PROLONGED DROUGHT CAUSED THE COLLAPSE OF THE ANCIENT MAYA EXPERTS SAY

Chichen Itza

Raging wild fires, one hundred year floods, and thousand year droughts. No, I'm not talking about the Maya—not yet—but about current weather patterns that are becoming all too common. A view into the past may well help prepare us for our environmental future.

In the past month I've read three new articles on studies that link the collapse of the ancient Maya to drought—from Nature Communications, Phys-Org, and Nature World News. To be sure, this is not new news. Archeologists across the globe have long debated the reason behind the Maya collapse and have come up with numerous theories. Radical environment change rises to the top of the list, always accompanied by extenuating circumstances linked to lack of water and how societies cope in times of food scarcity because of this. 

The Maya's rise to greatness was compromised by the most severe drought of the past seven thousand years. It devastated the Yucatán Peninsula and grand Classic Era Maya cities collapsed in four phases of abandonment—spaced about 50 years apart—around 760, 810, 860, and 910 A.D.  

NOT LONERS

The ancient Maya were not alone in civilization collapse due to radical environmental changes, but because that collapse occurred within the past thousand years, we may relate to it more. Before the collapse of the ancient Maya, countless great civilizations fell: the Minoan Greeks, the Hittites, Sumerians, Assyrians, Babylon, and ancient Rome for starters. The list goes on and on.

Minoan Greek Art

Early on, in 1946, the noted archeologist and Maya scholar Tatiana Proskouriakoff commented on a climate disaster that could have imperiled the Maya. She put it like this, "Though it is conceivable that the disappearance of the population may have been a gradual process, the catastrophically sudden extinction of the arts can be explained only in the terms of some widespread and unforeseen disaster that afflicted most Maya cities soon after a.d. 800."

The last known inscription on a carved Maya stella was listed as 910 A.D. in the Peten. In prosperous times, stella recorded major events detailing triumphs of kings and defeats of enemies. From 900 A.D. on there was either nothing to report or no backing for it. The kings could not maintain prosperity and when rain didn't come and crop harvests were not large enough to feed the population, disillusionment set in.

Recent testing of skeletal remains at various Maya sites shows evidence of disease and malnutrition right across the board—in nobles and peasants. Slash and burn agriculture caused land exhaustion and deprived the ground of nutrients. As the population grew, the peasants increased intensive farming techniques in an attempt to feed the masses. Their production system became over-burdened. Not enough food to go around.

LACK OF RAIN

And influential Maya archeologist, scholar, and author Michael D. Coe, in The Maya, Eighth Edition, Places and People, his last in the series, The Maya, writes researchers discovered a major drought that corresponded to the lapse between the early and late classic periods—a time in which no new stella (large limestone slabs placed in front of pyramid temples) were erected and in which earlier stella had been defaced. Defacing stella can be compared to spray painting graffiti on buildings today, showing a lack of respect for authority, I wrote in Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy.

Maya Carving at Palenque

In accordance with the environmental dilemma, I read an article on Mayapan, a prominent Post-Classic Maya city in the northwest Yucatán Peninsula, by Marilyn Masson. Posted in "Nature Communications," Masson, Principal Investigator for the Proyecto Economic de Mayapan, wrote that prolonged drought likely fueled civil conflict and its eventual collapse. So great was the city that it was considered the ancient capital of the Maya on the Yucatán Peninsula in the 13th century.

MAYAPAN

Mayapan (By En-Yucatán)

A latecomer to the pantheon of great Maya cities, Mayapan emerged as a regional capital on the Peninsula from the 13th to 15th centuries, after the demise of Chichen Itza. With a population of 20,000, it collapsed and was abandoned after a rival political faction, the Xiu, massacred the powerful Cocom family that ruled Mayapan. Historical records date the collapse between 1441 and 1461. But there's new evidence, thanks to Masson, professor and chair at University of Albany's Department of Anthropology, who co-authored the study which was assisted by a team of researchers. They studied historical documents for records of violence and examined human remains from the area and time period, looking for signs of traumatic injury.

Masson and her team found shallow mass graves and evidence of brutal massacre at monuments and structures across the city. "Some were laid out with knives in their pelvis and rib cages, others were chopped up and burned," she said. "Not only did they smash and burn the bodies but they also smashed and burned the effigies of their gods. It's a form of double desecration, basically." 

ADVANCED RADIOCARBON DATING TECHNOLOGY

Professor Douglas Bennett, University of California/Santa Barbara anthropolgy department, lead study on Masson's team, had new information to add. He dated the skeletons using accelerator mass spectrometry, an advanced radiocarbon dating technology, and found they dated 50 to 100 years earlier than the city's supposed mid-15th century downfall. 

Archeologists at Work

Plenty of ethno-historical records exist to support the city's violent downfall around 1458, said Masson. But the new evidence, thanks to Bennett's advanced radiocarbon dating tech, puts the evidence of massacre 100 years earlier. Combined with climate data that the Peninsula experienced prolonged drought around that time, the team began to suspect environmental factors may have played a major role in the desertion of the site along with the violent chaos that preceded that desertion.

