Lost World
of the Maya
Copan, settled as early as 2,000 B.C., was the Maya's most artistically advanced city, the New World equivalent of ancient Athens.
Typically the Mayans painted scenes of gods, kings, and war. But this unique mural shows an ordinary market scene.
The chinampa method of farming is still in use today. These modern Mayans still grow maize and beans the way their ancestors did.
The key to keeping the chinampa afloat and in place are the willow trees planted along the edges. The roots of the willow grow into the lake bed acting as an anchor
The Lost City of Copan
The year is 1839. Two friends, an American and an Englishman, depart from New York City on a mission to follow the rumors they had been hearing about ancient stone cities buried under the thick Central American jungle. John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, an artist, set out to find the lost Mayan city of Copan. Their journey could be described as difficult, but that would be a major understatement. Hacking through the rainforest in unbearable heat and humidity is one thing. But getting stuck in the thick mud, being kidnapped (it was only one day, but still) by bandits not to mention fighting off fever, snakes, and scorpions!
The two explorers not only found Copan, totally overgrown and forgotten, they were amazed to find an advanced civilization with massive temples covered in strange carvings. After drawing as much of Copan as they were able (keep in mind that the whole city was covered in trees and vines) the pair heard of another lost city called Palenque many miles away. Utterly exhausted they make another long, grueling trek through the forest.
Over the next few years the explorers would go on to uncover, draw, and document the Mayan cities of Copan, Palenque, Uxaml, and Chichen Itza. The books that they wrote sparked a major revival of interest in a civilization that many believed was a myth. The descendants of the once great Mayans and Aztecs now lived in small rural villages in Central America just eking out a living as subsistence farmers in mud huts. Their religion and language was long forgotten after being made a crime by the Spanish who came and conquered the area in the 1500s.
Archaeologists raced to clear the jungle and learn as much as they could about these once great civilizations who built stone pyramids and massive cities out of the rainforest.
Big City Living...Mesoamerican Style
The Mayans had lived in the area of the Yucatan Peninsula, Guatemala and Belize since about 2500 BCE. Just like other Mesoamericans, they started out in small agricultural villages. By around 500 CE (around the time of the last Olmec city) the Mayans began to do a lot of building which would continue for the next 600 years. Mayan cities were very impressive with all of the trappings of civilization. They had advanced irrigation and farming techniques to allow a large population to settle down and grow. Mayan cities were pretty happening places.
Mayan cities were built on a grand scale, spread out over a vast area. Each city acted as its own independent country (called a city-state) with its own king and chief gods. The homes of the Mayans were grouped into neighbors each with their own plaza, market place, and public gardens. Linking the neighborhoods to the city center were stone causeways that were raised platforms to avoid flooding, which is common in the lowlands of the rainforest. In the city center could be found the grandest buildings.
A grand plaza was one of the main features of every Mesoamerican city from the Mayans to the Aztecs. Surrounding the plaza were the temples, palaces, ball courts, and the largest of the city markets. To avoid the whole flooding issue, the temples and palaces were built on mounds of mud.
To the Mesoamericans, honoring the gods was top priority. All Mesoamerican cities built temples that were meant to resemble mountains to the most important gods such as the Sun god. Other temples dedicated to other gods would be spread out throughout the city. The minor gods might even have to share a temple or settle for a simple shrine. Unlike in Egypt, the Mayans built pyramids that served the living rather than the dead. The Mayan pyramid temples were built of limestone and arranged in a step formation. Some of the largest temples like the one in Tikal and Tenochtitlan were over 200 feet high. Mayan temples were covered in carving depicting scenes of their gods or battles.
This Lil' Mayan went to Market
The merchants and artisans were the ones kept the Mayans supplied with both their bling and their daily necessities. Mayan territory was spread out from southern Mexico to Central America– an area of about 150,000 square miles (about the size of California).
Traveling across the Mayan empire would have been nearly impossible had it not been for the ingenious network of roads that carved a path through the jungle, swamps, and mountains that covered the Mayan landscape. Mayan engineers built raised roads that were paved with stone and shot through the jungle arrow-straight. Mayan merchants traversed these roads daily, carrying goods from one part of the empire to another. From the wet mountain-sides of the Pacific coast came cocoa beans, high up in the mountains lived the quetzal bird whose green iridescent feathers decorated the headdresses of kings and nobles. The Yucatan provided salt, and the northern deserts provided the razor sharp obsidian that spewed from the volcanic mountains of Mexico. No Mayan city could produce everything it needed and so it was the work of merchants who kept the markets well-stocked.
