived by fortunate accident. With the decipherment of the Maya script
it was discovered that the Maya were one of the few civilizations where
artists attached their name to their work.
Writing system
The Maya writing system (often called
hieroglyphics from a vague
superficial resemblance to the Egyptian writing, to which it is not related)
was a combination of phonetic symbols and ideograms. It is the only writing
system of the Pre-Columbian New World that can completely represent spoken
language to the same degree as the written language of the old world. The
decipherment of the Maya writings has been a long laborous process. Bits
of it were first deciphered in the late 19th and early 20th century (mostly
the parts having to do with numbers, the calendar, and astronomy), but
major breakthroughs came starting in the 1960s and 1970s and accelerated
rapidly thereafter, so that now the majority of Maya texts can be read
nearly completely in their original languages. Unfortunately zealous Spanish
priests shortly after the conquest ordered the burning of all the Maya
books. While many stone inscriptions survive (mostly from cities already
abandoned when the Spanish arrived), only 3 books and a few pages of a
fourth survive from the ancient libraries. Rectangular lumps of plaster
and paint chips are a frequent discovery in Maya archaeology; they are
the tantalzing remains of what had been books after all the organic material
has decayed.
In reference to the few extant Mayan writings, Michael Coe, a prominent
archeologist at Yale University stated:
-
"[O]ur knowledge of ancient Maya thought must represent only a tiny fraction
of the whole picture, for of the thousands of books in which the full extent
of their learning and ritual was recorded, only four have survived to modern
times (as though all that posterity knew of ourselves were to be based
upon three prayer books and Pilgrim's Progress)." (Michael D. Coe,
The
Maya, London: Thames and Hudson, 4th ed., 1987, p. 161.)
Mathematics
The Maya (or their Olmec predesessors) independently developed the concept
of
zero (indeed, they seem to have been using the concept centuries
before the Old World), and used a base 20 numbering system (see Mayan numerals).
Inscriptions show them on occasion working with sums up to the hundreds
of millions. They produced extremely accurate astronomical observations;
their charts of the movements of the moon and planets are equal or superior
to any other civilization working from naked eye observation. The Maya
calculation of the length of the solar year was somewhat superior to the
Gregorian Calendar.
Decline of the Maya
In the 8th and 9th centuries AD Classic Maya culture went into decline,
with most of the cities of the central lowlands abandoned. Warfare, ecological
depletion of croplands, and drought or some combination of those factors
are usually suggested as reasons for the decline. There is archaeological
evidence of warfare, famine, and revolt against the elite at various central
lowlands sites.
The Maya cities of the northern lowlands in Yucatan continued to flourish
for centuries more; some of the important sites in this era were Chichen
Itza, Uxmal, Etzna, and Coba. After the decline of the ruling dynasties
of Chichen and Uxmal, Mayapan ruled all of Yucatan until a revolt in 1450;
the area then devolved to city states until the Spanish Conquest.
Post-Classic Mayan states also continued to thrive in the southern highlands.
One of the Maya kingdoms in this area, the Quiche, is responsible for the
best-known Mayan work of historiography and mythology, the Popol Vuh.
The Spanish started their conquest of the Maya lands in the 1520s. Some
Maya states offered long fierce resistance; the last Maya city state was
not subdued by Spanish authorities until 1697.
The Spanish American Colonies were largely cut off from the outside
world, and the ruins of the great ancient cities were little known except
to locals. In 1839 however, American traveller, John Lloyd Stephens, hearing
reports of lost ruins in the jungle, visited Copan, Palenque, and other
sites with English architect & draftsman Frederick Catherwood. Their
illustrated accounts of the ruins sparked strong interest in the region
and the people, and they have once again regained their position as a vital
link in Mesoamerican heritage.
Much of the contemporary rural population of Guatemala and Belize is
Maya by descent and primary language; a Maya culture still exists in rural
Mexico.
List of Maya Sites
Most important sites:
Other important Maya sites:
See also: Mayan
mythology,
Mayan
calendar