{my'-uh} The ancient Maya were a group of American Indian peoples who lived in southern Mexico, particularly the present-day states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatan, and Quintana Roo, and in Belize, Guatemala, and adjacent Honduras. Their descendants, the modern Maya, live in the same regions today, in both highlands and lowlands, from cool highland plains ringed by volcanos to deep tropical rain forests. Through the region runs a single major river system, the Apasion-Usumacinta and its many tributaries, and only a handful of lesser rivers, the Motagua, Hondo, and Belize among them. The ancestors of the Maya, like those of other New World peoples, crossed the \TBering Land Bridge\t from Asia more than 20,000 years ago, during the last ice age. The Maya were the first people of the New World to keep historical records: their written history begins in 50 BC, when they began to inscribe texts on pots, jades, bones, stone monuments, and palace walls. Maya records trace the history of the great kings and queens who ruled from 50 BC until the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. All Maya "long count" calendar inscriptions fall between AD 292 and AD 909, roughly defining the period called Classic. Earlier Maya culture is called Formative or Preclassic (2000 BC-AD 300), and subsequent civilization is known as Postclassic (AD 900-conquest). Protected by difficult terrain and heavy vegetation, the ruins of few ancient Maya cities were known before the 19th century, when explorers and archaeologists began to rediscover them. The age and proliferation of Maya writings have been recognized since about 1900, when the calendrical content of Maya hieroglyphic inscriptions was deciphered and the dates correlated with the Christian calendar. For most of the 20th century, only the extensive calendrical data of Maya inscriptions could be read, and as a result, Maya scholars hypothesized that the inscriptions were pure calendrical records. Because little evidence of warfare had been recognized archaeologically, the Classic Maya were thought of as peaceful timekeepers and skywatchers. Their cities, it was thought, were ceremonial centers for ascetic priests, and their artwork anonymous, without concern for specific individuals. More recent scholarship changes the picture dramatically. In 1958 Heinrich Berlin demonstrated that certain Maya hieroglyphs, which he called emblem glyphs, contained main signs that varied according to location, indicating dynastic lines or place names. In 1960, Tatiana Proskouriakoff showed that the patterns of dates were markers of the important events in rulers' lives. The chronological record turned out to serve history and the perpetuation of the memory of great nobles. Subsequently, major archaeological discoveries, particularly at \TPalenque\t and \TTikal\t, confirmed much of what the writings said, and examination of Maya art has revealed not only historical portraiture but also a pantheon of gods, goddesses, and heroes--in other words, Maya religion and mythic history. HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT MAYA By 5000 BC, the Maya had settled along Caribbean and Pacific coasts, forming egalitarian fishing communities. Certainly by 2000 BC the Maya had also moved inland and adopted agriculture for their subsistence. Maize and beans formed the Maya diet then as today, although many other foodstuffs--squash, tomatoes, peppers, fruits, and game--were supplements. The word for maize--wa--is synonymous with food itself, and the maize god was honored from early times. Preclassic Period During the Early Preclassic (2000-900 BC), civilization began to take shape in parts of \TMesoamerica\t. By 1200 BC, the \TOlmec\t of the Gulf Coast had risen to preeminence, dominating trade routes that extended from the modern Mexican state of Guerrero to Costa Rica, passing through Maya regions. At \TCopan\t, Honduras, and Cuello, Belize, around 1000 BC, local Maya leaders began to imitate Olmec styles of pottery and jades and adopted orthodox Olmec religious symbols for their own use. Identification with the dominant cult in Mesoamerica helped support the emergence of social strata among the Maya, particularly where the Maya came into contact with the Olmec. Archaeologists have recently shown that the Maya began to develop intensive agriculture and sophisticated water management during the Middle Preclassic (900-300 BC), which may have helped support the population explosion of the Late Preclassic (300 BC-AD 300). During this same period, writing was invented in Mesoamerica, probably by the \LZapotec\ls of Oaxaca. Although writing was in use along the Gulf Coast and in Oaxaca, the Maya began to use it only during the Late Preclassic. During the Late Preclassic, Maya village life everywhere gave way to stratified society dominated by a small elite. The fruits of intensive agriculture and the profits of long-distance trade began to