The Maya in the Yucatán

Some of the Maya’s greatest cities were built in the Yucatán, despite the obstacles of isolation and lack of water.

Maya settlements in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula expanded a little later than those farther south in Guatemala and Chiapas: The dry limestone terrain made the region less attractive for village communities. However, the Maya had established themselves here from early times, settling near cenotes – the pools or caves where rainfall collected. Some of the first evidence of human habitation has been found at the caves of Loltún, in the central Yucatán, thought to have been inhabited since around 8000 BC.

Chichén Itzá.

Alex Havret/Apa Publications

Olmec origins

Knowledge of the Maya has exploded since the 1960s, and new discoveries are adding to our understanding all the time. From early days the Maya farming villages around the Yucatán and Chiapas had trading and cultural contacts with other peoples of Mesoamerica (the historic region covering Mexico and Central America). One of the earliest influences came from the Olmecs, who lived around the Gulf of Mexico from about 1600 to 400 BC.

The “mother culture” of Mesoamerica, the Olmecs were the first people to move from living in simple villages to a more complex society centered on ceremonial complexes. From around 600 BC the Maya too began to create larger communities with dramatic ritual architecture. The main Preclassic Maya cities, such as Nakbé and El Mirador, were just to the south of the Yucatán, but by about 250 BC a cluster of significant settlements had emerged close to modern-day Campeche, including Edzná, Dzibilchaltún, and Oxkintok.

The grand palacio at Sayil.

Alex Havret/Apa Publications

Centers of civilization

The elements of Classic Maya civilization were in place by around AD 200. It was based on separate city-communities, each ruled by a dynasty of ahauob or “holy lords,” glorified as the community’s sacred channel to the gods. The Classic Maya had the most complex calendar of ancient Mesoamerica, the “Long Count,” and its only complete system of glyph writing. Their intricate beliefs included the idea that, in the same way that gods fed men with rain and corn, the gods too needed to be fed – most powerfully with human blood, hence the importance of human sacrifice. Maya cities were also often at war.

In the 8th century AD, the Classic heartland from the Usumacinta valley in Chiapas through the Petén to modern Belize was probably the most densely populated region anywhere in the world. Calakmul was one of the greatest cities, with perhaps 80,000 people. Its eternal rival was Tikal, and the two fought titanic battles through the 6th and 7th centuries.

The several main areas of Maya development and settlement reveal a fascinating diversity. The northern Yucatán long appeared to have been a backwater for most of the Classic era, but there were significant major Classic cities in the north, notably Dzibilchaltún and – largest by far – Cobá, believed to have been an ally of Calakmul.

The Nunnery Quadrangle at Uxmal.

Alex Havret/Apa Publications

Puuc splendor

However, the most celebrated Maya cities in the northern Yucatán did not begin to make their mark until after AD 600. It is thought overpopulation and environmental pressures in the Petén drove people north, bringing an influx of migrants and Classic Maya culture to the Puuc region.

Puuc is Yucatec Maya for hill, and refers to a range of low hills that stand out in the flatness of the Yucatán. They have very good soils, but the usual problems of finding water in the Yucatán are made far worse by the height; there are no accessible cenotes, so to retain water for the dry season the Maya had to build huge ceramic chultunes or cisterns in the ground. In this unpropitious setting the Maya of the Puuc created a string of impressive communities – not just Uxmal but Kabah, Sayil, Labná, and more – which flourished for a brief 300-year period between about 650 and 950.

Maya architects at Uxmal used finely cut stone to build delicate arches, and covered the exteriors of their buildings with intricate carvings, riotous ornamentation, and rhythmic designs. Naturalistic sculptures and the typical “hooknose” motif – often placed on corners, and thought to represent the rain god Chac – demonstrate the prowess of local carvers.

Uxmal and the other Puuc communities retained many elements of Classic Maya culture, notably rule by a single dynasty. Uxmal’s finest buildings – such as the Governors’ Palace and the Nunnery – were all completed in the reign of a single ruler, commonly referred to as Lord Chak, who reigned around 890–910.

The elaborate Maya carving of the long-nosed rain god Chac, at Chichén Itzá.

Alex Havret/Apa Publications

Chichén and its power

By this time a very different city had arisen to the east, Chichén Itzá. Its origins have long been debated. From the moment the first archeologists saw it, it was recognized that its largest buildings – above all the pyramid of Kukulcán – are unlike most Maya structures and much more like those of central Mexico. The name Chichén Itzá means “Well of the Itzaes.” The sacred pool or cenote around which it was built was a place of pilgrimage – and sacrifice – for several hundred years. In the 16th century, Bishop Landa related how the local Maya of his time still spoke of this pool: “It was the custom to throw live persons into the pool at times of drought; these persons were thought not to die, although they were never seen again. They also threw in many valuable objects.”

