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G r e a t e m p i r e s o f t h e pa s t

Empires of
the Maya
G r e a t e m p i r e s o f t h e pa s t

Empire of Alexander the Great

Empire of Ancient Egypt
Empire of Ancient Greece
Empire of Ancient Rome
Empire of the Aztecs
Empire of the Incas
Empire of the Islamic World
Empire of the Mongols
Empires of Ancient Mesopotamia
Empires of Ancient Persia
Empires of Medieval West Africa
Empires of the Maya
G r e a t e m p i r e s o f t h e pa s t

Empires of
the Maya

Jill Rubalcaba
angela KelleR, HistoRical consultant
Great Empires of the Past: Empires of the Maya

Copyright © 2010 Jill Rubalcaba

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the
publisher. For information, contact:

Chelsea House
An imprint of Infobase Publishing
132 West 31st Street
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rubalcaba, Jill.
Empires of the Maya / Jill Rubalcaba.
p. cm.—(Great empires of the past)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-60413-155-0 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-43812-952-5 (e-book)
1. Mayas—History—Juvenile literature. 2. Mayas—Social life and customs—Juvenile literature. I. Title. II. Series.

F1435.R83 2009
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 CONTENTS
Introduction 7

PA RT I H I STORY
CH A P T ER 1 The Preclassic Era: Dawn of the Maya 19
CH A P T ER 2 The Classic Era: Rise and Fall of the Superpowers 31
CH A P T ER 3 The Postclassic Era: Rise of the Yucatán 49

PA RT I I SOC I E T Y AN D C U LT U R E
CH A P T ER 4 Maya Social Structure 65
CH A P T ER 5 Religion and Ritual 93
CH A P T ER 6 Everyday Life in the Maya World 111
Epilogue 129
Time Line 139
Glossary 141
Bibliography 143
Further Resources 146
Picture Credits 149
Index 150
About the Author 159

GEP-Maya FNL.indd 5 11/5/09 12:45:16 PM

IntroductIon
VOLCANO PEAkS PIERCE THE BLANkET OF COOL MIST opposite
that hangs above the forest canopy. Ghostly howler monkeys scream, The Maya were master
unseen, as if the ruined temples were part of a scene in an unearthly pyramid builders, but
their magnificent cities
horror movie. For some, the sounds create the illusion that the lost
were buried by the jungle
city of Copán is haunted by tortured souls wailing deep within the until the late 1800s and
stone pyramids. Only the occasional rustle of a tree branch reveals early 1900s. This is a
that the monkeys are the true source of the screams. They scramble pyramid in Chichén Itzá,
across a platform where priests once addressed thousands of people. a great Maya city of the
The platform is now buried in vines, and moss, and jungle growth. Postclassic Era.
The remains of Copán, one of the richest centers of Maya civi-
lization, lie deep in the tropical forest of modern Honduras. Copán
became wealthy because of its rich soil and the Copán River’s annual
flood. Each year, the river overflowed and the water left behind a new
layer of rich, fertile soil. The huge quantity of precious jade found in
the tombs of Copán’s kings is evidence of how wealthy they were.

Maya GeoGraphy
The land of the ancient Maya lies south of the Tropic of Cancer and
north of the Equator in what is now called the Yucatán Peninsula, Gua-
temala, Belize, southern Mexico, and western Honduras and El Salva-
dor. There are a number of different habitats within the Maya area, but
for convenience, scholars divide it into three major geographic zones:
the Pacific coastal plain in the south, the highlands in the middle, and
the lowlands in the north.


E m p i r E s o f t h E m aya

CONNECTIONS The earliest Maya settle-

ments rose alongside the
What Are Connections? areas that are now mangrove
swamps near the Pacific coast.
throughout this book, and all the books in the Great
This food-rich environment
Empires of the past series, there are Connections boxes.
was ideal for supporting year-
they point out ideas, inventions, art, food, customs, and
round living. There was sea life
more from this empire that are still part of the world today.
on the coast and rich farmland
Nations and cultures in remote history can seem far away
not far inland. The coastal
from the present day, but these connections demonstrate
plain became a prime location
how our everyday lives have been shaped by the peoples
for growing cacao, which is
of the past.
used to make chocolate. The
Maya from the coastal plain
traded cacao throughout the
entire Maya area. Even today, large agricultural businesses dominate
the plain. The main crops now are sugarcane, cotton, and cattle.
The highlands are mountainous. This region is the most diverse
of the three zones. The southern half of the highlands is volcanically
active, and the rich, deep soils developed out of ancient lava flows and
ash deposits from the nearby volcanoes. For thousands of years, large
numbers of people chose to live here despite the dangers of earthquakes
and volcanic eruptions. It was worth the risk because the volcanic ash
made the soil excellent for growing plants.
Fewer people lived in the mountains in the northern half of the
highlands. Here the ancient Maya mined obsidian (volcanic glass), jade,
and other semi-precious stones. The rainforest of the northern high-
lands sprawls down into lower elevations and tropical climates.
The gentle hills of the southern lowlands, called the Petén region, are
covered with forest and laced with rivers. The Petén gently blends into
the dry bushland of the northern lowlands, or the Yucatán Peninsula,
where water resources are limited and are found mostly below ground.