be concentrated in the hands of a few. Lowland Maya groups at El Mirador, Cerros, Lamanai, \TUaxactun\t, and Tikal cleared small villages and replaced them with planned communities centered around massive ceremonial structures featuring enormous mask facades of a newly codified pantheon. In the highlands, at \TIzapa\t, Abaj Takalik, El Baul, and \TKaminaljuyu\t, other Maya groups erected stone stelae on which Maya lords and deities were portrayed, sometimes in association with dates. Although they did not invent the "long count" calendar, the Maya were its greatest exploiters, and they used it to record history in their own languages. in many ways, the pattern for Classic Maya life was forged during the Late Preclassic. Classic Period By AD 250 or so, at Tikal, Uaxactun, Rio Azul, and elsewhere in the lowlands, both monumental architecture and stelae with historical records were being erected, but on these monuments the Maya lords wear the images of the gods, and from this point until the end of the Classic period, the Maya rulers reigned as divine kings. Much religious ritual focused on ancestors. Based on the inscriptions, linguists believe that the Classic Maya spoke a language closely related to modern Chol, Yucatec, and Chorti. During the Early Classic (AD 250-550), the Maya also sustained profound contact with warriors and traders from \TTeotihuacan\t in central Mexico, the largest and most powerful state of the era. There is no evidence of conquest, but Maya adopted some foreign deities, modes of representation, and styles of clothing. By the end of the Early Classic, powerful lineages had established cities and city-states throughout the lowlands, from Comalcalco and Palenque in the west to Copan and \TQuirigua\t in the south, Altun Ha in the east, and Calakmul in the north. Following a period (AD 530-580) called the "hiatus," when few dated works of art or buildings were made, the Maya thrived during the Late Classic (AD 550-900), and art, architecture, and writing flourished at dozens of city-states. More than 2 million people may have lived in the Maya area, and Tikal, the largest center, may have had a population of 75,000-100,000. To support growing populations, the Maya expanded their systems of intensive agriculture. As populations rose, the nobles of these independent city-states both intermarried and made war on one another. Some families, as at Yaxhilan, built small empires and directed the fortunes of smaller satellites; others, as at Dos Pilas, actively made war on smaller cities and sometimes incorporated them into their spheres of influence. No lowland Classic Maya domain, however, survived into the 10th century. Ultimately, the system of rule that had served the Maya well for centuries failed. Faced with famine, foreign invasion, chronic warfare, and perhaps disease, an era ended in what is generally called the Classic Maya collapse. Although the Maya continued to live in both highlands and lowlands, the period of their greatest splendor was over. Postclassic Period In the northern lowlands, civilization continued to thrive briefly at \TUxmal\t and other sites in the Puuc hills and then well into the Postclassic at \TChichen Itza\t. At the beginning of the Postclassic, speakers of Itza or Putun Maya from the Tabasco coast probably ruled at Chichen Itza, consolidating a powerful state sustained by trade, tribute, and war, and possibly developing a new system of administration, whereby three or four brothers may have shared power simultaneously. According to central Mexican and Maya annals, the \TToltec\t king Quetzalcoatl (Feathered Serpent) fled in 986 from Tula, Hidalgo, to Yucatan, where he was known as Kukulcan, a Maya translation of his name. Chichen Itza and Tula share common styles of art and architecture, and Toltec rulers may have held power briefly at Chichen Itza. Tula was sacked at the end of the 12th century; Chichen Itza was probably abandoned by then as well. The Itza founded a new capital at \TMayapan\t in the 13th century, 100 km (62 mi) to the west of Chichen Itza, and they modeled their main buildings on those of their former capital. Unlike most other Maya cities, Mayapan was walled, and some 15,000 people lived close together inside the protective shield, a response to troubled and warlike times. In the mid-15th century, Mayapan fell to treachery and revolt, and today the impoverished ruins still reflect the bitter sacking of the city. Trading towns survived along the Caribbean coast, and in 1502, Christopher Columbus and his son Ferdinand encountered Maya traders plying high dugout canoes filled with cloth and other goods off the coast of Honduras. Tulum, the most spectacular of these trading towns, was seen from a Spanish ship and compared to Seville. Wracked by strife and then by European diseases, the Maya of Yucatan broke up into tiny states at the time of the Spanish conquest. The Spanish took advantage of Maya division to take