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Maya: Classic Period

current world, by this calendar, will end on December
21, 2012.
Like all Mesoamerican civilizations, the Maya invested the movements of the Moon, Sun, planets, and stars
with deep religious and cosmological significance, often
designing and constructing their temples, shrines, and
other edifices to align with astronomical observations.
These celestial bodies represented gods and deities, and
there is no evidence that the Maya understood the circular or elliptical orbits of the Moon, Earth, and planets as
discovered by Copernicus and Kepler centuries later.
Maya religion and cosmology were exceedingly
complex, an all-encompassing system of belief in which
the distinction between sacred and secular did not exist.
Rivers, rocks, caves, springs, and other natural features
were seen to possess divine powers, while a multiplicity
of spirits and deities, including ancestor spirits, infused
every aspect of everyday life. Creation myths emphasized the cyclical re-creation of the world by dualistic
divine beings who entered Xibalbá, or the Otherworld,
“a place beyond death inhabited by ancestors, spirits,
and gods—the place between the worlds,” according
to Friedel et al., outwitted the gods, and became divine
kings. The most elaborate Maya treatment of creation
myths and cosmology is the Popul Vuh, a uniquely revealing book written by the highland K’iche (Quiché)
Maya after the Spanish conquest.
ECONOMY, SOCIETY, AND POLITICS
The economic foundations of Classic Maya city-states
and kingdoms consisted of extensive and intensive agriculture supplemented by hunting, fishing, and gathering; craft specialization; and local, regional, and longdistance trade, all of dizzying complexity. Society was
divided into two broad groups: a tiny group of elites

and the great majority of commoners, with fine gradations in status at all levels. In some instances a more
prosperous strata of commoners emerged, though on
the whole wealth and power were highly centralized
and concentrated in very few hands.
Political power was exercised by hereditary ruling
dynasties. At the pinnacle stood the king (“sacred lord,”
or k’uhul ajaw), almost always male and considered a divine or semidivine being. Beneath him was a small group
of high-ranking elites—warriors, high priests, scribes,
and administrators.
Interstate politics were byzantine, with alliances between polities generally consummated through dynastic marriages. Kingdoms were formed by conquest and
domination of lesser polities, whose ruling houses the
conquering power generally left intact.

The decline of the massive city-state of El Mirador
in the late 100s c.e. created a power vacuum in the lowlands that was soon filled by other emergent polities,
most notably Tikal and Calakmul. From the 100s to
the late 300s, when it allied with mighty Teotihuaca´n,
Tikal became the preeminent Maya kingdom, its power stretching from the northern lowlands as far south
as Copán in Honduras. In the 400s Calakmul began
to challenge Tikal through conquests and alliances intended to encircle and weaken its adversary. In 562
Calakmul defeated and sacked Tikal. There followed
a period of intense conflict lasting more than a century.
“The giant war went back and forth,” in the words of
Arthur Demarest, until 695, when Tikal “roared back
and crushed Calakmul. And then the Maya world just
broke up into regional powers, setting the stage for a
period of intensive, petty warfare that finally led to the
collapse of the Maya.”
During the Late Classic, similar processes unfolded
to the southwest among the kingdoms of the Usumacinta River, most notably in the centuries-long conflict between Piedras Negras and Yaxchilán. The war between

these two regional powers and their allies raged off and
on from the 400s to the 800s, finally ending in the defeat of Piedras Negras in 808. Another major regional
conflict between Copán and Quiriguá, far to the south
along the contemporary Guatemala-Honduras border,
had a similar denouement.
By the 800s, as the kingdoms of the southern and
central lowlands declined, the northern lowlands saw
numerous polities rise to prominence in the 900s and
1000s, particularly in the Puuc region of western Yucatán. To the east the kingdom of Chichén Itzá, founded
in the late 700s, soon became the most powerful and
populous state in all of Maya history. With a more decentralized political structure and diversified economic
base than its weakening southern neighbors, Chichén
Itzá prospered from the 800s through the 1000s, when
it too experienced a period of decline and was all but
abandoned by 1100.
CAUSES FOR DECLINE
A complex combination of factors most likely caused the
decline of Classic Maya polities. Despite much variability in time and place, the most plausible scenarios point
to the interplay of overpopulation, long-term ecological
crises, endemic warfare, and the erosion of the moral legitimacy of divine kings in the eyes of the populace.
By the 800s the Maya lowlands were inhabited by
tens of millions of people, probably exceeding the carrying capacity of the land even under optimal conditions.