RAIN AND MAIZE CROPS

The Maya depended heavily on rain-fed maize but lacked any way to store grain longer than a year due to the humid jungle climate. The impacts of rainfall levels on food production are believed to be linked to human migration, population decline, warfare, and shifts in political power, the study states.

"It's not that droughts cause social conflict but they create the conditions whereby violence can occur," Masson said.

WARS ENSUE

Location of Mayapan (By ResearchGate)

The study suggests the Xiu, who launched the fatal attacks on the Cocom of Mayapan, used the droughts and ensuing famines to foment unrest and rebellion that led to the mass deaths and the migration from Mayapan as early as the 1300s.

Said Masson, "I think the lesson is that hardship can become politicized in the worst kind of way. It creates opportunities for ruthlessness and can cause people to turn on one another violently."

It's hard to not compare our present news cycles with these past events.

Following this period of drought and unrest however, Mayapan bounced back briefly thanks to healthy rainfall levels around 1400.  "It was able to bend pretty well and bounce back before the droughts returned in the 1420s, but it was too soon," Masson said. "They didn't have time to recover and the tensions were still there. The city's government just couldn't survive another bout like that. But it almost did."

According to Jared Diamond, author of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, it's amazing how many cultures do collapse and one of history's disturbing facts is that collapse is caused by the destruction of the natural resources on which these cultures depend. The Anasazi, Easter Islanders, the kingdom of Angkor Wat in Cambodia...and the Maya. Declines of societies, he wrote, swiftly follow their peaks.

ON THE TAIL OF CHICHEN ITZA

Chichen Itza 

Mayapan rose to power in the footsteps of the decline of mighty Chichen Itza and after the great city-states of the south such as Tikal and Calakmul had gone into steep decline. During the late Postclassic Era (1250-1450 A.D.) Mayapan was the cultural and political center of the waning Maya civilization and had great influence upon smaller city states surrounding it. The sprawling complex spreads over four square kilometers and houses four thousand buildings. The ruins include temples, palaces and ceremonial centers, with architectural influence in the style of Chichen Itza. 

Tikal in Guatemala (ByLivescience.com)

Focusing on the present, as food insecurity, social unrest, and drought-driven migration in parts of the modern world continue to be of great concern, Masson said there are lessons to be learned in how other previous empires handled environmental hardships.

FAMINE OF ONE RABBIT

Pre-Spanish conquest, the Aztecs survived the infamous Famine of One Rabbit fueled by a catastrophic drought in 1454. The emperor emptied out the food storehouses from the capital to feed the people and when that ran out, he encouraged them to flee. Many sold themselves into slavery on the Gulf Coast where conditions were better but eventually bought their way out and returned to the capital, and the empire emerged stronger than ever. This strategy enacted by the Aztec imperial regime, said Masson, is likely what allowed for their recovery.

Her conclusion was that inspite of drought, civil conflict, institutional failure, and military conflict, a resilient network of small Maya states persisted that were encountered by Europeans in the early 16th century. (Just in time to be met, ironically, by the Spanish invasion).

HISTORY REPEATS?

In the face of present day climate change, these complexities and challenges faced by great Mexico and Central American civilizations are important as todays's world evaluates the potential success or failure of modern state institutions designed to maintain order and peace in the face of future climate change. Although Mayapan is a tale of only one city, correlations to present day world problems make the study of Mayapan extremely relevant now.

Climate change and its effects are real.

Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy

                                             by Jeanine Kitchel on Amazon

If you enjoyed this post, check out Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy, is on Amazon.

CHOCOLATE'S COLORFUL HISTORY TRACES BACK TO ANCIENT MEXICO

The devilishly addictive treat like no other—chocolate—came from Mexico. Anthropologist Sophie Coe knew it, studied it, and wrote about it in The True History of Chocolate. In her book, Coe draws on botany, archeology, and culinary history to present chocolate's complete and accurate beginnings. "Essential reading for anthropologists as well as scholars in a variety of other disciplines, and Coe's book brings serious pleasure reading to lay readers who are cooks, eaters, and students of food ways," said a review in American Anthropologist.

CULINARY ANTHROPOLOGIST

Sophie Coe's interest in the food and drink of pre-Spanish peoples of the New World first inspired her to write America's First Cuisines in 1994. During that research, she discovered the important position given to chocolate in Mesoamerica. She became smitten with a love of chocolate's history since 1988 while preparing a paper titled "The Maya Chocolate Pot and Its Descendants" for a seminar. 

Unfortunately, Coe died before the book was finished. Having amassed thousands of pages of reference materials and having outlined the first eight chapters, so near and yet so far, she couldn't complete the task. Her husband, famed archeologist and Maya scholar Michael D. Coe, promised he would see it through to publication. 