control in 1542, and they established their own capital at Merida, on the site of a Maya city called Tiho. During the Late Postclassic, the Highland Maya of Guatemala--Cakchiquel, Quiche, Pokomam, Tzutuhil--established fortified cities on hillside acropolises at Iximche, Utatlan, and Mixco Viejo, and scrapped among one another for control of precious resources, such as obsidian. The Quiche had made alliances with the Aztecs, but at the time of the conquest, the Cakchiquels aided the Spanish cause. In 1527, the Europeans established their own capital. A few years later, a young Quiche nobleman wrote down the Popol Vuh, the greatest surviving Maya work of literature, in the European alphabet. The last Maya kingdom, Taytasal, in Lake Peten Itza, was taken by the Spanish in 1697. ANCIENT MAYA CIVILIZATION Although writing in the New World did not originate among the Maya, they gave writing its greatest refinements. The Maya wrote a mixed script, with ideographic and phonetic elements. About 80% of Maya glyphs can now be interpreted for their meaning, with a smaller number that can be sounded out phonetically and understood through Maya languages spoken today. Most inscriptions survive on stelae, and they recount the lives and deeds of nobles, the positions of heavenly bodies--particularly the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter--on the dates recorded (all major events in the life of Chan Bahlum of Palenque, for example, coincided with the movements of signatures. Inscriptions on pottery reveal elaborate mythology, as well as names of patron and maker. Four Postclassic Maya screenfold manuscripts are known, and by sheer accident of survival, all are almanacs of the rituals, offerings, and auguries for the year. Scribes and artists were nobles, and many may also have been priests. The Maya used several calendars simultaneously, and the "long count," a continuous record of days from a zero date that correlates to Aug. 13, 3114 BC, was as precise as the \TJulian day\t number, a chronological system developed in Europe in 1582 for scientific calculations. They also kept track of the solar and lunar years and the cycles of visible planets. In their calculations, numbers were written with dots (for ones) and bars (for fives) in a vigesimal (based on the number 20) system. Their number system used a placeholder that functioned like zero, which allowed them to calculate enormous sums: for example, a stela at Coba records a period of time that now would have to be written 142 followed by 36 zeros. Across the Maya realm, as evinced in art and inscriptions, Maya nobility celebrated a ritual cycle: birth, heir designation, accession, warfare, ballgame (an athletic contest that was also a symbolic event), death. Blood was the mortar of Maya life, and offerings were made to seal these events. Male nobles drew blood from the penis, ear, or tongue; women drew blood from the tongue; blood was drawn from the ears; fingernails, and mouths of war captives before they were sacrificed. When nobles died, the Maya believed that they became one with the gods, and that they dwelt in the night sky with them. The Maya worshiped their ancestors, and in so doing, they worshiped the gods. From early times on, the dead were buried under their houses, in which the family then continued to live. In Classic times, pyramids were erected over the tombs of dead kings, shrines to the ancestors and the gods. At Palenque the Temple of Inscriptions was a permanent tribute to Pacal (r. 615-683), and at Tikal, Temple I embodied Ruler A (r. 682-c.725). Architecture Maya architectural forms were derived from domestic architecture: stone or earthen platform and wattle-and-daub shelter, covered by a hip roof of thatch. The shrine and platform of the pyramid grew from the house form, and the Maya corbel arch, often called a "false" arch, preserves the hip roof in stone. With these elements the Maya built ranging palaces, pyramids, shrines, and even ballcourts. Maya builders frequently set a new structure directly over an old one, and within ranging palace complexes, doorways were frequently walled up and changed. Maya cities follow no grid and show centuries of accretions. Buildings cluster along causeways and hillsides, following the difficult topography of most Maya sites. During the Postclassic, Chichen Itza builders introduced new forms, particularly columns, and great colonnades with thatch roofs were set in front of many administrative buildings. Palaces with galleries of columns opened onto private patios. Later buildings at Mayapan and Tulum imitated the ones at Chichen Itza, but they were poorly made and coated in thick layers of plaster and paint. Sculpture and Painting Early Classic stone sculpture usually features a single Maya ruler celebrating his reign in one of a limited number of formal poses, and the format was retained at Tikal, the most conservative of Maya cities, in the Late Classic. Particularly