Mayan+Pyramids

__ Yucatán Peninsula and the Petén __ Deep in the heart of the Guatemalan jungle, about two-hundred miles from the city of Copán, lies the remains of a little-known civilization. For their “gods”, the ancient peoples build magnificent temples/pyramids that stood tall above the surrounding jungle. These people were and still are the Mayans. The Mayan temples in Mesoamerica are about two-thousand years old, meaning that they predated the conquistadors by a thousand years or more. It also proves that Europe’s famous “explorers” did not discover the new world. These people were already here.

The Mayans lived in the Mexico-Belize-Guatemala area of Mesoamerica. Their culture was present from approximately the year eight-hundred B.C. through about nine hundred A.D. They survived during the following eras: Middle Preclassic, Late Preclassic, and Early Classic, Late Classic, and Terminal Classic periods. Though the people “vanished” long ago, their buildings are still here, showing the world that they were an advanced group of people.

The city of Tikal began as a quiet forming village in about the year six hundred B.C.E. However, it grew quickly over the following years, possibly helped by links with Teotihuacan through either peaceful trade or dominant military power. When Tikal was thrown into chaos from a large military defeat, Teotihuacan was overthrown by attackers and then soon abandoned. But Tikal’s power would soon return. Near afterward the people would build their temples higher than before, so the pyramids were the tallest structures in the rainforest.

The people built stone walls around where they lived for many different reasons. Some walls were designed to defend cities, while others were designed to divide separate kingdoms at their borders. Some scientists believe that the walls built on the streambeds were used as dams to flood the water onto their crops. Over the following millennia, however, the walls became hidden in the jungle landscape. Andrew Scherer of Brown University traveled to Guatemala’s northern lowland area called the “Petén” with several other researchers, associates, and professional architects. When they searched for the remains of the Mayans, they could not find any. “Not a lot of people were looking for fortifications” says Scherer. The walls themselves appeared to be little more than piles of stones covered with fallen leaves and thick jungle vegetation. “It was only over time that we started realizing them for what they were.” The walls represented the warfare between the separate kingdoms. One problem with the walls, however, was by the time the walls were constructed; the cities they were designed to protect had already grown too large and had outgrown the area.

There are other areas in the region that contribute to this archaeological motherload. One of them was Palenque, an ancient city of the Maya in Chiapas, South Mexico, in the Usumacinta Valley. Its architectural elegance, adapted to the tropical and topographical conditions, was a high point in the art of the Classic Period. Stucco sculpturing and low-relief paneling reached their highest expression at Palenque. The Temple of Inscriptions, noted for its hieroglyphic tablets, is one of the best preserved Mayan temples. And though it is not exactly a place, the term Olmec is important when describing the region. It is a term denoting the culture of the ancient Mexican natives inhabiting the tropical coastal plain of the contemporary states of Veracruz and Tabasco, between the years thirteen-hundred and four hundred before Christ. The term is also used to refer to contemporaneous groups in the highland regions of Mesoamerica (including the states of Oaxaca, Morelos, Guerrero, and the Federal District) who possessed ceramic or sculptural designs similar to those found in the lowlands. Other places included Usumacinta river homes and the remains of the Maya at Chichén Itza. The Usumacinta River cuts through the rainforest on the Mexican-Guatemalan border. The people living in this kingdom built stone walls to protect themselves from animals and military attacks. The walls ranged from three to six feet high, two to six feet thick, and continued down a four-mile-long stretch of rainforest.

Throughout most of their history, it seems, the Mayans used slash-and-burn farming. This is an agricultural technique that involves the cutting and burning of forests and woodlands to create fields to grow various crops. While this method uses very little need for tools, it would not create enough food for the hungry people. When they realized this fact, they started to build terraces (flat steps) in the surrounding mountains and hill-sides. This allowed them to grow more, and keep the rain from washing all of the soil from the mountainside fields. If you lived among the Mayans and surrounding kingdoms and cultures, your social position was deeply reflected by what kind of house you lived in. The nobles and kings lived in stone palaces that were built by workers. The workers lived in stone houses that were sometimes used as workshops. And finally, the peasants and farmers lived in various sized huts made of adobe-brick walls and a thatch roof.

Today, Tikal is a major city/tourist attraction that lies deep in the heart of the Guatemalan El Petén rainforest. Being two hundred and twenty two square miles, it is one of the largest ancient Maya sites in Mesoamerica. It is an important sanctuary for endangered wildlife such as ocelots, peccaries, monkeys, toucans, parrots, jaguars and many more. Tikal is bounded by rivers to the east and west that drain into the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The geographical position helped Tikal to become the greatest trade, religious, and political center above the others. To the east and west of the urban center, wetlands provided fertile land areas for agriculture. Water conservation and management was key to survival in the urban area. Because of this, Maya infrastructure engineering devised ingenious culvert and reservoir systems for water diversion and storage to maintain constant supplies in a climate of cyclical rainfall.

During an archaeological expedition during the 50’s or 60’s, one hundred archaeologists and professors traveled to the vast jungle to look for remains. They found the homes of forty-five thousand people, some of which date back as far as six hundred years before Christ. Mayan evidence is spread out over a one hundred and twenty-five thousand square mile area. In one twenty-five sq. mile section, they found about five hundred buildings. If it is the same density in the whole hundred twenty-five thousand sq. mile area, there would be two million five hundred thousand buildings. What awaited the archaeologists, however, was rough jungle terrain with a very limited amount of walking paths. From an aerial view of the jungle, you would see swampy open patches called civales breaking the “great green quilt” made up of the canopies of one hundred fifty foot tall ramón (breadfruit) and sapodilla trees.

Works Cited

Harris, Nathaniel. //Ancient Maya: archaeology unlocks the secrets to the Maya’s past.// Washington, D.C.: National Geographic, 2008.

Zorich, Zach. “Defending a Jungle Kingdom.” //Archaeology// 64.5 (2011): 34-38. //History Reference Center.// EBSCO. Web. 27 Oct. 2011.

Columbia University, Press. “Olmec.” //Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition// (2011): 1 //History Reference Center.// EBSCO. Web. 27 Oct. 2011.

Brown, Chip. “LOST CITY OF THE MAYA..(cover story).” //Smithsonian// 42.2 (2011): 36-49. //History Reference Center.// EBSCO. Web. 27 Oct. 2011.

Columbia University, Press. “Palenque.” //Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition// (2011): 1. //History Reference Center.// EBSCO. Web. 27 Oct. 2011.

“Mayan Culture.” //Phoebe Grant’s Fascinating Stories of World Cultures & Customs// (2005): 59-89. //Book Collection: Nonfiction.// EBSCO. Web. 27 Oct. 2011.

Lubman, David. “136th Lay Language Papers.” __Acoustical Society of America.__  Found 1 November 2011.

“Ancient Observations: Chichen Itza.” __Exploratorium__.  Found 1 November 2011.