Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Post 1 -Origin of Maya

Origin of Mayan people.

When we visit the abandoned Mayan pyramids and review the amazing achievements of these mysterious people, we may wonder about their origin and what happened to them after they abruptly abandoned their magnificent cities. Our understanding of these people is far from complete, research into the history and life of the Maya is still in its infancy. This brief history is not an attempt to provide a detailed description of all known facts, it is merely an introduction to help you understand what you are seeing when you visit the Mayan ruins in Belize.

The Mayan empire suddenly appeared in the jungle lowlands of Central America about 380 BC and lasted until after the year 1000 AD. Then the cities were abandoned, one after another, until only a few remained in Mexico when the Spanish arrived. Like most empires, the Mayan empire seems to have been created by conquest, one kingdom after another was conquered and brought under the central control.

Let’s begin our search for the origin of the empire by looking at several theories for how these native people arrived in Central America.

A large religious group centered in the western United States holds the belief that native Americans descended from an ancient group of Hebrews who became disenchanted with the leadership of their faith. According to sacred documents of this religious group, these ancient Hebrew people believed their leaders had deviated from the true beliefs and practices of their faith, so they set off in search of a new land where they could practice their religion in its true form and they found that land in America. According to that religious group, these ancient Hebrews were the original Americans, the American Indians and Mayans were their descendants.

Like many religious beliefs, this theory has been proven false by science, especially by DNA testing that indicates most native Americans migrated from Asia, with the exception of a few that trace back to Europe. In physical appearance, Mayans look much like people from southeast Asia.

The generally accepted theory of how they migrated from Asia takes us back to the Ice Age, when the arctic ice cap expanded southward and formed a bridge over the Bering Sea between Asia and North America. According to that theory, the Asians walked across to what is now Alaska, then spread all the way to South America.

A variation of that theory involves the way they traveled, they may not have walked. Some Asians were fishermen, and they would have traveled by boat, they would have sailed along the edge of the ice and gone ashore occasionally to hunt and to exercise their legs. Traveling by boat would have enabled them to move long distances much more quickly, and carry their tools and possessions to their new homeland. When they reached a climate similar to the one they had left, they would have settled. They would have found that suitable climate in Central America. From their settlements along the Pacific coast, they would have spread eastward to the land that became the site of the Mayan empire.

This theory of traveling by boat along the edge of the ice accounts for some native American DNA tracing back to Europeans, because the ice sheet covered the North Atlantic as well as the Bering Sea between Asia and Alaska. People from France, for example, could have migrated to eastern Canada by sailing along the edge of the ice.

Post 2 - Origin of Cities

Origin of Mayan cities.

The ancient people would find a desirable place, such as beside a stream, and several families would build their homes close together in a village so they could help each other. They would choose a leader, perhaps the man who was the best hunter or they thought was the wisest, but often they chose a shaman, someone who claimed that he knew how to communicate with the spirit gods, the unseen deities who controlled the unseen forces they feared, such as sickness and famine. As the village grew into a city, this shaman became their king and their spiritual leader as well.

This king needed assistants to help him lead and govern the people, so he appointed helpers and gave them authority over his subjects. They became the aristocrats, his overseers for the work that needed to be done. They collected taxes for him and they helped him lead the religious services. The king directed that the people build a palace for him, fine homes for the aristocrats and a pyramid as a place to worship their spirit gods.

Now they had cities, each with a king and a government and an official religion, and the cities did trade with each other, but they did not have an empire. This apparently peaceful and laid back era of Mayan history is known as the Pre-Classic period. The empire was formed later, during the creative Classic period, and researchers are still attempting to determine if some event or some person initiated the change, because it was drastic and seemed to occur suddenly.

Post 3 - Origin of Empire

Origin of Mayan empire.