MICHAEL COE STEPS IN

Cacao Pods After Harvest

In the introduction, Michael Coe explains that writing about food and drink has only become a 'respectable' and scholarly subject in recent decades, at least in the Western world, As a consequence, culinary history was left to amateur enthusiasts, he wrote, who usually promoted one food, drink, or cuisine.

Coe goes on to say that is especially the case with chocolate and the cacao from which it was manufactured. This is because the substance's origins lay in the cloudy area of New World pre-history and ethnographic-history. Sophie Coe's book on the subject is fascinating because as a culinary anthropologist, she looked at her subject with a worldwide view. And along with husband Michael Coe, archeologist, we the reader could not have a better pair to guide us through the long, fascinating world of cacao and its origins.

Sophie Coe (By SophieCoePrize.com)

Sophie had spent hundreds of hours in both American and European libraries tracking down all possible references to chocolate and cacao as well as vast amounts of time in her husband's enormous Mesoamerican library for her research. With her scientific background and a doctorate in anthropology, she left no stone unturned.

After her death in 1994 Michael continued to organize her notes. Even though the first chapters had been outlined, the book did not see the light of day until 2003. The second edition came out in 2013 bearing a wealth of new information not only on cacao and chocolate, but what it meant to ancient Mesoamerican cultures, thanks to the recent decipherment of Maya hieroglyphic texts. 

CACAO FOUND IN BURIAL SITES

Cacao Glyph in Mayan

One thing that was determined in the decade between the book's first and second publication was this: the royal and noble occupant of every Maya tomb went to the next world accompanied by Mesoamerica's most valued drink. This is known due to numerous pyramid site excavations in recent years that have given archeologists an abundance of insights into the importance of chocolate to these civilizations.

The cacao tree, named Theobroma cacao in the 1700s, is picky. It refuses to bear fruit outside a latitude of 20 degrees north or south of the equator. Nor is it happy with this tropical range if the altitude is too high— it will shed its leaves. It's a magnet to rodents of all kinds—squirrels, monkeys, rats—who steal the pods for the sweet white pulp around the seed. 

Cacao Pod's Pulp Surrounded Seeds

FINICKY CACAO 

It gets diseases: pod rots, wilts, and fungus produced extraneous growth called witches' brooms. A botanical problem child for sure. A young tree can begin to bear fruit within its third or fourth year. At first it was thought that it needed the shade of taller trees to produce, but actually, cacao also needs the litter underneath found on rainforest floors of old leaves, dead animals, and rotten cacao pods to create a rich soil base. 

Cacao Grove 

The young pods, green in color can turn yellow, red, or green when ripe. They cannot open on their own and need humans or animals to do the deed. Animals were originally drawn to the sweet pulp surrounding the acidy bean, and would break the bean out of its pod-like shell for the meat.

It takes four steps to produce cacao 'nibs' or kernels so that the beans can be ground into chocolate: fermentation, drying, roasting or toasting, and winnowing. For three thousand years, this is how the production has gone. 

CACAO'S ROOTS

Though not one hundred percent certain, it's thought the species Theobroma cacao originated in the Amazon River Basin below the eastern slopes of the Andes. Researchers do not believe it was used by South Americans. It's thought that it could have been transported as an already domesticated fruit plant from South America to Central America and Mexico, with the discovery of the intricate chocolate process made by Mesoamericans. 

Map of Mexico Cacao Country (By eps.com)

COLUMBUS'S ENCOUNTER

It's well known that the first European encounter with cacao took place on Columbus' fourth Atlantic voyage when his son Ferdinand came across a Maya trading canoe with cacao beans in its cargo in 1502. 

Coe states it was known that chocolate was used among the Aztecs both as a drink and currency. And, he writes, Spanish invaders derived their earliest real knowledge of cacao, and the very word cacao, not from the Aztecs but from the Maya of the Yucatán and neighboring Central America. 

In fact, one thousand years before the Spaniards landed on their shores, the Maya were writing 'cacao' on magnificent pottery and vessels used in preparation of chocolate for their rulers and nobles, both living and dead. 

THE OLMEC CONNECTION

Calakmul Noble Gestures Towards Foaming Chocolate

But before the Maya, there were the Olmecs. Their complex culture flourished in Mexico's humid Gulf coast lowlands near Veracruz about 1500 to 400 BC. Prodigious builders of massive ceremonial centers, they left behind their famous collossal stone heads—multi-ton portraits of their kings—along with exquisite jade carvings. Sadly they left behind no writings that ethnographers were able to decode. They did have a script, and scattered hieroglyphs were left on inscribed serpentine blocks, but it is currently indecipherable. Linguists however did decipher a data point to an ancestral form of a family of languages, Mixe-Zoquean, still spoken by thousands of peasants near the lands covered by Olmec remains. It is thought that at the height of their influence over less advanced cultures, the highly civilized Olmecs used 'loan words' that are still in use to this day. 

