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.