During the Pre-Classic period, Mayan cities seemed to enjoy a peaceful coexistence, with achievements coming slowly. Pyramids constructed during that era were adorned by pleasant art. For example, a huge sculpture of a peaceful head (called a mask) is found at the Mask Temple in the old city of Lamanai. The Classic period, when it arrived, brought much war, and the achievements came more quickly. Also, the art became very violent. For example, we know that the Mask temple was enlarged, and its peaceful art was covered with a layer of steps. The purpose of art in the Classic period seemed to have become propaganda, intended to emphasize the power of the king and to intimidate any who may question his authority. During this period, the religion became quite brutal and ritual human sacrifice became a part of their ceremonies. This change of attitude was depicted in the art, and peaceful themes were replaced by violent.

When this Classic period ended, The Mayans mysteriously began to abandon their cities in Belize and the jungle overcame the magnificent palaces and the pyramids. When the Spanish arrived, a few Mayan cities remained in the Yucatan area, the northern part of the Empire.

Early researchers believed that the ancient Mayans left no written records, but that is not true. When the Spanish conquered the Mayan cities that had not yet been abandoned, they were disgusted by the brutal religious rituals. Spanish priests saw that the Mayan documents written on paper and animal skins were filled with killing and bloody sacrifices, and they assumed that these were mostly religious documents. They believed these documents were works of the devil and burned them. A few survived and are now entrusted to museums in Europe.

The Spanish priests, however, did not destroy all Mayan historical records. The ancient Mayans recorded important events on stone columns called stela that they erected in their cities, and these carvings did not show the brutal rituals so the priests did not destroy them. When the Mayan language was decoded, these stela gave researchers an accurate description of major historic events and important people in a city. Since the stela were authorized by the ruler, they treated him kindly, sometimes included a sculpture depicting him.

The Maya invented a very accurate calendar and this was used by all their cities, so the records carved on stela often contained the exact date an important event occurred. By comparing the stela of different cities, researchers could determine if some event involved more than one city and could even trace the movement of an important person from one city to another.

These stela are proving to be very useful to researchers attempting to determine the cause of the drastic change that ended the peaceful Pre-Classic period and brought in the more violent, creative Classic period.

Before the Maya, a peaceful people named the Olmec occupied Central America. These Olmec seemed to be much like the Maya, except their art showed a more peaceful existence and their achievements came slowly. Did the Mayans conquer the Olmec and occupy their cities, or did these Olmec suddenly change and become the violent Maya?

A stela found among the ruins of an ancient city in Guatamala may answer that question, and also reveal the events that ended the Pre-Classic period and abruptly ushered in the Classic period.

Post 4 - The Classic Period

Beginning of the Classic period.

On the date of January 8, 378 AD an envoy and a band of warriors from a powerful city in the highlands of Mexico entered the city of Waka in what is now Guatemala. His name was Fire-Is-Born, and the event was important enough that it was recorded on a stela in the city of Waka. This envoy was welcomed by Sun-Faced-Jaguar, the ruler of Waka, and the two quickly formed an alliance.

According to a stela in the nearby city of Tikal, Fire-Is-Born arrived there on January 16, a mere 8 days later, with his band of warriors strengthened by warriors from Waka. They swept aside the defenders and quickly conquered the city, and a stela at Tikal tells that the ruler of the city died that day, obviously murdered. This ruler was replaced with a young king, and Fire-Is-Born was the overlord.

Stela in nearby ruins indicate that Fire-Is-Born quickly moved from one city to another and gained control of the entire region, either by alliances or by conquest, and the Mayan empire began to form around the hub city of Tikal. Each city had its own ruler, but all cities were welded together by a single, forceful religion. As the empire grew to include distant territories, other hub cities became the centers of further growth.

A hub city in southern Mexico spurred growth northward from Tikal. Copan, in present day Honduras, became a hub for growth southward. Other cities, such as Caracol in Belize, also became hubs. The smaller cities became vassals of the hub cities, protecting the large cities from outlying rivals and providing taxes to the hub.

The rapid growth in accomplishments began as these hub cities competed with each other for dominance of the region. For example, the city with the largest pyramid would be viewed as the city with the most powerful god and smaller cities would want to form an alliance with a more powerful city. The building of pyramids reached its zenith, with new layers of stone steps making older pyramids taller to show the importance of their powerful king and their god.