And one of those loan words happens to be cacao, from the Mixe-Zoquean language and originally pronounced kakawa, linguists say. 

Colossal Stone Olmec Head Near Veracruz

So it might be said, Coe continues, that the Olmecs first domesticated the plant or at least discovered the chocolate process. Hershey Foods, U.S. purveyor of chocolate, got involved with discovering chocolate's history by scraping archeological ceramics used for liquids and detected alkaloids found in Theorbroma cacao as far back as 38 centuries, which pre-dates the Olmecs. 

16th Century Indigenous Woman Prepares Chocolate

Sedentary village culture in Mesoamerica, it was discovered, did not begin near the Gulf Coast lowlands but the Pacific coastal plain of Chiapas and adjacent Guatemala. Excavations show the first pottery producing culture of Mesoamerica, dubbed Barra, dedicated sophisticated neckless jars, so delicate they must have been used for the display of valued drinks rather than cooking, archeologist say. Radio-carbon dates were from 1800 to 400 BC, and the Barra were pre-Olmec. Some of the pieces found the compounds and/or alkaloids of cacao, proving positive for the tell-tale theobromine. 

Excavators for Hershey's lab found a stone bowl in San Lorenzo (Olmec) region dating to 1350 BC to be positive for theobromine, meaning that the Olmec kingdom knew of chocolate, had a Mixe-Zoquean word for it, and could well have been adapted from another emerging culture in Mesoamerica eventually passing that cacao knowledge on to the Maya. The Maya not only consumed the chocolate but revered it. Maya written history and art displays chocolate drinks being used in celebration and to finalize important transactions. Carvings on pots discovered in royal burial tombs show drawings of a drink being prepared, undoubtedly chocolate. 

A MAYA TRADITION

Despite chocolate's importance in Maya culture it wasn't reserved for the wealthy and powerful but was readily available to anyone. Pre-conquest, it was prepared in a number of ways: as drink, gruel, powder, possibly even as a solid substance like we know it today. In many Maya households, chocolate was served with every meal, it is believed. When used as a drink it was thick and frothy and often combined with chili peppers, honey, or water and the Maya liked to drink it hot. They also liked foam in their chocolate, not unlike a fine cappuccino, and would create it by pouring the liquid from one vessel to another like a Starbucks barista. They were as creative as modern chefs.

Ethno-historic accounts point to widespread use throughout Maya culture, in betrothal and marriage ceremonies, especially among the wealthy. In this way, chocolate drinks occupy the same niche as expensive French champagne in other cultures. In the Quiché kingdom, there were three lords whose function was to give wedding banquets. Quiché specialist Dennis Tedlock noted one of the things people did at these festivities was to 'chokola'j,' or drink chocolate together, a possible source of our English (and Spanish) word chocolate. 

A GIFT FROM THE GODS

The Aztecs took chocolate admiration to another level. They believed cacao was a gift from their gods. Like the Maya, they enjoyed the caffeinated kick of hot or cold and spiced chocolate beverages served in ornate containers, but they also used the beans as currency. In their culture, cacao beans were considered more valuable than gold. 

Cacao Beans As Currency

For Aztecs, it was an upper class extravagance though lower classes enjoyed it occasionally at weddings or celebrations. And Moctezuma II supposedly drank gallons of chocolate each day for energy and as an aphrodisiac. It's said he also reserved some beans for his military. 

CORTÉS AND CHOCOLATE

Cortés was introduced to chocolate by the Aztecs of Moctezuma's court. After returning to Spain, cacao beans in tow, he supposedly kept his chocolate knowledge a well-guarded secret. One story claims that the friars who presented Guatemalan Maya to Phillip II of Spain in 1544 also brought cacao beans along as a gift. No matter how chocolate got to Spain, by the late 1500s it was a much-loved indulgence by the court and Spain began importing chocolate in 1585. 

By 1639, a colonial source said of Mexico, "The business of this country is cacao." The Yucatec Maya had even learned how to grow cacao trees in the damp environment of cenotes, and the Spanish haciendados saw cacao pods dangling from sinkhole roofs in a form of 'silvi-culture.'

EUROPE GOES WILD FOR CHOCOLATE

Though it took a while for the European palate to embrace chocolate due to Spain keeping cacao a secret for so long, Europeans got a taste of it little by little while Phillip II was king. It was the highlight at his daughter's wedding to Louis XIII of France. Her gift to her husband was chocolate. Drinking hot chocolate became a fashionable trend in France before spreading throughout Europe. It's craze was nudged along by a pirate-botanist, William Hughes, who spent a good deal of time in the New World. A natural historian, he began to document plants and the foods he came across. In 1672 he wrote the first plant book on the New World titled The American Physician. In it he outlined a recipe for hot chocolate, adding ideas on what could be added to it, including rum or brandy.