ClassifyinG Maya history

Archaeologists divide pre-Columbian (the time before Columbus
arrived in the Americas in 1492 c.e.) Maya history into three major
time periods: Preclassic, Classic, and Postclassic. During the Preclassic
Era, from about 1200 b.c.e. to 250 c.e., settled farming communities
grew into complex societies. Many Maya kingdoms experienced rapid


 Introduction

growth in this era. They built monumental structures, established

long-distance trade routes, and developed governing systems. In the
later part of the Preclassic Era, some kingdoms were enjoying their
peak while others had already faded away.
The Classic Era was between about 250 and 900. From southeast-
ern Mexico to upper Central America, this varied landscape supported
millions of people in Classic times. During the height of Maya civiliza-
tion in the eighth century, as many as 60 independent kingdoms dotted
the Maya area, as well as hundreds of smaller towns and villages.
Unlike the Aztec people, their neighbors to the north, the Maya
never unified into a single empire. Instead, they built commerce centers
that grew into city-states (cities that function as separate kingdoms or

In Their Own Words

Peeling Back the Jungle

By the time the Spanish conquered monument, and then to dig around and
Honduras in the 1520s, Copán had long bring to light a fragment, a sculptured
corner of which protruded from the earth.
been overgrown by rainforest. Several
I leaned over with breathless anxiety
explorers visited it in the early 19th century
while the Indians worked, and an eye, an
and wrote about the barely visible ruins. ear, a foot, or a hand was disentombed.
In 1839, explorer and travel writer John When the machete rang against the
Lloyd Stephens (1805–1852) paid a Maya chiseled stone, I pushed the Indians away,
guide to lead him to the site. In Stephens’s and cleared out the loose earth with my
hands. The beauty of the sculpture, the
book Incidents of Travel in Central America,
solemn stillness of the woods, disturbed
Chiapas and Yucatan, he offers this riveting
only by the scrambling of monkeys and
account of how the jungle was stripped away chattering of parrots, the desolation of
to rediscover the ruins. the city, and the mystery that hung over it,
all created an interest higher, if possible,
It is impossible to describe the interest
than I had ever felt among the ruins of the
with which I explored these ruins. The
Old World.
ground was entirely new; there were
no guide-books or guides; the whole
was virgin soil. We could not see 10 (Source: Stephens, John Lloyd. Incidents of
yards before us, and never knew what Travel. Available online. “Lost King of the
we should stumble upon next. At one Maya.” URL: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/
time we stopped to cut away branches nova/maya/travel.html. Accessed September
and vines which concealed the face of a 23, 2008.)


E m p i r e s o f t h e m aya

Palenque was one of the nations) ruled by kings. These kingdoms formed alliances with one
great cities of the Classic another one day, only to turn into sworn enemies the next.
Era. These ruins were Robert J. Sharer wrote in The Ancient Maya that the capitals of
once the temple complex.
independent kingdoms were “interconnected by commerce, alliances,
and rivalries that often led to war.” By the end of the Classic Era, the
southern lowland capitals had collapsed, leaving modern scholars to
wonder what catastrophe forced the Maya to abandon their cities.
The northern lowlands kingdoms rose and fell during the Postclas-
sic Era, from 900 to 1524. Some kingdoms flowered dramatically, but
probably did not reach the heights of the kingdoms from previous eras.
It was in the Postclassic Era that kings lost their grip on centralized
power and nobles greedily stepped in to break the kingdoms up into
smaller pieces.
The Postclassic Era ended with the arrival of the Spaniards, who
found that most Maya were living in medium-sized kingdoms and
groups of allied cities throughout the Maya area.

