Mexico´s indigenous civilizations - the Maya (part 1 of 2)

Along with the Aztec, the Maya is the best known of Mexico's ancient civilizations.  There were others as well - Olmec, Mixtec, Zapotec and so forth - but the Aztecs in central Mexico and the Maya on the Yucatán peninsula and further south, through what is now Guatemala, are generally considered the country´s two great antecedents.

Mayan civilization seems to have been mostly a collection of city states joined by a common language, cultural heritage, and artistic aestnetic.  The Maya flourished for much longer than the Aztecs, and covered a wider territory.  The civilization began, flourished and declined centuries before the Aztecs started to rise to power.  It was at its peak between 250 BC and 900 AD, but there are Mayan settlements in Belize that date back to 2600 BC, and their calendar begins on the equivalent in our years of 3114 BC.

Mayan ruins in Guatemala.  I think this is Tikal.  My mother took the photo, so I´m not sure.

During this long historical period, there were ups and downs.  For example, around 100 BC, the civilization as it existed at that time underwent a great downturn which some characterize as a collapse, only to revive and surpass its former glory in the 250 BC - 900 AD period.

The civilization went into an even steeper decline around 900 AD.  No one is exactly sure why, but one theory that recent investigations point up to is that a prolonged drought was exacerbated by declining rainfall due to building over former forest and crop lands.

(We might want to draw a lesson from this, ourselves....)

One way or another, after about 950 BC, most of the southern part of the Maya civilization ceased to exist for all practical purposes, and many cities were simply abandoned.  In the north, on the Yucatan peninsula, Maya cities continued to flourish including the ones at Chichen Itza and Uxmal.

From the same ruins as above, probably Tikal.

In 1450 AD, however, there was a revolt against the most powerful and extensive of the Mayan kingdoms rule that was enough to extinguish it and throw others into decline.  Some Maya cities and towns continued in existence in reduced form until the Spanish conquest.

It took the Spaniards nearly 200 years to complete the conquest of the Maya, however, the last city state falling in 1697.

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Eve A. Ma and Palomino Productions are currently working on a documentary about Mexican immigrants and Chicanos which deals briefly with the Zapotec, Mixtec, Aztec and other of Mexico´s indigenous civilizations.  Find out about this by signing up for our newsletter LINK.