William Hughes in the New World (By AtlasObscura)

Chocolate was ready for its close-up. And for the past 400 plus years, its popularity has skyrocketed. So we can thank the Olmecs, the Maya, the Aztecs, the traders and growers and marketers of chocolate for our long tasty love affair with a delectable and lovely treat.

If you enjoyed this post, check out Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya, on Amazon. My website is www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are also on Amazon. And my journalistic overview of the Maya 2012 calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed: Demystifying the Prophecy is on Amazon.

THE MAGNIFICENT MAYA CALENDAR SYSTEM AND HOW IT WORKS

Maya Calendar (historyonthenet.com)

"The deep time of the Maya calendar is stunning in its scale. . . It expressed the grandest expressions of time ever put down on stone or paper by human minds." David Stuart, archeologist and MacArthur Genius Grant recipient.  

THE CALENDARS

What if you thought of a calendar—or time—as a spiral, not a sheaf of papers that hang on a wall?

The Maya viewed time differently than we do today with the Gregorian calendar. The present was determined by the past. Everything repeated, everything was a recurring pattern. They only had to view the past to know what would happen in the future. Their intricate system of separate calendars was possibly used for predictions, say some archaeologists like Michael Coe, though others would disagree. It is widely thought that they borrowed the system from their Mesoamerican neighbors, the Olmec.

True Maya Calendar from Madrid Codex

Three calendars were a staple of every day Maya life. This triumvirate includes the Tzol'kin, or sacred round, which lasts 260 days; the Haab', which is a 360-day "solar"calendar to coordinate with the total number of days it takes the earth to rotate around the sun but with five 'days that had no name' at the end coming to 365; and the Long Count calendar, one of the most important cycles of Maya time, which lasts 5,125 years and which had been forecast to end on December 21, 2012.

COUNT OF DAYS

The 260-day Tzol'kin calendar is religious in its bearing. The count of days, as it is also known, was invented by pairing two smaller cycles—numbers one through thirteen—which equals the number of layers in Maya heaven, and the cycle of the twenty "day" names. The Tzol'kin is formed as a circle, not as a straight line.

"There is nothing quite like it, anywhere else in the world, " says archaeo-astronomer Anthony Aveni, author of The End of Time: The Maya Mystery of 2012. "The sacred Tzol'kin is the centerpiece of the Maya calendar system; it is the single most important chunk of time the Maya ever kept, and still keep, in remote areas.

"But why 260?" pondered Aveni. "Multiply numbers thirteen and twenty? Also the Venus cycle's appearance as morning or evening star is 263 days."

Aveni believes that 260 days came about as some enlightened daykeeper, eons ago, realized this particular number signified so much.

FOCAL HARMONY

"It was a focal harmony point. It brought together so many of nature's phenomena: the moon, Venus, planting cycles. It may not have come about in a flash," he continues, "but with Maya knowledge that number and nature are joined together perfectly, the discovery of the multiple significance of 260 was bound to be raised to prominence in Maya time consciousness. One even took their name and their fortune from the day name in the 260-day count calendar."

COMMUNING WITH THE GODS

Maya God Images (mayangods.com)

The Tzol'kin could have been used for making predictions, for communicating with the gods. The Maya believed a god ruled each day, and depending on that god's traits, it could be good or bad for certain activities. This calendar was used in the way one's horoscope would be viewed today.

The calendar is easy to remember and that's why it has been passed down and is still in use. It fits into the culture of the people, said Barbara Tedlock, anthropologist and author of Time and the Highland Maya.

The Haab' calendar, which works with the Tzol'kin, has 18 named "months" of 20 calendar days each. The Maya then added five days at the end of this 360-day cycle. It was considered a nineteenth month and these five odd days were considered unlucky but essential to bring a total of 365 days for a full rotation cycle.

Caracol Observatory at Chichen Itzá

CALENDAR ROUND

These two calendars, like cogs in a wheel, meshed a named day in the Tzol'kin and also had a conjunct day in the Haab'. But this same "double" day could never reproduce again for 52 years, roughly the length of a human life. This was called the calendar round, and the only annual time count possessed by the people of Mexico. There were 260 possible different combinations of number and name in this creation. A Maya Calendar Round date is actually two dates listed as a pair, with a separate reference point.

Night Star Gazing at Chichen Itza (by Chichenitza.com)

In this combined calendar round, slippage occurred because a year is actually 365.24 days which as mathematicians and stargazers extraordinaire they had computed, but this did not bother the Maya. Nor did they try to play catch up like we do with leap years. They just let time roll along.

"That would mean Christmas could back up to early fall or the Fourth of July might back up into the cold of winter for us," said Anthony Aveni. "It wasn't of concern to the Maya," he continued, "because they placed more emphasis on following an unbroken chain of time."

52-YEAR CYCLE

This 52-year cycle combination was celebrated throughout Mesoamerica. The Aztecs included it in their fire ceremony that was timed by sky events. At midnight, when the calendar keepers saw the Pleiades had passed the zenith, they knew the movements of the heavens hadn't stopped, the world had not ended, and they would have another 52 years. 

