Post 4 Periods of Empire

Beginning of the Classic period.

 

On the date of January 8, 378 AD an envoy and a band of warriors from a powerful city in the highlands of Mexico entered the city of Waka in what is now Guatemala.  His name was Fire-Is-Born, and the event was important enough that it was recorded on a stela in the city of Waka.  This envoy was welcomed by Sun-Faced-Jaguar, the ruler of Waka, and the two quickly formed an alliance.

According to a stela in the nearby city of Tikal, Fire-Is-Born arrived there on January 16, a mere 8 days later, with his band of warriors strengthened by warriors from Waka.  They swept aside the defenders and quickly conquered the city, and a stela at Tikal tells that the ruler of the city died that day, obviously murdered.  This king was replaced with a young king, and Fire-Is-Born was the overlord. 

Stela in nearby ruins of other cities indicate that Fire-Is-Born quickly moved from one  to another and gained control of the entire region, either by alliances or by conquest, and the Mayan empire began to form around the hub city of Tikal.  Each city had its own ruler, but all cities were welded together by a single, forceful religion.  As the empire grew to include distant territories, other hub cities became the centers of further growth.

A hub city in Mexico spurred growth northward from Tikal.  Copan, in present day Honduras, became a hub for growth southward.  Other cities, such as Caracol in Belize, also became hubs.  The smaller cities became vassals of the hub cities, protecting the large cities from outlying rivals and providing taxes to the hub.

The rapid growth in accomplishments began as these hub cities competed with each other for dominance of a region.  For example, the city with the largest pyramid would be viewed as the city with the most powerful god and smaller cities would want to form an alliance with a more powerful city.  The building of pyramids reached its zenith, with new layers of stone steps making older pyramids taller to show the importance of their powerful king and their god.

The previously independent Mayan cities from the jungle lowlands of Honduras to the northern Yucatan became a single empire, held together by a vicious and tyrannical religion where each city was ruled by a powerful king the people believed to be a god, assisted by his aristocrats and his priests.  This civilization dominated the region for more than 500 years, and then it began to slide into decline. Several theories have been offered for the collapse of this once-powerful empire during what we call the Post-Classic period.  

 

 

 

Post 5

The Post-Classic period.

 

This Post-Classic era stretched out until about the year 1000, when all semblances of the once-mighty Mayan empire that began in the jungles of eastern Guatemala and western Belize faded out.   When the Spanish arrived, only a few cities remained and they were on the Yucatan, far from where the empire began around the city of Tikal.

The most popular theories for the reaason the empire collapsed are war, disease, and starvation.  Some people used to believe the Spanish destroyed the Mayan empire that centered in the lowlands of Guatemala and Belize, but when researchers recognized that all the cities of these lowlands had been abandoned before the Spanish arrived, that was no longer considered a possibility.  The Spanish found villages of thatched huts, the cities with their stone palaces were mere ruins covered with jungle.

War then becomes the most likely possibility.  Researchers now recognize that the larger cities began fighting for domination of the region, but we must recognize that this theory suffers from a major flaw.  If war between the cities for domination caused the collapse, what happened to the winner?  The winning city would not have been abandoned, and the cities that had been conquered would have been made vassal states, because no profit comes from totally destroying a defeated city.  If all cities except the winner had been destroyed, then the conquering city would have no other people to dominate, no value to doing that.

Disease then becomes the most likely possibility, but the cities were abandoned over a period of hundreds of years.  A disease contagious enough to wipe out the entire population of a city would have spread quickly, and since active trade was occurring between the Mayan cities, all cities in a region would have been abandoned at the same time, and the disease would not have waited hundreds of years to spread to other regions.

Starvation would not have caused the cities to be totally abandoned and never again populated.  The Mayans developed very advanced techniques of agriculture, including irrigation, so their crops should not have totally failed.  If the population of a city had grown to where the surrounding farms could no longer feed it, then everybody would not have abandoned the city.  After enough people left the city so the food was sufficient, the remaining people would have stayed.  If a famine had caused a food shortage, when the famine ended, people would have returned.  These were marvelous cities but they were abandoned totally and abruptly, as if the residents had fled in panic, and they never returned.  People do not leave abruptly because of a famine and never return.

Which of these theories do you like, or do you want to search for another?

(Guide will ask for responses.)

An oral history tale passed down for generations in village near an abandoned city in western Belize, near Tikal, may hold the answer to this mystery.  The tale was told to an author with an interest in folklore, and he knew that every folklore tale has a scrap of truth hidden in it.  He believed this tale was based on a scrap of truth that could tell why the city was abandoned.  This author spent five years searching for that truth, and his book, Mayan Mystery Unveiled, explains what he discovered.

(Guide holds up the book). 

Could he have found something the archeologists missed during their decades of research?  That is possible.  The archeologists were excavating the ruins and looking at artifacts in search of clues.  They would not find the truth behind a folklore tale by digging holes in the dirt.