ANCIENT MAYAN HISTORYTHE MAYAS FROM THE ANCIENT EMPIRE
The origins of the oldest Mayan tribes get lost in the
darkness of leyends. The XVI century indian manuscripts have lost all historical
rememberance of the primitive Mayan geographic localization, be it wizard books or Chilam
Balam writen in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mani, Chumayel, etc., or the quiches' Popol Vuh, a
branch from the Mayan trunk, writen in Guatemala.
Nor does the only Mayan primitive narrator, fray Diego de
Landa, who wrote by 1566, keep a clear tradition to that respect. In any case all the
information refers to the Mayas in Yucatan, of the so called New Empire, and not to the
old Mayas who lived in the south (Chiapas, Guatemala, and Honduras), whose civilization
had extinguished some centuries before the peninsular cities reached their fullness,
Chichen Itza, Uxmal, and Sayil.
We know that in a very remote time, the Mayas lived on the
Atlantic shore of Mexico, from where they decended to Central America going along the
Usumacinta to reach the Peten. An old Mayan group, the Huasteco, was left on the extreme
north of Mexico, on the Veracruz-Tamaulipas kidney.
Maybe the Nahua drive cut in two the Mayan people and
displaced some groups to the north and some to the south. The groups displaced to the
south were the ones who developed in all its splendour the Mayan civilization. In the
beginings of their historical times they lived in a Palenque triangle, in Chiapas;
Uaxactun, in Guatemala; and Copan in Honduras; this being a very ample and difficult to
access jungle area, crossed by large rivers, which comprehends all of the Usumacinta
valley, the Guatemalan Peten and the Motagua valleys and the Copan river.
Outside of the monuments that the acient Mayas have left, we
know nothing about the history of the men who erected Tikal, Palenque and Copan. But if,
as we saw, there are no writen sources, the sculpted monuments are eloquent to this
respect. One of the oldest practices was to erect wakes to conmemorate or fix time
transits; in the begining wakes were erected irregularly; later they were built with a
certain periodicity, generally at the end of each Katun, ciclic period of twenty years.
It has been posible to read these dates due to the code
provided by Landa -the Mayas begun their calendar from the legendary date of 3113 B.C.-,
and to the fact that the Mayas knew larger time units, BAKTUNES, ciclic periods that
enclose twenty KNTTULCS, in other words, almost 394 of ours.
The first historical and none mithycal dates that are known
are the BAKTUN OCTAVO, being very numerous on the nineth to decay and almost sculpturally
disappear on the BAKTUN.
Once the Mayan and the Christian calendars had been
corelated, numerous dates inscribed on wakes, lintels, steps and temples haven decifered.
Probably by the III century, the Mayas living in Veracruz and Tabasco begun to move in
direction of the Peten, following the natural route of the Usumacinta river.
The Mayan archeological city that has the oldest engraved
date is Uaxactun, on the Guatemalan Peten, with the 9th wake of the year 328, date related
to a nearby piramid, the E-VII Sub. Perhaps Palenque, Copan or Tikal had older dates, but
were probably worked on stucco, painted or engraved on wood and thus they have not lasted
until now.
After the 9th wake, Uaxactun continued erecting monuments
regularly: on the 18th and 19th wakes they fixed the year 357; on the 5th the 358,
continuing the dates normally until the IX century.
Dates become more abundant on the 5th century. The wakes
irradiate to the far and badly comunicated centers, and cities surging up on the most
disperse area: Balakabal, on the Peten, Campeche, 405; Uolantun, 409 and Tikal, Guatemala,
416; on the extreme south, Copan, Honduras, 465; on teh extreme north, Oxkintok, Yucatán,
472, etc.
On the VI century the important centers of the Usumacinta
river begin their historical rise: Yaxchilan, Piedras Negras and Palenque, as well as
Tonina, Chiapas, Calakmul, Yucatán, and Rusilha, Guatemala. The Yucatán colonization
begun following the gulf and caribean route.
A century later the Golden Age of the Ancient Empire begins:
from 633 to 830, on the second half of the nineth Baktun, the most precious wakes are
sculpted, the finest lintels, the most sumptuos buildings were erected and the most
artistic stairwells are engraved. Towards the century when Palenque becomes the religious
Meca by excelence; its architecture never again would it be overpassed, its stuccos
modeled with scenes were left as unperishable master pieces, while on the intelectual, and
particularly in astronomy, is the head of the Mayan cities.<P. Naranjo. But by the
middle of the IXth century the Mayan dates in long count begin to be scarce and almost
come to disappear. The last one that is known in a Mayan city is the one from the twelveth
wake of Uaxactun, from 899, contemporary of the nineth wake of Oxpeinul and the tenth of
Xultun, only one later date from the tenth Baktun is known: the jade plate of Tzibanche,
Quintana Roo, from 909.