Third in the triumvirate of Maya calendars is the Long Count and although widely used in Mesoamerica, the Maya took it to its highest degree during the classic period. The Long Count consisted of 13 baktuns. One baktun is 400 years. The starting point of the Long Count calendar, according to early archeologist Eric Thompson, was August 11, 3114 BC. It was known as 4 Ahaw.

13TH BAKTUN

This date may have been chosen because it coincided with the completion of a cycle of successful crops, an August summer's day. If you flash forward 5,125 years you come to the cycle's end, and this is where the December 21, 2012 debate came in. It also ended the thirteenth baktun cycle, an auspicious time for the Maya or 13.0.0.0.0. as carved on Maya stela.

Oldest Known Maya Mural, San Bartolo, Guatemala (by sciencenews.com)

Aveni goes on to explain the Maya used this innovation in their calendar so royalty could create a dynastic narrative that covered vast stretches of elapsed time. It extended Maya culture all the way back to the creation of the gods, cementing the reputation of daykeepers and royalty as gods themselves.

DAYKEEPERS

The daykeepers act as go-betweens. "They are empowered to make prayers to the gods and ancestors on behalf of the lay people," Barbara Tedlock said.

Maya Scribe

He or she pays attention to each and every day, making offerings of copal incense and lighting candles; they also do dream interpretations. Through dreams and reading the day's influence, recommendations were then made for the best course of action and both were used to plot one's future. Barbara Tedlock, anthologist along with her husband Dennis, author, translator and anthrologist, were initiated as daykeepers in a Guatemala highlands pueblo where they lived from 1975 to 1979, a very unusual occurrence for those not of Maya descent. 

It's hard for the modern world to fathom why such a complex calendar system existed. Michael Coe, archeologist and author of The Maya (Editions one through eight), stated his belief of the why's and wherefores like this: "How such a period of time even came into being is an enigma, but the use to which it was put is clear: Every single day had its own omens and associations and the march of the twenty days acted like a fortune-telling machine guiding the destinies of all the Maya and the peoples of Mexico who used this calendar. It still survives in unchanged form among some indigenous peoples of southern Mexico and the Maya highlands, under the guard of the calendar priests."

Maya Stela of Ruler

With this calendar fashioned as a direct line to the cosmos, royalty and priests were able to govern and control the masses by predicting common events. Most likely with the aid of their calendars and the predictions derived from them, the Maya enjoyed 1500 years of relative stability. It was not until ninth century AD, the finale of the classic period of the Maya, that the Long Count was abandoned and not seen again on Maya stela. Times were changing. One wonders if the stars and calendars predicted that. And I would guess that yes, they did.

If you enjoyed this post, check out my other works, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. It's available on Amazon with tales of expat life and living within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites. Also, check out my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are available on Amazon where you can find my overview of the 2012 Maya calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy.*

*Excerpts of Chapter 6 from my book Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy were used in the post.

WHAT IS THE SOLSTICE AND WHY DID THE ANCIENT MAYA REVERE IT?

 

June 21 is the summer solstice and the longest day of the year. From now until winter solstice in December, we will lose sunlight each day. Due to the Earth's orbit and daily rotational motion, such as the wobble in the Earth's axis, the time and date of the solstice varies from year to year. Both the solstice and the equinox were important to the ancient Maya, and one cannot be explained without understanding the other. Here's why.

The Maya punched numbers and astronomical calculations that could make our heads spin, but nothing was more meaningful to them than the movements of the sun.

Maya Scribe (Latin America Studies Organization)

The Dresden Codex, one of three paperbark books that survived the mass destruction of Maya documents by Spanish zealots in 1562, is filled with numbers—mostly calculations for lunation cycles and Venus tables. And one of the Maya's main calendars, the Haab, is tied to the earth's rotation. They calculated it at 360 days, with five "extra days" at the end that were considered unlucky time. The Maya were naked eye astronomers, and through sheer volume, they assimilated countless facts about the planets and the impact of the earth's rotation through centuries of observance.

Portion of Dresden Codex (Frederico Custodio)

It's known that the number four held great importance to them. Some archeologists suggest it could be very basic: the body has four limbs with the heart at its center; a house has four corner posts; a milpa cornfield has four entrances; and the sun has four paths it takes on its seasonal journey—two solstices and two equinoxes. Other scholars suggest that the number four symbolized wholeness and is associated with Ahau, the Sun God. In K'iche', the word for day is the same word as sun, and a day is one complete passage of the sun.

Made with 2 images from Project Gutenberg
and CIA's World Facebook via MS Paint

The Maya also observed four cosmic points, which may possibly relate to the four posts of the sun's daily journey: sunrise, noon, the sun on the horizon at dusk, and lastly the nadir, just before the sun moves into the underworld. Scholars call these the four points of the Maya cosmos, and emphasize these are nothing like our cardinal directions of north, south, east and west.