How Historians Know About the Maya

What is known about the Maya comes from many sources. Scholars
piece together bits of information as one would put together a jigsaw

10
 Introduction

puzzle—each piece contributing to the whole picture. Archaeologists

unearth buildings or just their foundations, and map Maya cities.
They dig up royal tombs and speculate about the lives of the living
by examining what was buried with them when they died. Geolo-
gists date towns by counting carbon atoms in the garbage the Maya
threw away. Biologists reconstruct Maya diets by examining teeth and
bones.
Scientists from every field contribute a piece to the puzzle—lin-
guists, historians, anthropologists (people who study human cultures),
mathematicians, ecologists, geneticists. Even NASA’s scientists are
adding a piece to the puzzle by locating stone structures using satellites
that circle the Earth.
Much information comes from the Maya themselves. Hieroglyphs
(writing using symbols) cover Maya stone and wooden monuments,
doorjambs, wall panels, benches, and stairways like graffiti. It was not
until the mid-20th century that Mayanists (people who study the Maya)
realized this was a writing system that had elements such as those in
modern writing systems, where symbols can indicate sounds. And it
was decades more before the 800 signs in the Maya writing system were
decoded. Today, Mayanists are scrambling to translate public carvings
Maya or Mayan?
and paintings that commemorate important moments, date kings and
There are some conven-
kingdoms, and chronicle the lives of kings and their courts.
tions among scholars
These public billboards reveal details of the people in power, but about when to use Maya
what about the common people? What kind of life did the farmer lead? and when to use Mayan.
What about mothers and children, artists and builders? For details Maya can be used as
about everyday life and everyday people, scholars carefully study smaller a noun when speaking
archaeological sites and households. They also look at accounts written about the Maya people
then and now. Maya
by the Spaniards who came to the Maya area in the 16th century. can also be used as an
One particularly detailed account was written by a Franciscan adjective to describe
priest who arrived in the Yucatán in 1544. Diego de Landa (1524–1579) something that is part of
had been sent to bring the Catholic religion to the native peoples. But the Maya culture, such
he became obsessed with wiping out Maya customs and rituals. Landa as Maya monuments or
Maya pottery. Scholars
claimed Maya books taught pagan beliefs (that is, non-Christian beliefs
use the word Mayan to
that he considered primitive) and he destroyed every Maya book he refer to the language of
found. In July of 1562, Landa burned more than 5,000 Maya images and the Maya, as in, “The
dozens of Maya books that he believed to be works of the devil. Books Mayan word for turtle is
written by the Maya about medicine, astronomy, religion, and history ahk.”
were all burned.

11
 E m p i r E s o f t h E m aya

CONNECTIONS The Spanish king con-

demned Landa’s actions and
Rainman commanded him to come back
to Spain to stand trial for abus-
shamans—people who had access to and influence over
ing his power. During Landa’s
good and evil spirits—were an essential part of maya society.
trial, as part of his defense,
they still play an important role today. a village shaman could
he wrote a book describing
be called upon to cure disease, make crops grow, or conduct
his observations of the Maya
religious ceremonies. today’s shamans offer prayers to
people, their culture, and their
ancient gods and goddesses. they preserve a link to the past
writing system. One version
and to the maya people’s unique view of the world.
of this book is Relacion de las
in 1989, during a terrible drought in the yucatán, the
Cosas de Yucatan (an account
people called on a shaman to bring rain. a shaman named
of the affairs of Yucatán),
Don pablo conducted a three-day ceremony to the storm
which was later translated into
gods called the Cha-Chac ceremony.
English using the title Yucatan
maya archaeologist David friedel described the shaman
Before and After the Conquest.
and the rain he brought in The Untold Story of the Ancient
Landa was found innocent
Maya: “Don pablo came running over the crest of a nearby hill,
and returned to the Yucatán in
clutching his hat in the gusting winds as he fled inches ahead
1573 as bishop of the region.
of a gray wall of rain. a great rainbow arched over him in bril-
His book provides an impor-
liant orange light of the setting sun in a magnificent display
tant glimpse into the Maya way
that affirmed the success of his performance as shaman.”
of life at the end of pre-Colum-
bian times. Although Landa
was responsible for erasing the
Maya’s own historical account, he is also responsible for much of what
is known about the Maya today. His information was based on his own
observations and extensive interviews with the Maya people he met.
Still, it is important to remember that the book was written by someone
who respected what the Maya had achieved but was angered by their
religious beliefs.
Very few Maya books survived Landa’s fires. Even fewer survived
the passage of time. After Landa’s great book burning, there were also
some attempts to write down from memory—or possibly copy from
books that were hidden—the classic Maya texts. One such text is the
Chilam Balam. Chilam is the Mayan word for priest or shaman, and
balam means jaguar, which is a prestigious title. The Maya called their
powerful priests chilam balam, or jaguar priests. There are several Chi-
lam Balam books from various cities in Yucatán. The most famous are
the Chilam Balam of Chumayel and the Chilam Balam of Tizimin.