Before the Spanish came, the people of Central America had no pack animals to help ease their burden. Horses and mules were unknown to the Maya. To get your load of jade from point A to point B required good ol' fashion human muscle. Merchants (or their hired porters) carried their goods in a back pack that strapped to their foreheads. This not only took the weight off of their backs but freed their hands.
A porter could carry one of these packs, weighing between 80 to 150 pounds, for up to ten hours each day. Traveling twenty miles or more with a load of valuables can be risky business. Robbers and wild jaguars lurked in the thick jungles and it was one of the risks that travelers took when hitting the open roads. To protect them, the government patrolled the main roads but it was still a good idea for any merchant to travel in groups. The wealthiest merchants traveled in packs with hired guards and servants to carry their goods. The governor of every city built a travelers hut where travelers could stop and rest for the night. Each hut was stocked with fire wood, corn, and a few other creature comforts–all for free!
The Mayan Peasant
On the outer fringes of the cities lived the commoners who lived in mud and grass reed huts and did all of the grunt work like farming and helping to build public works projects. The Mayan commoners were near the bottom of the Mayan social ladder just above the slaves.
The Mayans had been farming all the way since around 5000 BCE when evidence suggests that the Mesoamericans began to give up hunting in favor of a more sedentary lifestyle.
The Mayans were excellent farmers and they were able to use their knowledge of the natural world to domesticate plants and animals such as the wild turkey. The men were also responsible for bringing home the venison by hunting deer and other wild game. This spike in food production allowed the population to grow and over a few hundred years their villages began to grow into towns and cities.
But slash and burn farming is a very wasteful method of growing food. The land wears out fast and the constant rain erodes the topsoil. In order to create cities that could support tens of thousands, the Mayans had to move beyond simple farming methods and harness the power of science which they borrowed and improved on the methods of the Olmecs.
For the peasant family your life revolved around the seasons–which in the tropical environment of Central America meant a dry season and a wet season. During the dry season which started in the late fall; farmers would be out in groups getting the land ready for spring planting. Growing crops depletes the nutrients in the soil. To keep the soil from becoming infertile they would rotate between fields. One field would be for legumes rich in nitrogen, another field might be planted with corn or squash. The third field would be left fallow so that the soil could replenish itself. In this part of the world the thick jungle is quick to reclaim anything that is left alone so farmers would have use slash and burn techniques to clear the soil. The ashes leftover would help to fertilize the soil. In the spring, the farmers would wait for news from the priests who were busy consulting their calendar and reading the signs of the gods.
Once they got the “go ahead” the farmer would know it was a good time to plant his crop. Farming is already hard work but for people without large pack animals like oxen or horses to pull the plows the Mayans had to find another way to get their fields plowed. Men strapped a small wooden plow to his forehead and walked his field, cutting furrows into the soil. For this reason, Mayan fields were small and the whole community came together to sow, weed, and harvest the crop.
The most important crop was corn (aka maize) which made up about 80% of the diet of all Mayans. The old adage “a women’s work is never done” is as true for the Mayans as it is for peasant women everywhere. Not only did women have to help their husbands in the field but they were also responsible for caring for the children, weaving cotton into colorful textiles, and preparing food for the family. The hardest job by far was grinding the hard kernels of corn into fine flour that would be made into tortillas. Mayan women would be kept busy for several hours each day hunched over their grinding stones. It was the woman’s job to also go out into the forest and gather valuable wild plants like vanilla, oregano, and papaya. Meat was not a part of the commoner’s diet but occasionally men would hunt deer, tapir, or spider monkeys which would be turned into good eats.
The Mayans built cisterns to capture rainwater, built canals to irrigate fields, and drained swamps for an expanding civilization. In swampy low-lands (such as the Valley of Mexico) the Mesoamericans really came up with a stroke of farming genius in the form of chinampas. Chinampas are floating gardens built on a reed platform and piled with mud. It was using this system that one of the greatest Mesoamerican cities- the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan- was able to feed one million hungry faces every day.
"Maya women rose and started the fires before 4:00 AM. Women made breakfast toasting leftover cornmeal pancakes. By 5 AM men had finished eating and left for the fields with their sons. There they harvested their maize. At midafternoon men and boys would return from the fields and sometimes hunt or check their traps along the way.