The most relevant positions of the sun are the solstices and the equinoxes, even to us today. For the Maya sky gazers, these were of supreme importance and they paid homage to these positions.

If you've gone to Chichen Itza on a spring or fall equinox to watch the performance of the sun's descent from the top of Temple Kukulkan to the bottom of the staircase ending at the serpent's mouth, you've no doubt been awed by the experience. 

Chichen Itza at Equinox with Serpent's Shadow

Onlookers believe they share a moment in time with the ancient Maya, for legend has it that the Maya also witnessed the same image a thousand years ago. Kukulkan, one of the most monumental of all their sacred works, was the Maya god of rejuvenation and his effigy symbolized the renewal of life.

Why did the Maya immortalize the equinox in this bi-annual spectacle of astronomical showmanship? Although no one knows for sure, scholars believe rites of agriculture may have been the basis for the concept and design of Kukulkan's slithering serpent. Since Kukulkan symbolized rejuvenation, the March date coincides with planting cycles and a September date coincides with annual harvest, which in itself is a renewal of life, for it allows food for the winter months.

Native Corn in Mexico 

The equinox is unique because on that day, in March and September, night and day are equal.

The solstices represent a similar idea, as they are twice a year occurrences and on these days the sun reaches its highest or lowest altitude in the sky above the horizon at solar noon. 

Winter solstice, which we've just observed, is the traditional beginning of the earth's yearly cycle. Though I never adhered to the end calendar belief of the 2012ologists who claimed 2012 would be the end of time, John Major Jenkins, author of Maya Cosmogenesis 2012, had a point when he suggested the solstice was so important to the Maya that they placed  buildings in alignment with its zenith.

                                                   

Jenkins believes that a stela at Izapa (a site in southern Mexico that may or may not be Maya) leaves a code for us to decipher. In particular, Group F Ballcourt, which displays what Jenkins calls creation imagery, is aligned within one degree of December solstice sunset and the June solstice sunrise direction. He claims this could have been no coincidence.

Archeo-astronomer Anthony Aveni states there are at least 73 city alignments to the solstice throughout the Maya world. He thinks there is evidence for a solstice-based calendar. He leans towards June because it marks the time of the peak rainy season in the year.

El Caracol Observatory at Chichen Itza (Veteezy.com)

At Chichen Itza, the equinox is visible through a window in El Caracol Observatory's tower. And the great ballpark at Chichen Itza, the largest known ballcourt in the ancient Maya world, encodes many alignments involving the Milky Way and the solstices. The ballcourt was aligned with the Milky Way at midnight on June solstice 865 AD, and if one had stood in the center of the ballcourt on that night, the arc of the Milky Way could have been seen touching the opposed horizons to which the lengthwise axis of the ballcourt pointed. Overhead, one would have seen where the Milky Way and the ecliptic cross.

Picture of Milky Way (Discovery)

This incredible symmetry was planned on a grand scale. The why's and wherefores we may never know, but what we do know for certain is this: the Maya were well aware of the solstice and equinox dates and they paid homage to them in the most obvious way. They were so important that they commemorated them by building ethereal stepped pyramids that lasted for centuries that would align with both solstice and equinox, and are still viewed with wonder to this day. Today we view the solstices as the shortest and longest days of the year, and know once December comes, the earth will soon be tilting towards the sun, reaching for more light. 

If you enjoyed this post, check out my memoir, Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. It's available on Amazon with tales of expat life and living within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites. Also, check out my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival, and Tulum Takedown, are available on Amazon where my overview of the 2012 Maya calendar phenomenon, Maya 2012 Revealed—Demystifying the Prophecy, can also be found. 

Lead photo: Welcoming Winter Solstice, is from the Navajo-Hopi Observer.

MAYA QUEEN'S DISCOVERY UNEARTHS GAME OF THRONES' STYLE PALACE INTRIGUE

 

Glyph of Lady Ikoom from Stela at El Perú-Waka

PART 3

Did palace intrigue exist a thousand years ago in the kingdoms of Maya kings and queens? Apparently so. As in the adage, "Revenge is a dish best served cold," some vindications were even cross-generational. A Calakmul king in Yucatán's southern lowlands retrieved an important stela (large limestone slab placed in front of pyramid sites) that had been discarded for nearly a hundred years. It was to be included in a burial chamber for his beloved queen and wife, Lady K'abel, and re-established the family connection of his wife and another famous woman ruler, Lady Ikoom, also from powerful Calakmul, famously known as the Snake kingdom, but generations earlier.

The discovery of Stela 44 at the Guatemalan El Perú-Waka' archeological site in 2013 unleashed a discussion about the ruling Maya kingdoms of Tikal, Calakmul, and El Perú-Waka' from the seventh century. Prior to the discovery of this large limestone slab, very little was known about the titans of these ruling factions at that time.