12

GEP-Maya FNL.indd 12 11/5/09 12:45:17 PM

 introduction

The Books that Survived the Fire

Diego de Landa wrote in Yucatan Before
and After the Conquest, “We found a large
number of books. . . and as they contained
nothing in which there were not to be seen
superstition and lies of the devil, we burned
them all, which they regretted to an amaz-
ing degree, and which caused them much
affliction.”
the texts that did survive the fires were
all documents from the postclassic Era. they
were written in mayan hieroglyphs. all were
sent back to Europe, where no one knew
how to read them, and they were kept as
curiosities.
t day, these ancient books are known as
to
codices (books made from bark and written
in hieroglyphic script; the singular is codex).
only three maya codices and fragments of a
fourth survived the book-burning. they are
named after the cities in Europe where they
are now located. they are:
Dresden Codex: this beautifully illustrated
codex was made by flattening a long sheet
of bark into paper and then whitening the
surface with lime paste. the book was con-
structed by folding the long sheet accordion
style to create 74 pages. it contains almanacs,
mathematical tables for eclipses, predictions
about floods and when to plant, as well as
information about sickness and cures.
Madrid Codex: some scholars believe A beautiful page from the Dresden
Codex has tables showing the phases
that the madrid Codex is a table for eclipses.
of Venus alongside pictures of Maya
(continues) gods.

13
E m p i r E s o f t h E m aya

(continued) zodiac. the information in the paris Codex

guided priests in their divinations by reveal-
Eclipse symbols appear on many of the ing to them the workings of the universe.
pages. Celestial serpents snake across Grolier Codex: small pieces are all that
pages 12 through 18. the maya often used is left of this badly damaged codex, found
serpents as symbols for the sky. the mayan by treasure hunters in a cave in Chiapas,
word chan means both “sky” and “snake.” mexico. the codex fragments are bits of a
also included in the madrid Codex are tips Venus table, predicting with precision when
on deer hunting, deer trapping, beekeep- the planet Venus will appear as the morning
ing, marriage, and how to summon the star. the Manuscript of Serna, a missionary
rain. report from Central mexico (as quoted in
Paris Codex: this codex illustrates 13 “the real maya prophecies: astronomy in
constellations, each represented by mysti- the inscriptions and Codices”), states that
cal animals carrying the sun glyph (symbol) next to the sun, the natives “adored and
in their mouth. the arrangement of the con- made more sacrifices” to Venus than any
stellations is similar to modern signs of the other “celestial or terrestrial creatures.”

Although the text of these versions of Chilam Balam was written

in the Maya language, the script is European. The supposed author,
Chilam Balam, was said to have been a great Maya priest from the 15th
century. But in fact, the Chilam Balam books were written by sev-
eral people over several generations. They record centuries of history
before, during, and after the Spanish conquest of the Maya area.
Many towns had their own version of Chilam Balam. Although it
was written down, the people knew Chilam Balam through firelight
performances. These were chanted by the priests who protected the
book, and accompanied by moans of conch-shell trumpets, clickety-
clacks of bone rattles, and the mellow thump of wooden and clay
drums. The messages chanted were often mysterious, with animals
and plants serving as symbols for something else entirely. For example,
jaguars and eagles stood for the most important leaders, foxes repre-
sented the Spanish invaders, and deer symbolized the Maya people.
The Maya took the prophecies in Chilam Balam very seriously.
They believed that the gods had revealed to the jaguar priests what
would happen in the future, and it was the job of the chilam to relay

14
 introduction

that information to them. One In TheIr Own wOrds

important role of a Maya sha-
man was to be a diviner—some- Bad Times to Come
one who interpreted the ancient
this prophecy (prediction of the future) from the book of
texts and sacred calendars. To
Chilam Balam of Chumayel predicts a severe drought. it
the Maya, history was circular
says water will become so scarce that watering holes will
and repeated at regular inter-
dry up and deer will die. During a long drought, the maya
vals. So by carefully studying
would leave their villages and wander through the forests
the past, one could predict the
looking for people who would take their possessions in
future.
exchange for food. this passage predicts a future drought
Another piece of the Maya
so devastating even the ruler will be forced to beg for food
puzzle is provided by under-
and will be unable to provide for himself or his people. (a
standing their mythology. In the
k’atun is a cycle of time in the maya calendar.)
16th century, the Quiche Maya
Submit to the unhappy destiny of the katun which is to
living in the highlands of pres-
come. If you do not submit, you shall be moved from
ent-day Guatemala wrote down
where your feet are rooted. If you do not submit, you
the Popol Vuh (council book). shall gnaw the trunks of trees and herbs. If you do not
Popol Vuh is considered one submit, it shall be as when the deer die, so that they
of the greatest works of Native go forth from your settlement. Then [even] when the
American literature, in part ruler [himself] goes forth, he shall return within your
settlement bearing nothing. Also there shall come
because it is one of the very few
[such a pestilence that] the vultures enter the houses,
records of early mythology in all
a time of great death among the wild animals. . . .
of the Americas.
The first half of Popol Vuh (source: roys, ralph L., translator. The Book of Chilam Balam
is a poem more than 9,000 lines of Chumayel. Washington, D.C.: Carnegie institution,
long. The poem is a retelling of 1933.)