They would kill birds with blowpipes and clay pellets. Sometimes they also hunted with spears. When the men got home they had hot baths waiting for them. (Some cities had community baths) After bathing men had dinner but the woman didn't eat with the men. The women served the men and then ate their dinner later. Dinner could include cornmeal, black beans, meat, maize, rabbit and turkey. After dinner men usually worked at making wooden and jade things which were sometimes used in trade. Women would spin cotton and weave."
Source: kidsnewsroom.org
The Mayan Social Pyramid: The King
In Mayan times separation of religion and state was unknown. The king who was known by his title ‘ahaw’ was considered a god-king who ruled over their particular city-state. As you might expect the king lived in a grand stone palace in the center of his city. The palace walls were decorated with precious feathers and painted with colorful frescoes depicting scenes from Mayan history, mythology, or famous battles. The Mayans were famous for their beautiful cotton textiles and it makes sense that the finest pieces hung on the walls and doorways of the king’s palace.
The royal residence even sported an even cooler feature (literally). 900 years before indoor plumbing would appear in European homes wealthy Mayans were taking advantage of running water and flush toilets! From his throne room overlooking a grand courtyard the ahaw met with his council of advisers and nobles who assisted him running the city. Mayan kings had more in common with Emperor Nero than Henry VIII. In Mayan times the king had many roles from army leader, to ruler of his city state, to high priest to ball player. That’s a lot of headdresses to put on.
But as the direct descendant of the sun god himself, the king was responsible for leading the rituals and sacrifices that kept the universe in balance. When times were good and the harvests were plentiful the people praised their king for doing such a great job. But when disaster struck guess who got the blame. That’s right, his royal highness could find his very life on the line if the people began to believe that the gods no longer favored the current king. To appease the gods, the king would offer human sacrifices–usually slaves or captured warriors. But in particularly bad times he would be advised by his priests to offer up one of his own sons to set the world right again.
K’inich Janaab Pakal or "Pakal" or short is the most famous of all the Mayan kings. Pakal came to the throne at the ripe old age of 12 and ruled the city-state of Palenque in the 600s C.E. During his reign much of the grand buildings and works of art were commisioned that make the site one of the most popular tourist destinations.
If you've ever watched the History Channel series "Ancient Aliens" you might have heard of a Mayan tomb whose king is riding some sort of alien- motorcycle. Thats our guy Pakal. Rather than some sort of space craft the picture is more likely showing Pakal climbing the World Tree, preparing to enter the Otherworld by way of the Dark Rift in the Milky Way, commonly known as the Galactic Center
The Nobility
Just below the god-king were the priests and nobles. These people were connected to the royal family- either by blood, marriage, or business. The Mayans didn’t care too much for chaos. The Mayans kept their social classes strictly separated from the clothes you wore, to the food you ate, to where you lived. The modern notion of moving up the social ladder through hard work was almost unknown to the Mayans. The gods either made you a noble or they didn’t. The fact that only nobles could build their houses in the center of the city near the palace, could only eat the sacred cocoa beans, and wear headdress of exotic feathers proved that the gods made them better than commoners.
Nobles lived a life free of physical labor. The advised the king, served as judges, collected taxes, were the officers in the army, and served as priests to the gods. The closer you were by birth to the king, the more important your job was.
The nobles not only didn’t perform physical labor they didn’t even bother walking the long distances between the Mayan cities like a commoner did. Instead, whenever they traveled they were accompanied by servants who carried the nobility on a litter–a portable bed or chair. Of course, if you couldn’t spot a noble by their fancy clothes, or the fact they were always surrounded by doting servants, you couldn’t miss their most distinctive feature.
The Mayans had some unusual ideas about beauty. At birth, while the cranium is still soft, noble babies would have their heads wrapped between two boards which–over many months– would permanently elongate their skulls. Many nobles sharpened their teeth to a point for that extra fierce look. Proving that even back in Mayan times people would do anything for the sake of fashion. The freshly pointy incisors would then be decorated with designs. To accomplish this the tooth would have a small hole drilled into it and a small piece of jade (only nobles were permitted to use this fine mineral) would be inserted into the hole.
Mayan noble shown denying a peasant the sacred drink of Chocolate (probably mixed with chiles and a bit of human blood)
The Jaguar was a sacred animal for the Mayans. Mayan kings all claimed this big cat as their animal spirit and used its skin for their thrones.