on the peripheries of the Classic realm, at Palenque, Copan, Yaxchilan, and \TPiedras Negras\t, at the beginning of the Late Classic, new modes of representation were introduced, and multifigure compositions became the rule. Scenes of bloodletting, warfare, and play in the ballgame were carved on lintels and panels as well as on stelae, and women took featured roles as wives, mothers, and as rulers themselves. Many fine carvings on small jades, shells, and bones were worn and used by nobles, and many objects bear their owner's name. Few monumental paintings survive, but a complete program has been preserved at \TBonampak\t. Undoubtedly the most complex representation known in Maya art, it features hundreds of nobles celebrating the installation of an heir in office and the subsequent battle and bloodletting that sealed the events in 790 and 792. During the 7th and 8th centuries many schools of vase painting thrived, and the surviving works are a window on Maya belief and ritual. No Classic books survive, but the fine line painting on some pots may be comparable to manuscript illumination. From many pots, it is clear that the Maya nobility emulated the Hero Twins, mythic tricksters who overcame underworld gods. At Chichen Itza, war, warriors, and sacrifice dominate the representations. From the cenote, or sacred well, gold disks, jades, and other precious objects have been retrieved. THE MODERN MAYA The modern Maya live in roughly the same geography as did their predecessors, now divided by modern political boundaries. Some 4 million or so Maya speak one of the 30 or more Maya languages and retain traditional customs, diet, dress, or housing. Many, particularly in Merida and Cancun, have adopted an urban life, but most continue to live in rural areas. Particularly in highland Guatemala, where insufficient land is available, men accept seasonal work away from their families and spend months harvesting coffee or other crops on the Pacific coast. During the Colonial period, Spanish slavers hauled thousands of Maya to the mines in northern Mexico, where most died, leaving the tropical lowlands virtually unpopulated. In Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize, many Maya have gone to the tropical lowlands in search of land in recent years. Prior to this incursion, only the \TLacandon\t, a small group of 350 people living in a handful of communities, had dwelt in the jungle in this century. Now many Tzeltal, Tzotzil, Chol, and Yucatec Maya have been granted new ejidos, or collective farms, by the Mexican government, where they raise coffee or cattle. In Guatemala, Kekchi and Mopan settlers have pushed into the Peten rain forest. Civil and racial strife in Guatemala in the 1970s and 1980s forced many Maya, particularly Quiche, to flee across the border to Mexico, where thousands of refugees remained. The Mexican government moved a large number to a permanent settlement near Edzna, Campeche. In both the highland and the lowlands, the Maya have maintained age-old traditions. Maya rituals for naming children, nurturing the agricultural cycle, marriage, sickness, death, and even auguring the future have been widely retained. In the northern lowlands, Chaac the rain god is worshiped, and in times of need a chachaac, or rainmaking ceremony, is performed. Before the conquest, the uayeb, or last five days of the year, was a dangerous time; most Maya now identify uayeb with Holy Week, and it and Carnival are carefully observed. Particularly in the Mexican highland communities of Zinacantan and Chamula, the cargo system of rotating civil offices is retained. Although the Spanish quickly established their capitals after the conquest, Maya rebellions were common until the 20th century. In Yucatan, Mexico established (1902) a separate territory, Quintana Roo on the east side of the peninsula, where many rebels fled. Made a state in 1974, Quintana Roo is now the location of Mexico's prosperous Caribbean resorts. Mary Ellen Miller Bibliography: Benson, Elizabeth P., The Maya World, rev. ed. (1977); Coe, Michael D., The Maya, 4th ed. (1987); Hammond, Norman, Ancient Maya Civilization (1982); Henderson, John S., The World of the Ancient Maya (1981); Miller, Mary Ellen, The Art of Mesoamerica (1986); Morley, Sylvanus G., and Brainerd, George V., The Ancient Maya, rev. by R. J. Sharer, 4th ed. (1983); Morris, Walter F., Jr., Living Maya (1987); Reed, Nelson, The Caste War of Yucatan (1964); Schele, Linda, and Miller, Mary Ellen, The Blood of Kings: Dynasty and Ritual in Maya Art (1986); Stephens, J. L., Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan, 2 vols. (1841; repr. 1969), Stuart, George E. and Gene S., The Mysterious Maya (1977); Tedlock, Barbara, Time and the Highland Maya (1983); Tedlock, Dennis, trans., Popol Vuh (1985); Vogt, Evon Z., Zinacantan: A Maya Community in the Highlands of Chiapas (1969). See also: \TIndians, American\t; \Tpre-Columbian art and architecture\t.