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Temple of Itzamna, Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico

Who were the ancient Maya?

The name ‘Maya’ roughly translates as ‘people of the corn’.

The ancient civilization of the Maya stretched four thousand years (around 2500 B.C. to 1500 A.D.)

That’s twice the time that has passed since Jesus of Nazareth was around!

The Maya settled a bunch of kingdoms in Mesoamerica - countries we NOW know as Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. There were other civilisations in the same area around the same time, but the Maya were the largest and the most advanced in astronomy, architecture, engineering and mathematics.

Detail of Structure XX, Chicanna, Campeche, Mexico

What’s so special about the Maya?

The Maya seem a bit of an engima to our modern minds.

• They built amazing temples and cities but apparently never got beyond using stone as a material (not iron or bronze).
• They invented the concept of a zero in maths, but never invented the wheel.
• Their society was complex and people had to cooperate to fit in, but they also practiced human sacrifice.
• Their system for counting used numbers that can express massive sums - but only atoms and stars are counted in such big numbers.
• They were obsessed with astronomy and build entire cities which work as astronomical observatories to track the positions of the sun, moon, planets and stars.
• They invented a written hieroglyphic script (although they sort of borrowed from an earlier script that was probably invented by the Olmecs, an older civilisation). In all of human history writing has only been properly invented three times - the Olmec/Maya, the Mesopotamians and maybe the Egyptians. Everyone else either heard about or copied the idea. The Egyptians may have heard about it via Mesopotamia…we don’t know for sure.
• They had a calendar, the ‘Long Count’, which ends on 21 Dec 2012.
• And sometime around 900A.D. they began to abandon all those incredible cities they’d built by hand - and shrunk back to live as simple farmers in the forests and savannahs of Mesoamerica. Why?

Stela in Museum of Mayan Culture, Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico

How did the Maya live?

The Maya, like other Mesoamerican peoples, were an agricultural civilisation. They grew three main crops: maize, beans, squash. If you’ve been to Cadbury World you may also know that they also cultivated the cocoa bean. (Chocolate came to Europe and then the rest of the world via the Spanish conquest of Mexico.)

Most Mayan lived in huts made of adobe (a kind of mud) with thatched roofs made from palm fronds. Things haven’t changed too much - you’ll see these traditional huts dotted all over the Yucatan countryside.

Mayan society was divided into royalty, priests, warriors and everyone else. Royalty lived in the stone-built temples. The ordinary people’s huts were outside these ceremonial centres.

Priests and scribes were involved in writing, astronomy and celebrating religious events. Royalty did the same as Kings and Queens everywhere in the days when Kings and Queens had real power. They ruled the land and sometimes made war - or defended their country - from other Mayan kingdoms.

Statue of Chac-Mool, Museum of Mayan Culture, Chetumal, Mexico. (Notice the small Beanie Baby - my daughter’s - in the vessel for burnt offerings…)

What was their religion?

The Maya believed in a pantheon of gods - not just one god but many. Most gods had both Good and Evil traits. The favour of the gods was needed for good crop harvests, weather etc.

Priests would study the sky (using astronomy) and use their religious calendar (the 260-day Tzolkin) to predict whether things might go well or badly. Sometimes they decided they would need a favour from one particular god. That might mean giving blood from a small animal. A bigger favour would need a bigger sacrifice - blood-letting by the King or Queen, perhaps. Or maybe even the sacrifice of a human life.

The Maya believed that the world was divided into three planes - earth, heaven and the underworld (Xibalba). The souls of the dead lived in Xibalba, along with some of the gods.

The Maya believed that the universe was flat and square. They used colours to represent the four cardinal directions - north (white), east (red), south (yellow), west (black). The Bakabs -the four sons of the ‘Earth Monster’ Itzamna - were believed to support the four corners of the universe. Hence the Bakabs of Muluc, Kan, Cauac, and Ix.

A page from a Mayan codex, Museum of Mayan Culture, Chetumal, Mexico

What did they write about?

This is an exciting question! The Mayan script was only first deciphered in the 1980s. That might seem ages ago to you but compared to other scripts like Sumerian or ancient Egyptian, it is as though it was cracked yesterday!

And you have to add in the fact that a Spanish bishop once piled up all the Mayan books he could get his hands on and set them on fire. So only four books are known to have survived - the Dresden Codex, Paris Codex, Madrid Codex and Grolier Codex.

The codices seem to be mostly concerned with astronomy and religious matters. They don’t seem to be historical accounts from when they were written.

The other place where you find writing is on the temples and monuments. Some of the most interesting recent findings have come from translating glyphs on a staircase at Copan and Dos Pilas. These inscriptions tell us about some of the history of those cities and their rulers.

Detail of inscription on Monument 6, Tortuguera

Did they really think the world would end in 2012?

