Decline of the Mayan Culture – The Mayan Civilization
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The fall of Teotihuacan, which occurred in the second half of the 8th century, allowed for the flourishing of the large population centers that the Maya had built in the Highlands. As a result, cities such as Tikal, Tonina, Yaxchilan, and many others experienced their heyday between the 9th and 10th centuries.
For a long time, it was insisted that the reason for the decline of the major Maya urban centers was a mystery. However, intense archaeological research in the region occupied by these states during the Classic period of Mesoamerica has revealed some of the reasons why the Maya were forced to abandon the cities and retreat into the jungle.
Firstly, these were small states engaged in perpetual warfare with each other. The stelae of Tonina indicate that the ruling elite of that city undertook an aggressive military campaign that led them to occupy important sites such as Palenque, Piedras Negras, and Bonampak. It is not surprising that other states in the region may have launched similar campaigns, leaving several cities in ruins.
Furthermore, during this time, there was a climatic imbalance as a result of the El Niño phenomenon. The climate likely had serious consequences for agriculture in the Maya area, as it did in the highlands of Central Mexico.
Since these catastrophes were culturally attributed to the ineffectiveness of the priestly class, the common people must have turned against them, blaming them for the scarcity of food and other necessary goods for life. One of the symptoms of Maya decline in the Classic period is the absence of commemorative monuments (known as stelae) after the year 889 AD, only found in a few sites in the region. In the following centuries, the Long Count calendar was no longer employed in Mesoamerican calendric inscriptions, highlighting the end of a cultural tradition.
In addition to the Long Count (the time-counting system that has surprised many with its precision and abstraction), the only thing the Maya of the Classic period abandoned were the large cities. There was never a massive migration to Yucatan, although some groups may have done so.
The majority of the population stayed in the region, and during the Postclassic period, they contributed to a new period of prosperity, although not of the same magnitude. The most important state in the Highlands during the Postclassic period was the Quiche in Guatemala.
Both the Maya of Yucatan and those of the Highlands and the Pacific Coast were influenced by migrating peoples from the highlands and the Oaxacan area. These groups, in turn, were pushed by the ancient peoples who left the southern zone of the Mexican highlands when ecological disaster made agriculture there impossible. In the south, they established independent states with cultural characteristics of Nahua origin.
Among these groups were the Pipiles, who settled on the coast of Guatemala and El Salvador. In the Yucatan Peninsula, the Nahuatlized peoples (whether they were truly Nahua or had adopted many of their characteristics, such as the Chontales) contributed to a new flourishing of Maya communities.
However, rivalries among the elites of the region, only briefly mitigated by the ephemeral presence of the Mayapan League, ultimately led to the ruin of the great cities of Chichen Itza, Uxmal, and many others, which were abandoned by their rulers. When the Spanish arrived in Yucatan, they found the region divided into small states hostile to each other, making it easy to subdue them. Some groups took refuge in the Peten, where they created a small independent kingdom with its capital in Tayasal. The conquest of this independent kingdom was not achieved until 1697.
The ruins of the ancient great cities were very isolated from the outside world and were little known, except by the native people. In 1839, American traveler John Lloyd Stephens, hearing rumors of lost ruins in the jungle, visited Copan, Palenque, and other cities with architect and illustrator Frederick Catherwood. Their illustrated journals about the ruins sparked strong interest in the region and its inhabitants (both in the United States and in Europe).
The descendants of the Maya did not disappear at the time of the Spanish conquest. Studies of mitochondrial DNA have shown that the genetic composition of modern inhabitants of the Maya area corresponds to the frequencies of haplogroups (hg) of pre-Hispanic Maya, with high frequencies of haplogroups A and B being prevalent. These frequencies are common in other contemporary populations of Mesoamerican origin. Maya-speaking groups still inhabit southeastern Mexico, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala (where they represent the largest ethnic component of the population).
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