Then as it is comonly affirmed, " solitude and silence
was made on the Mayan cities". The migrations to Yucatán intensified and the human
waves pushed some groups and fixed others; but the decadence of art could be seen
everywhere.
Diverse hipothesis have tried to explain the abandonment of
the southern Mayan cities: climate changes, fevers and epidemies, agricultural colapses,
wars, etcetera, that made those regions uninhabitable. Morley suggests that the exhaustion
of the lands pushed the population to the north; Thompson, on the contrary, seems to
incline more for the peasant up rising aganist the priesthood; others see the Olmec-Toltec
hand in this destruction that, penetrating alongside the Usumacinta before 895, may have
judged this culture throwing its remains towards Yucatán.
Be it one way or the other, the fact is that by the X century
the jungle begun to invade the old cities. Some population did remain, but they were
peasants who only left ceramic remains, but never again were any wakes or palaces erected.
When Hernán Cortés traveled by the Ancient Empire area, in the Usumacinta as well as in
the Peten, during his expedition to Hibueras, many centuries had passed since these cities
had been abandoned and no rememberance of them was left.
NEW EMPIRE
The dominant society requires its youth to study their
cultural heritage and origins in Europe and the Mediterranean. For Native American youth,
a study of the great civilizations of the Western Hemisphere is appropriate. The Maya are
not gone--Chiapas Maya in Mexico have been much in the news, and more than 10,000
Guatemalan Mayan refugees from the terror live in the U.S., while the war there against
indigenous people goes on .
Much of the study of their past civilization focuses on their
sciences and mathematics, for a long time all that could be deciphered of their
jungle-choked stone cities. Recently, the glyphs of the stone-recorded language, together
with the Pop Wuj book written by desperate Mayas in the 16 century to preserve their
culture under the Spanish onslaught, and oral histories of elders, have begun to yield a
human history, as well as the ancient sciences.
THE MAYAS AND THE NEW EMPIRE
We have already seen that an obscure and silent era in Mayan
culture begins in the tenth century. No more stelae with a long count are sculpted and the
palaces and temples built are few. The Middle Age, Mayan art's dark age, is felt
everywhere, simultaneously starting the great mass migratory movements to the north, to
Yucatán.
The Mayas abandon the ancient Palenque-Uaxactun-Copan area.
They begin to move along the Caribbean and the gulf. Tulum and Ichpaatun are witnesses to
an earlier colonization following the Quintana Roo route, in 564 and A.D. 593. The
colonization of Oxkintok, Yucatán is dated at A.D. 472. Jaina, in Campeche, knew the
Mayan penetration in A.D. 652.
In the seventh and eighth century the penetration has reached
the center of the peninsula -- Coba, starting back in A.D. 613. El Chilam Balam from
Chumayel remembers the Mayan dispersion by the Caribbean, "when the sons of the
earth's crowd multiplied, it was the center of Cozumel."
But the stelae and the lintels are sculpted no more -- the
last known date is A.D. 899 -- one must go to other sources to get information about Mayan
history. These sources are the books of the Chilam Balam, the Popol Vuh, and the histories
of Landa and Cogolludo. They are full of narratives of the moon, which span a period from
the year A.D. 900 to the year 1500.
According to these sources, whose data Eric S. Thompson has
admirably reduced, the ITZAES locate in Chichen Itzá for the first time in 711. The
Itzaes, "sacred men," as the Chilam Balam from Mani calls them, probably came
from the Usumacinta valley to Palenque or nearby cities.
"The indians say," Landa says, "that from the
mid day part came to Yucatán many people with their lords and they seem to have come from
Chiapas . . ." They live in Chichen Itzá until the year 928, when they abandon the
city and go to Champoton, Campeche in 968.
By this time a new clan arrives to the Yucatán scene: the
TUTUL XIU. The Chilam Balam Books has them originating in NONOUAL, in other words,
Tabasco, "coming out of the Tulapan region." Toward 948 this XIU family abandons
Nonoual and discovers Bacalar (987), where they part to Chichen Itzá, which they find
abandoned (1027).
There they remain for one hundred and twenty years, at the
end of which they march to Champoton, which the ITZAES inhabited, and "Champoton was
destroyed." They still wander by the peninsula, "in search of their homes and
they lived after for several eras on the uninhabited mountains," until 1263 when they
settle in Uxmal. The Mani Chilam Balam says: "Uxmal was founded . . . meanwhile, the
ITZAES, who also lived under the trees, under the ashes, under the misery," return to
Chichen Itzá to settle there definitively.
The Mayan Middle Age has passed and the Revival is about to
begin. The transition architecture HOCHOB, DZIBILNOCAC AND BEC (river kind) survives in
some Uxmal and Chichen Itzá buildings -- but it is abandoned. New and more beautiful
constructions are built. This architecture came from a new, energetic, foreign influence
of Mexican origin.