They certainly believed that something would happen at the end of 2012! But since they believed that time was cyclical - things ended and then started again - it’s unlikely that they believed in something as simple as an ‘ending’.

There is only one written document (Torguera Monument 6) that even mentions the date of the end of the calendar. Sadly, the inscription becomes impossible to read just as it starts to get interesting.

So the proper answer is - we just don’t know!

I’ve written a longer article about 2012 and all that.

Why did they abandon the cities?

This is another ‘controversial’ issue. There are several different ideas for what might have happened.

It’s very mysterious when an entire civilisation just stops practicing their religion and drifts away from the urban centres that have cost them so much effort to build and maintain.

There are many theories but the one that right now seems to have most support is that the ‘collapse’ came about because of droughts.

Around the 9th century, the climate in the region began to change. Scientists know that drastic climate change happened in the past even before there were any cars to blame it on.

Droughts, perhaps also combined with poor harvests to cause famine amongst the Maya. Maybe the temple-building made things worse. To make the cement for the limestone-built temples, the Maya would burn lots of trees. And without tree cover, topsoil can wash away.

When famine hit the Maya would have worked even harder to please their gods, asking them to bring good weather and crops. They might have sacrificed lots of people, maybe even started wars to get more sacrificial victims. But when this didn’t work, maybe they stopped believing in human sacrifice. And if you didn’t need to make sacrifices, why live in the city, giving up your sons and daughters to be killed on temples? Better to go into the forest, build a hut and start your own little farm.

There’s some proof for drought, but the rest is all theory.

Calakmul, Campeche, Mexico

Where are the Maya now?

The Spanish explorers led by Hernan Cortez arrived in 1519. By then most of the Mayan cities were abandoned or in decline. One of the last cities to be ‘in business’ was Tayasal. They didn’t know it but Cortez and his men passed within miles of the ruined city of Palenque - once a jewel in the Mayan empire.

Once they’d arrived the Spanish set about destroying all traces of Mesoamerican culture. It wasn’t that they didn’t respect the grandeur of what they found in Mexico - one conquistador was even more impressed than he’d been by Constantinople. But as very religious Christians they believed that the ancient Mesoamerican civilisations were pagan and possibly rather evil. Human sacrifice certainly was something that the European world hadn’t seen for thousands of years - it was associated with devil worship. So they believed it was their moral duty to bring the people they’d found out of their ways - what with all the human sacrifice - and introduce them to Christianity.

But that wasn’t the end of the Maya people. Over six million Maya live in Mexico and Central America today. That’s lots more than the total estimated Maya population during the peak of their so-called Classic period, around 700 A.D.

The Maya who escaped the Spanish, and those who had left the cities before the Spanish invasion - eventually converted to Christianity. When the Spanish told them that the Christian Messiah, Jesus, had sacrificed himself, spilled his own blood to save his followers, they immediately understood - it was just what the Mayan royalty used to do.

However, it is believed that many Mayans secretly carried on with their traditional beliefs. They transposed their Tree of Life, the sacred symbol of cosmic unity, onto the Holy Cross; their pantheon of gods morphed neatly into the array of Catholic saints. Today, offerings of corn are still made at altars hidden in jungle caves. It’s even said that a few discreet Maya daykeepers in the Guatemalan highlands still follow the 260-day religious caldendar, the Tzolkin.

Becan, Campeche, Mexico

Where can I find out more?

Websites

Jaguar Sun is a site which has some basic information; not hard to follow and good for children.

Wikipedia has several good articles about Mayan civilisation, religion, writing, the collapse, and more.

The FAMSI website is terrific for those keen to know more about Mayan writing.

Museums

In Mexico the best exibitions are in the Museum of Mayan Culture (Chetumal) and National Museum of Anthropology (Mexico City).

In the USA you have the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology.

Mayan sites to visit in Mexico

It’s best to plan your trips from one central landing point, unless you like trekking from one hotel to another…

If you stay in Cancun you can take day trips to Chichen Itza, Tulum, Coba and Ek Balam.

From Chetumal (a five-hour drive from Cancun) you can see Calakmul, Becan, Chicanna, Xpujil and Kohunlich.

From Merida - Uxmal, Chichen Itza, Labna, Kabah, Sayil, Dzibitzalchun.

From Campeche City - Edzna and Uxmal

From Villahermosa - Palenque

Chetumal, Quintana Roo, Mexico

The Joshua Files is set around the Chetumal area. It’s not yet become very busy. Unlike in any other Mayan ruin I’ve ever visited, we strolled around Becan, Chicanna and Calakmul seeing hardly any other visitors. I’ll let you into a secret - I wrote ‘Invisible City’ before I realised just how quiet these ruins are! I actually imagined the whole area as much busier. Now that I’ve actually been there, when I edit Book 2 I’ll be making sure to let readers see how spooky and quiet the atmosphere can be...