The previously independent Mayan cities from the jungle lowlands of Honduras to the northern Yucatan became a single empire, held together by a vicious and tyrannical religion where each city was ruled by a powerful king the people believed to be a god, assisted by his aristocrats and his priests. This civilization dominated the region for more than 500 years, and then it began to slide into decline. Some cities were overcome by war, others seemed to simply disappear. Several theories have been offered for the collapse of this once-powerful empire. Perhaps the farmers and other working people lost their respect for the rulers and for the religion that had been used to control them, and they either rebelled or simply walked away from the city.

Post 5 - Post Classic

The Post-Classic period.

This Post-Classic era stretched out until about the year 1000, when all semblances of the once-mighty Mayan empire that began in the jungles of eastern Guatemala and western Belize faded out. When the Spanish arrived, only a few cities remained and they were on the Yucatan, far from where the empire began around the city of Tikal.

The most popular theories for the reason the empire collapsed are war, disease, and starvation. Some people used to believe that the Spanish destroyed the Mayan empire that centered in the lowlands of Guatemala and Belize, but when researchers recognized that all the cities of these lowlands had been abandoned before the Spanish arrived, that was no longer considered a possibility. The Spanish found villages of thatched huts, the cities with their stone palaces were mere ruins covered with jungle.

War then becomes the most likely possibility. Researchers now recognize that the larger cities began fighting for domination of the region, but we must recognize that this theory suffers from a major flaw. If war between the cities for domination caused the collapse, what happened to the winner? The winning city would not have been abandoned, and the cities that had been conquered would have been made vassal states, because no profit will come from totally destroying a defeated city. If all cities except the winner had been destroyed, then the conquering city would have no other people to dominate, no value to doing that.

Disease then becomes the most likely possibility, but the cities were abandoned over a period of hundreds of years. A disease contagious enough to wipe out the entire population of a city would have spread quickly, and since active trade was occurring between the Mayan cities, all cities in a region would have been abandoned at the same time, and the disease would not have waited hundreds of years before spreading to other regions.

Starvation would not have caused the cities to be totally abandoned and never again populated. The Mayans had developed very advanced techniques of agriculture, including irrigation. If the population of a city had grown to where the surrounding farms could no longer feed it then everybody would not have abandoned the city. After enough people left the city so the food was sufficient, the remaining people would have stayed. If a famine had caused a food shortage, when the famine ended, people would have returned. These were marvelous cities but they were abandoned totally and abruptly, as if the residents had fled in panic, and they never returned.

An oral history tale passed down for generations in village near an abandoned city in western Belize may hold the answer to this mystery. The tale was told to a tourist with an interest in folklore, and he believed this tale was based on a scrap of truth from a thousand years ago, when the city was abandoned. This man spent five years searching for that truth, and his book, Mayan Mystery Unveiled, explains what he discovered. When you take a Mayan Mystery tour, you will learn the events that explain why the ancients abandoned their cities and disappeared from history.

I hope this brief description of the Mayan people helps you understand what you are seeing if you take a Mayan tour. For a close up view of a theory describing the abandonment of an ancient Mayan city, read the novel Mayan Mystery Unveiled, available from Amazon.. You can click on the link, www.mayanmysterysearch.blogspot.com for a summary of the story, at no charge. You can also enjoy an adventure that follows the story of the novel. Tours are available for either a short visit from a cruise ship that stops for a single day at Belize City, or for a lengthy visit that allows the tourist to travel to several distinctly different regions of Belize and visit the ruins of ancient cities and pyramids. You can become involved in your own search for the answer to the Mayan Mystery. Perhaps you will notice something that will lead you to a better understanding of the reason the marvelous Mayan cities were abandoned.

The Mayan Mystery story is much like an Indiana Jones adventure among the pyramids and the ruins of ancient cities. After reading the story, you may want such an experience for your next vacation. This Mayan Mystery tour may not be as expensive as a vacation in Myrtle Beach, and a lot more ecciting and eucational.

Ask your travel agent to contact www.MayaLandBelize.com and arrange an exciting Mayan Mystery tour to suit your circumstances.

Glenn Lawson

Storyteller

Post 4 The End

Post 4

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History of Maya