Bishop Landa spoke favorably of Quetzalcoatl: “He was regarded in Mexico as one of their gods... [and] a god in Yucatán on account of his being a just statesman.”

Legends told to the Spaniards described the city as having been founded by a “foreign,” non-Maya people called the Itzaes, who worshiped the god Kukulcán or Quetzalcoatl. This encouraged the theory that the “Mexican” buildings of Chichén were the work of the Toltecs, originally from Tula, north of Mexico City, who were said to have invaded the Yucatán around AD 1100.

However, the “Toltec migration” theory does not match well with known dates. Moreover, there are plenty of entirely Maya buildings at Chichén – the Nunnery complex – and recent research has shown that they and the “Mexican” temples were mostly built around the same time, between about 750 and 900. Instead of a product of separate invasions, Chichén Itzá seems always to have been a hybrid community, created by local Maya and migrants from central Mexico in the disrupted world of the Terminal Classic.

Chichén differed in all kinds of ways from Classic Maya cities. They are full of monuments to named, individual rulers; there is not one at Chichén, but instead there are images of huge numbers of people, as in the Temple of the Warriors. Chichén Itzá did not have a ruling dynasty, but a kind of collective leadership, shared between the heads of several lineages.

Chichén’s style of operation gave it extra strength and flexibility, and it dominated trade in important commodities such as salt, honey, and cotton. Around 860, Chichén crushed its greatest enemy, Cobá. After the decline of Uxmal, Chichén Itzá had no challengers to its domination of the northern Yucatán.

The Collapse moves north

Even Chichén Itzá, though, could not avoid the catastrophe that swept over Classic Maya culture after 800. The “Maya Collapse” is a great enigma of history, but it seems fairly clear the Classic Maya fell victim to a spiral of environmental decline and political disasters.

Soaring population growth led to land being over-exploited, and productivity fell over a period of time. Maya rulers responded with more warfare, which only made things worse. Chronic crises led to a fall in confidence in the sacred ahau-kings. Between around 800 and 870 all the dynasties of the southern cities collapsed, and whole cities such as Palenque were abandoned over the next 200 years.

The Collapse came later to the north and was never as complete, but still had its casualties. Most prominent were the Puuc cities; as in the south, rapid growth seems to have accelerated land exhaustion, and from around 920 Uxmal and the Puuc communities fell into a rapid decline. Chichén Itzá survived longer, but around 1200, according to Maya chronicles, its last ruler, Chac Xib Chac, was expelled by a lord from a new city, Mayapán.

Postclassic revival

From the 13th century Maya culture revived on a far smaller scale in the northern Yucatán, in the Postclassic era. At its center for 200 years was Mayapán, the last “capital” of the Yucatán Maya. The Postclassic Maya seem to have been in awe of earlier achievements, for architecturally much of Mayapán is almost a smaller “copy” of Chichén Itzá. Its political organization was also similar, as authority was shared and sometimes rotated between different lords. This system was always unstable, and around 1440 Mayapán fell apart, and the Yucatán split into 19 often warring local chiefdoms.

Tulum’s modern name, from the Yucatec Maya for fence or enclosure, refers to the walls around the site. Its old name was probably Zama, “Place of the Dawn,” a lyrical evocation of its fabulous view of the ocean sunrise.

This did not prevent economic development, particularly around the coast, which benefited from expanding trade between the Aztec empire and Central and South America. The most impressive of the Postclassic coastal centers is Tulum, now on the Riviera Maya .

The ruins of Tulum overlooking the beach.

Alex Havret

The Spanish arrive

The first Spaniards to penetrate the Yucatán were two shipwrecked sailors, survivors of Valdivia’s expedition, which sank off Jamaica in 1511. One, Gonzalo Guerrero, spent the rest of his life among the Maya; the other, Jerónimo de Aguilar, became Hernán Cortés’s interpreter and went with him on the conquest of central Mexico. The first proper Spanish expedition to the Yucatán arrived in 1517, led by Francisco Hernández de Córdoba.

Juan de Grijalvabecame the first European to see the temples of Tulum in 1518. The next year it was the turn of Hernán Cortés, who landed on Cozumel, where he celebrated the first Mass. In 1527, conquest of the Yucatán Maya began in earnest, led by Francisco de Montejo.

The House of Pigeons at Uxmul: the roofcombs suggest dovecotes.

Alex Havret/Apa Publications