Cdeadly Maya Secrets

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cDEADLY MAYA SECRETS

HOW WAR CONSUMED AN ASTONISHING CULTURE

By Charles Fenyvesi

Article Provided by Michael CampbellU.S.NEWS & WORLD REPORT

October 30, 1995

Even grave robbers, the pesky nemeses of the mighty, have avoided the Guatemalan

rain forest of Petexbatun, once the heartland of the Mayas. But for the past six years,

an unusually large research team has penetrated the dense jungle haunted by jaguars

and poisonous snakes, as well as guerrillas, to study the mystery: Why did this

amazingly inventive civilization exit from history with the abruptness of a tropical

sunset?

The question has been debated since 1839, when machete-wielding natives hired by

New Yorker John Stephens slashed their way through another part of the rain forest

and found superbly crafted pyramids, palaces and serpent-shaped hieroglyphics

revealing an amazingly precise calendar. Many theories have been advanced for the

ruination: foreign invasion, population explosion, epidemics and other catastrophes.

Now, after a study of some 200 sites, the multidisciplinary team--45 scientists

including archaeologists, zoologists and nutritionists--will reveal this week at a

conference at the University of California that the explanation is very familiar. ``The

Mayas paid a terrible price for internecine war waged in the pursuit of elite wealth andpower,'' says Vanderbilt University archaeology Prof. Arthur Demarest, who directed

the project. ``They thrived only as long as their warfare was limited and did not

disrupt the traditional economic and ecological systems.'' The study suggests that the

Maya elite committed the equivalent of collective suicide in the ninth century--at the

time Charlemagne united Western Europe.

SPORTSMANLIKE WARRIORSThe explanation is surprising because in the preceding millennium, Mayas excelled as

warriors of sportsmanlike self-restraint. During the Maya golden age--from 300 to 700

A.D.--the nobles of adjacent city-states engaged in what Demarest calls ``almostcontinual warfare.'' They fought without harming agriculture or trade because classic

Maya warriors did not lay long sieges that would have drained the economy. And

their rules of engagement spared civilians. Demarest suspects even a ban on attacks on

villages and fields, since up to the eighth century no fortifications were built to shield

them.


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The memorable image from the work of Demarest's team is that of the Maya warrior--

more a samurai taking orders from a master than a European knight- errant making a

living by violence. His life was a bloody sport: raiding other Maya cities to capture

prisoners who were frighten to the raider's home base and handed over to its priests.

His victory settled dynastic feuds and decided who was paramount to whom.

But the key objective was the sacrifice of the captives during an elaborate theatrical

spectacle that marked the Mayas' high holy days. Mayas believed the higher the rank

of the captives, the more their gods appreciated the sacrifice. And the gods especially

liked blood from the genitals of men and the tongues and lips of women.

Dressed in elaborate attire designed for show rather than combat, the warriors fought

with obsolete weapons such as spears and clubs and seldom annexed the territories

they invaded. Mayas turned war into a ritual that did not affect their trade in quetzal

feathers and obsidian blades, exchanges of artisans and scribes, adherence to the same

canons in art and architecture and visits during royal births, marriages andcoronations.

What, then, changed? The part of the Vanderbilt study bound to stir controversy is the

report that there is no evidence of foreign invasions, epidemics, natural catastrophes

or climate change that could have destroyed the civilization. Even more significant is

the finding that the Mayas raised enough food on the thin topsoil of the rain forest.

Nutritionists detected no sign that Mayas were undernourished. To the contrary, the

scholars concluded that, amazingly, Maya farmers produced bumper crops feeding a

large and constantly growing population without disrupting the fragile ecological

balance. They mimicked the diversity of the ecosystem, building terraces and

applying a range of techniques on small plots under tall trees, rather than focusing on

a monoculture on large cleared areas.

Demarest's team argues that the Maya decline began in the mid-700s. With the

proliferation of the rulers' marriages for the sake of dynastic alliances, cadet lineages

kept branching off. Some royal sons left home to found new, rival cities; others stayed

to press claims to their inheritance. As the elite grew in number, they demanded more

luxury imports from other kingdoms, such as jade jewelry, and fought more wars to

take home larger and larger piles of booty. Fighting got out of hand, disrupting trade

and decimating craftsmen and farmers. The raids escalated into ceaseless civil war,

with bands from splinter states burning fields and pillaging cities and villages and

massacring civilians until a mere 10 percent of the population was left. ``Until this

study, scholars did not realize the importance of the shift from ritual to endemic

warfare,'' says Ron Bishop, a senior archaeologist from the Smithsonian Institution,

who worked on the project.


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Demarest traces the beginning of the end of Maya civilization to 761 and the siege of

the royal palace in the city of Dos Pilas. Once the hub of a loose network of city-states

scattered over 1,500 square miles, Dos Pilas was attacked by men from the nearby city

of Tamarindito. The hastily erected defensive walls--which included carved stones

ripped from temples and palaces--were breached. A pit containing 13 heads of men

between 18 and 35 suggests that some survivors were executed. Eight days later--allthe critical dates were fastidiously carved into stone--the victors held ``a termination

ceremony.'' They toppled the king's limestone throne and knocked down the temple

and the steles boasting of past victories.

SURPRISE ATTACKSome of the nobles fled to nearby Aguateca, a natural fortress surrounded by a deep

chasm. For 40 years the refugees held out, protecting their crops behind palisades, but

were eventually overrun. The invaders sprang a surprise, as evidenced by items such

as a scribe's paint and grinding stones found scattered in his workshop. By 800,

Aguateca was a ghost town.

In another case, the Punta de Chimino peninsula was cut off from the mainland by the

excavation of three concentric moats and walls, with the innermost ring 40 feet deep

and cut into solid limestone bedrock. Scholars were impressed that the labor invested

in the massive defenses was several times the labor required to erect all the buildings.

``Such a defense outlay is simply not sustainable,'' says Demarest.

After 820, the Mayas abandoned the Petexbatun forest where for more than a

millennium they built city after city. For reasons scholars have not been able to

explain, Mayas have never returned to the cradle of their civilization. These days theylive scattered across the Guatemalan lowlands, as well as Mexico, Belize and

Honduras. And they have lost the memory of their past grandeur as well as that of the

apocalypse. Now, North American scholars are the ones who teach a few of them to

read the hieroglyphics invented by their ancestors, the earliest writing system in the

New World.

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