We will see how the TOLTECA migration seems to have followed
two routes in two different times: the first one is the one from the OLMECA branch,
interning itself in Central América. The second one, the TOLTECA, reaches Chichen Itzá.
The sculptural and iconographic themes held in common between
Tula and Chichen Itzá are many: atlantes, serpentine columns, tigers in a walking
attitude, and more. Perhaps the Tula expulsion displaced an important nucleus, Xicalanco
first, then Yucatán, where as conquerors, the TOLTECA dominated Chichen Itzá.
Wherever the TOLTECA branch from Central América went, we
find antiquities, yokes and palms and so on. Does this make it probable that they were
part of the OLMECA nucleus -- from Veracruz?
The Toltecas who reached Yucatán made their benevolent
influence felt in Mayapan, Chichen, Uxmal, Zayil, and in other places. Nevertheless, it is
in Chichen Itzá where they are found, first as mercenaries and later as conquerors. Their
ability in the handling of bows and arrows, according to Landa, gave them an
unquestionable advantage over the Mayas.
Tozze maintains that some gold plates and the Chichen Itzá
paintings immortalize the Tolteca occupation of that city. During this time the most
beautiful buildings were built in Chichen Itzá: the Snail, the Castle, the Warriors
Temple, the Ball Game, the Tzompantli, the Eagles House, the Osario, the Temple of the
Chac Mool, etc.
Seler has pointed out the Mexican influences at Chichen:
sculptures without deformed foreheads; clothing and ornamentation, the royal diadem or
COPILLIS; the symbolic emblems, such as the solar sign and the CHACMOOL figures;
serpent-ordered columns; mosaic pins; the circular temples for Quetzalcoatl, etcetera.
But this revival, during which the soil of Yucatán and
Campeche sees itself inhabited by temples and palaces, is cut in the middle of the
fifteenth century when the equilibrium of Mayapan League is broken. Again the culture
stops in its upward spiral of evolution. This time it will never again see another cycle
of progress revived.
According to Landa's version, the reigning family in Mayapan,
the COCOMES -- helped by Mexican mercenaries -- had ended up tyrannizing their Mayan
subjects: "That the Cocom governor came into greediness for riches and because of
this he dealed with the garrison people that the kings of México had in Tabasco and
Xicalanco, promising them to deliver them the city and like this he brought Mexican people
to Mayapan and oppressed the poor ones and made many slaves; the lords would have killed
him had they not been afraid of the Mexicans.
That the TUTUXIUES' lord never agreed to this and that seeing
themselves, the ones from Yucatán, oppressed they learned from the Mexicans, the art of
the weapons and thus they became masters in the handling of the bow and arrow, the spear,
and the ax."
After this change of fortune, the Tutul Xiu from Uxmal and
the Itzaes from Chichen Itzá, go against the Cocomes from Mayapan, governed by Huanac
Ceel. At first luck favored the Cocomes thanks to the help from the Xicalancas, but after
thirty four years of fighting, Mayapan is destroyed, all of the Cocom family is
assassinated, except one of Huanac Cell's sons who was on a journey.
Only the Tolteca mercenaries were respected, but Mayapan was
abandoned and the Cocom family disappeared. The last Cocome descendants did not forget to
remind the Tutul Xiu their foreign origin, claiming themselves as pure representants of
the illustrious Mayan family: "Foreigners and traitors -- says the Chilam Balam --
"when their main lord was killed (Huanac Ceel) stealing his hacienda."
The destruction of Mayapan occurred -- says the Mani Chilam
Balam -- sixty years before the arrival of the Spaniards. If we take as a parting point
the year of the conquest of México, we would arrive to the date of 1461.
Still, after the fall of Mayapan, prosperity reigned for
twenty years, at the end of which disaster befell Yucatán once again: a hurricane leveled
the peninsula. Another period of peace followed. A time of plague then presented itself
along with another period of cruel wars, with which the culture came to its final end.
When the Spaniards reached Yucatán, there was not one
surviving empire, only barbarian tribes that wandered throughout the peninsula. When the
Spaniards of Montejo consummated the conquest in 1539, it had been several years since the
the flame of Mayan high culture had already been extinguished. This time forever.
Calendario Tzolkin (calendario sagrado), de 260 días.
– Haab Calendary (civil Calendary), of 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes y 46 seconds
-Calenary of long count, mixt between Tzolkin y el Haab.
1 KIN=1 DAY
1 UINAL=20 KINES
1 TUN=18 UINALES
1 KATÚN=20 TUNES
1 BAKTÚN=20 KATUNES
The first ideas about the calendary probably the com from the
Olmecas civilization.
-Their mathematic sistem was based by the number 20:
-They knew about the existant of the cero, this was very
important because in other civilizatins they never knew
-They knew to add, multiply and divide
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