Maya creation myths that go

back to the very origins of the
Maya themselves. The creation myths show how the Maya viewed
their universe. The second half of Popol Vuh is the history of the
Quiche kingdom—their kings and the connection between humans
and gods.

the Maya leGaCy

The Maya left behind thousands of grand stone monuments and struc-
tures—temples, palaces, and pyramids inscribed (painted or engraved)
with scenes from Maya mythology and portraits of powerful kings. Over
a 2,000-year span, these kings ruled over nobles, priests, merchants,

1
E m p i r E s o f t h E m aya

artisans, warriors, farmers, and slaves. Maya kings financed ambi-

tious construction projects such as buildings, reservoirs, and cause-
ways (raised roadways). They paid for these things with wealth gained
through conquests, tribute (wealth given to a ruler to show submission),
and a trade network that reached far beyond the Maya world into Cen-
tral America and Central Mexico.
Although the individual kingdoms never united into one grand
empire, all Maya people were united by their spiritual view of the uni-
verse, their mythology, their calendar, and their culture. What divided
them ended up saving them—at least for a while. Spanish military lead-
ers and their armies of conquistadors were able to conquer the Aztec
people and topple their empire merely by taking Tenochtitlán, the
Aztec capital city. The conquest of the Maya would take centuries. It
required waging war a hundred times over, in hundreds of settlements
throughout the Maya area.
Many scholars consider the Maya culture to be the most com-
plex of any ancient Western Hemisphere culture. Sharer wrote in The
Ancient Maya, “The more we learn about the Maya past, the more pro-
found is our respect. For as the record shows, the Maya were a people of
astonishing achievement in mathematics, astronomy, calendar-making,
and writing; in technology, political organization, and commerce; in
sculpture, painting, architecture, and the other arts.”

16
 PA RT • I

HISTORY
THE PRECLASSIC ERA:
DAWN OF THE MAYA

THE CLASSIC ERA:

RISE AND FALL OF THE SUPERPOWERS

THE POSTCLASSIC ERA:

RISE OF THE YUCATÁN

GEP-Maya FNL.indd 17 11/5/09 12:45:22 PM

 C h aPt e r 1

the PreclassIc era:

dawn of the Maya
THE PRESENT WORLD BEGAN AUGUST 11, 3114 b.c.e., opposite
according to the ancient Maya calendar known as the Long Count. The Beautifully carved
Long Count kept track of how many days, or kins, passed since that very stelae throughout the
ancient Maya world use
first day. The Maya calendar counted 360 kins in a year. Each year was
glyphs to trace Maya
called a tun, the Mayan word for “stone.” The ancient Maya were the only history and proclaim the
pre-Columbian people to keep a calendar with a specific starting point. accomplishments of kings.
What was the Maya world like at the time of their “creation” more
than 5,000 years ago? Scholars call this time the Archaic Era (archaic
means very old). This is when ancient peoples in the Americas were
making the change from hunting and gathering wild plants to settled
village life and agriculture.
The change was gradual. It spanned thousands of years, from 6000
to 2000 b.c.e. The shift began as Archaic peoples started returning to
the same spots each season. Perhaps fish ran at a certain time of year
in a particular stream. Or nuts ripened in a favorite grove. The people
returned year after year until they were no longer wandering about ran-
domly, looking for food, but were beginning a settled life.
Scholars do not know exactly when Archaic peoples first started
farming in Mesoamerica (the area extending from what is today central
Mexico to Honduras and Nicaragua). But they do know that there is a
connection between agriculture and settled life. And they know that
by about 1000 b.c.e, farming and the settled life that goes with it were
widely adopted in Mesoamerica.
In the beginning, Archaic peoples did not practice farming the
way it is done now. Instead, they simply encouraged certain plants to
grow at their favorite spots by weeding and watering. When it came

1
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