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THE ANCIENT MAYA

STANFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

List of Tables............................................................................xiiiList of Figures...........................................................................xxiiiList of Boxes.............................................................................xxviList of Color Plates......................................................................xxviiPreface...................................................................................xxxiAcknowledgments...........................................................................xxxiiiA Note on Names and Pronunciation.........................................................1INTRODUCTION..............................................................................23CHAPTER 1 The Setting of Maya Civilization................................................57CHAPTER 2 Archaeology and Maya Civilization...............................................99CHAPTER 3 History and Maya Civilization...................................................153CHAPTER 4 The Origins of Maya Civilization................................................177CHAPTER 5 The Emergence of Maya Civilization in the Middle Preclassic.....................223CHAPTER 6 The Origins of Maya States in the Late Preclassic...............................287CHAPTER 7 The Expansion of Maya States in the Early Classic...............................377CHAPTER 8 The Apogee of Maya States in the Late Classic...................................499CHAPTER 9 Transformations in the Terminal Classic.........................................589CHAPTER 10 Reformulation and Revival in the Postclassic...................................631CHAPTER 11 The Ancient Maya Economy.......................................................665CHAPTER 12 The Organization of Maya Society...............................................719CHAPTER 13 Maya Ideology and Religion.....................................................757EPILOGUE The Conquest of the Maya.........................................................779APPENDIX Dates for K'atun and Half-K'atun Endings.........................................785Bibliographic Summaries...................................................................811Bibliography..............................................................................889Illustration Credits......................................................................893Index

Chapter One

There is the white sea, and there is a red sea. They say that there is a sea like milk. ... Because they say that there is just water under the earth. And over the water we are floating. Because they say that where the edge of the world remains ... there is just water ... there they join, the edge of the world and sky. -Contemporary Ch'orti' Maya view of their world (after Fought 1972: 373)

This book is about the past of an extraordinary Native American society, the ancient Maya. The distribution of the ancient ruins of Maya civilization, and the settlements of their descendants, covers a geographic area of some 324,000 [km.sup.2] (125,000 sq. mi.), a region roughly the size of the state of New Mexico (Fig. 1.1). Despite five centuries of social change since the Spanish Conquest, the Maya people and their languages have survived, and some are expanding in number of speakers. There are several million people who speak one of the twenty-eight Mayan languages as their primary language (note that the adjective Mayan is usually reserved to refer to the languages spoken by Maya people, while Maya refers to all other aspects of these people and their culture). Except for the Waxtek speakers of Veracruz, the Mayan languages occupy a fairly compact zone in eastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras, and until recently, western El Salvador (Fig. 1.2).

Most Mayan speakers are at least minimally bilingual in Spanish (or English in Belize), and other languages have influenced all Mayan languages. There is grammatical evidence for ancient contacts between the Mayan and the adjacent MixeZoquean language family (including Zoque and Tapachultec shown in Fig. 1.2). Borrowing between these groups almost certainly took place in the Preclassic era and was mostly from Mixe-Zoquean to Mayan. For example, several basic Mayan kinship and body-part terms are related to Mixe-Zoquean, as are several other words such as ajaw (lord) and kakaw (cacao or chocolate). Most Mayan languages also have a small number of loanwords from Nahuatl (the language of native peoples from Central Mexico, especially the Postclassic Mexica, or Aztecs). These loanwords presumably reflect the rising prominence of the Central Mexican states in the Postclassic era or in earlier times. The Maya were also donors of linguistic influence. Xinca, a nearly extinct non-Mayan language of southeastern Guatemala (Fig. 1.2), has a fairly large number of loanwords from Mayan. This process has continued with Spanish and English since European contact. The already-mentioned Mayan word kakaw has entered English as cacao and cocoa, as has the Mayan word xook (pronounced "shok") as the English shark.

The grouping of the twenty-eight Mayan languages into a single language family recognizes their close relationships. With the exception of Waxtek, these Mayan languages have been in contact with one another for many centuries and often grade into one another. Over time changes have spread from one language to another in different degrees. New languages often emerge as the result of isolation, as when communities once speaking the same language become separated from each other. Thus it is usually assumed that an original Proto-Mayan language first diverged into Waxtekan, the most remote subgroup, and the ancestor of the other Mayan languages, which in turn diverged into Yukatekan and the remaining four subgroups: Greater K'ichean, Mamean, Greater Q'anjob'alan, and Tzeltalan-Ch'olan (Fig. 1.3). In time these subgroups became differentiated through migration or other social processes until the present-day variety of Mayan languages evolved.

It is clear, therefore, that the Maya have occupied southeastern Mexico and upper Central America for thousands of years. Within Mexico, the Maya area includes all of the Yucatan Peninsula, and within upper Central America it includes the nations of Guatemala and Belize and the western parts of Honduras and El Salvador. The surrounding Pacific Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean Sea provide the only firm geographic limits to the Maya area. To the east and west, boundaries correspond to zones of cultural interaction and transition between Maya and non-Maya peoples, rather than discrete geographic features. On the west the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, a narrowing of the Mexican landmass to just under 200 km (124 mi.), is a convenient boundary between predominantly Maya and non-Maya areas of southern Mexico. On the east the zone of transition falls roughly along a line from the lower Lempa River in central El Salvador northward to Lake Yojoa and along the Ulua River to the Gulf of Honduras in the Caribbean Sea (Fig. 1.1).

The diffuse nature of these cultural boundaries is a reminder that Maya civilization was not an isolated development. Beyond sharing common roots in language and tradition, the ancient Maya were very much a part of a larger...