Maya World Map by Keith Eppich

INTRODUCING LADY IKOOM

Lady Ikoom, also known as White Spirit, was predecessor to one of the greatest queens of Maya civilization, seventh century Holy Snake Lord Lady K'abel, who was also the Kaloomté, or military commander, of El Perú-Waka'. (See Lady K'abel Supreme War Lord post, October 15, https://jeaninekitchel.blogspot.com).

Archeologists wager around 700 AD, Stela 44 was brought to the main city temple by command of Lady K'abel's husband, King K'inich Bahlam II, to be buried as an offering in the funeral rituals for his queen.

The right side of Stela 44 (Francisco Casteñada)

POLICITCAL PAWNS

Princesses first, both Lady Ikoom and Lady K'abel were used as political pawns in marriages to powerful rulers of the Snake Dynasty of Calakmul. Though Lady K'abel's name has been bandied about for fifteen years, until discovery of Stela 44, Lady Ikoom was unknown, as was her husband, Waka' King Chak Took Ich'aak.

Dr. David Freidel in El Perú-Waka' (Sci-News.com)

According to Dr. David Freidel, professor of anthropology in Arts and Sciences at Washington University, St. Louis, co-director at the El Perú-Waka' site in Guatemala with Lic. Juan Carlos Pérez, the discovery of this stela offers a wealth of new information about a "dark period" in Maya history sometimes known as The Hiatus. Stela 44 introduced the names of two previously unknown Maya rulers and the political issues that shaped their legacies.

NEW CHAPTER FOR EL PERÚ-WAKA'

Freidel's epigrapher, Stanley Guenter, who deciphered the hieroglyphic text, believes Stela 44 was originally dedicated roughly 1450 years ago, around 564 AD, by the Waka' dynasty king, Wa'oom Uch'ab Tzi-kin, or He Who Stands Up the Offering of the Eagle.

Scholars believe the stela was left out in the elements when political ideologies shifted and Ikoom and her husband's clan fell out of favor. But it's likely, said Freidel, that the king prized this stela because as scion of the Snake Dynasty, Lady Ikoom would have had a familial connection both to him and his wife. Fragments of another stela, Stela 43, found in the temple walls in 2013, also mention Lady Ikoom. In this stela, Ikoom is given pride of place on the front of that monument celebrating an event in 574 AD.

WAR AND POLITICAL INTRIGUE

The stela tells a riveting story of war and political intrigue. The front shows a king cradling a sacred bundle in his arms. Two other stela at this site share this same pose and were probably raised by King Chak Took Ich'aak, whose name was used earlier by two Tikal kings. It's likely that this king of Waka' was named after them and that his dynasty was as a Tikal vassal at the time he came to the throne, said Freidel.

Tikal, Guatemala (Shutterstock)

WHITE SPIRIT

The text describes the accession of Chak Took Ich'aak's son which was witnessed by Lady Ikoom, who was most likely his mother. Her title, White Spirit, suggests she was a holy person and was linked to the powerful Snake Kingdom monarchy of El Perú-Waka', a vassal state of Calakmul, making it likely that Lady Ikoom was a Snake princess, according to Freidel's epigrapher Guenter. 

Stanley Guenter cleans Maya glyphs at a Maya site

The inscription reveals the death of Chak Took Ich'aak's father, which ushered in a period of political turmoil as different groups grasped for supremacy. Chak Took Ich'aak's son ultimately took the throne.

Years later, by the king retrieving Stela 44 and bringing it to his wife's burial site, this action put things back in order to re-establish the leadership and imperial dynasty of his clan.

CHANGING ALLIANCES

Scholars, including Freidel, assume, "At some time in his reign, King Chak Took Ich'aak changed sides and became a Snake dynasty vassal."

But when he died and his son became heir to the throne, he did so under a foreign king, which Freidel's epigrapher, Guenter, argued— after deciphering the hieroglyphics—was the king of Tikal, not Waka. In other words, King Chak Took Ich'aak's son came under the power of Tikal. Somehow Queen Ikoom survived this existential change of political favor.

The Maya political landscape underwent a huge turnabout beginning 556 AD with the Snake Dynasty on the rise and Tikal in decline. "A dramatic tide shift occurred," continues Freidel, "when that same Tikal king, Wak Chan K'awii, was defeated and sacrificed by the Snake King in 562 AD."

Calakmul, home to Snake Dynasty

Two years after that major reversal, the new king and his mother raised Stela 44 at the pyramid site, giving the story outlined here. Game of Thrones indeed. Only difference, this one happened in the land of the Maya, not Westeros of George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones' fame.

Stay tuned for Part 4 of Maya Warrior Queens. If you enjoyed this blog, check out my memoir Where the Sky is Born: Living in the Land of the Maya. It's available on Amazon with tales about ex-pat life and living within 100 miles of four major pyramid sites. Subscribe to my bi-monthly blog posts above, or check out my website at www.jeaninekitchel.com. Books one and two in my Mexico cartel trilogy, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival,  and Tulum Takedown are available also on Amazon.