by Peter Watson
Clouds of incense and smoke were generated in the course of these rituals, the coils of smoke fashioned naturally so as to resemble a serpent high above the pyramid, rising to the heavens. ‘This was the Vision Serpent, the Feathered Serpent, perhaps the most powerful symbol of Maya kingship, the tortuous path between the natural and supernatural realms.’24 The Vision Serpent was generally evoked via a bloodletting ritual, most often by passing a rope through a hole cut in the tongue. This painful procedure elicited a trance state in which the Vision Serpent would appear, the creature being ‘the conduit through which the ancestors came into the world and spoke to their descendants’.25 The Milky Way and Vision Serpents are discussed in more detail in the next chapter.
MOUNTAINS, MASKS AND MEMORIES
Bloodletting appears to have been the most fundamental ritual in Maya life. Everyone offered blood at all occasions, from the birth of a child to marriage and funerals. Usually, it was taken from the tongue or the penis, using either a fish spine or an obsidian blade to make the incision. Most of the time a few drops were sufficient but on important occasions elaborate cleansing rituals were devised in which people (men and women) would draw a ‘finger-thick rope’ through their tongues or penises to stimulate ready flows of blood which dropped on to sacred papers that were then burnt. (This, too, is explored more fully in the next chapter.)
The Maya believed that gods could take the form of mountains or other features of the sacred landscape, as shamans or as trees. Thus the pyramids sometimes represented sacred mountains, and the images of kings were carved on stelae to create a number of standing stones that, together, comprised a ‘forest of kings’. Even today, says Linda Schele, shamans still make models of the sacred landscape out of sticks and corn stalks which they place in caves or at the foot of sacred hills to communicate with supernatural forces.
The Maya famously had a sacred calendar, or rather two sacred calendars. They did not invent this device – it was very ancient (beginning ~600 BC), based on the early Mesoamerican counting system, a system ordered around the number 20, probably derived from the number of fingers and toes on the human body.* From Olmec times onwards, at least, priests devised a tzolkin, or sacred year of thirteen months each with 20 days, giving a 260-day cycle. The derivation of this cycle, used nowhere else in the world, still remains obscure but the best ‘guesstimate’ so far is that it stems from the average gestation time of humans, which is 266 days (conception to birth, 280 from last menstruation to birth), and, roughly speaking, the basic agricultural cycle in Maya territory. Ancient priests may therefore have seen something special or sacred about the 260-day period.26 If this is true, it would confirm the relatively late discovery of the link between coitus and birth, as discussed in chapter seven.
But they also used a second cycle, the haab, which was developed later and consisted of 18 ‘months’ of 20 days each (20 again), and one short month of just five days, making a total of 365 in all. This too may have been a farming calendar but, unlike the calendars of other civilisations across the world, the Maya tzolkin/haab cycle did not make use of the phases of the moon, to divide the year into twelve, and as a result gradually went out of alignment with the seasons by a quarter of a day every four years, meaning it was 1,460 years before it was back in step.
Two other features of this system – again quite different from anything elsewhere in the world – deserve mention. One, around the time of the birth of Christ, the two calendars were meshed together, in an interlocking calendar, which produced a great cycle of time of 18,980 days, or fifty-two years. And two, they developed the so-called ‘long-count’, a calendar which used the 52-year system to calculate backwards in time to the creation of the world which, according to them, took place on 11 August 3114 BC in the calendar we use today. This enabled Maya kings to locate themselves in the grand sweep of history and establish their genealogy, which added to their legitimacy to rule. Underneath it all, however, the Maya had a cyclical idea of history and believed that, in the fullness of time, events would repeat themselves. (See above, chapters two and five, for the possible origin of the idea of cyclical time.)
Linda Schele and David Freidel have chronicled the rapid birth of kingship in Maya society. Kingship, they say, was essentially of a shamanistic nature, the divine ahua opening a portal to the supernatural world via bloodletting. Kings bore responsibility for the weather, for disease, even for death.28 They observe that this idea of kingship seems to have emerged in Cerros, until about 50 BC a small village on the Gulf of Mexico. At that date, however, the archaeological evidence indicates that, for some reason, the inhabitants deliberately abandoned their homes in the centre of the settlement and replaced them with a T-shaped temple that stood on a pyramid of earth and rock, where shamanistic rituals were carried out. (This was reminiscent of the Olmec architecture.)29 The façades of the monumental buildings were plastered (an innovation of the Maya) and decorated with political and religious messages that described the role and functions of kingship.
There was a massive staircase from the plaza to the shrine at the top of the pyramid, where there were huge post holes, in which were located large tree trunks to symbolise World Trees and the cardinal directions, in relation to the rising and setting sun. This is where the king-shaman carried out his bloodletting and went into a trance in preparation for his ritual meeting with the gods and the ancestors. The lower levels of the pyramid were decorated with huge masks of snarling jaguars, representing the Jaguar Sun God and the Ancestral Twins of Maya legend (described in chapter twenty-one).
According to the archaeologists, the temple precinct in Cerros grew in magnificence in just a generation, to three times the size of its original construction, with the raised platform on the pyramid reaching a height of 52 feet. Other platforms and ball courts were built nearby and for a time Cerros was an impressive centre. Unfortunately, it didn’t last and the city was destroyed, possibly by a rebellion of the people, in a pattern that had occurred at Olmec San Lorenzo and was to recur time and again in Mesoamerica.
The ultimate significance of Cerros is that it forged the hierarchical nature of Mesoamerican society that was to be repeated at the great classic Mayan cities of El Mirador, Tikal and Uaxactún. The hierarchy in Mayan society was marked. There were four ranks, with the elite enjoying a distinctive diet that resulted in them being, on average, ten centimetres taller than the rest of the population.30 We know more about El Mirador, Tikal and Uaxactún because of the inscriptions that have now been deciphered and because Popol Vuh, the Mayan ‘Book of Counsel’, which gives us the Mayan view of the cosmos, in which the main players are the great shaman-kings.
El Mirador, the first of the great Mayan cities, lies among the swamps and low hills of the Petén (north Guatemala), and flourished between 150 BC and AD 50, covering in all some six square miles. It had a large pyramid at its centre, plus many other ceremonial buildings and plazas, all raised on platform mounds, and was controlled by a highly organised elite, which employed its own artisans, priests, engineers and traders. Some of the earliest examples of Mayan writing appear at El Mirador but it hasn’t been deciphered and for that reason (among others) the causes of the rapid decline of the city in the first century ad are not understood.
Tikal and Uaxactún, barely forty miles away, filled the political vacuum. The former, located in a swampy region, had started out as a small village around 600 BC, trading obsidian and quartzite. Gradually large public buildings appeared – platforms and plazas – adorned with plaster masks so typical of the developing Mayan style. Notably, too, the royal tombs of this time contain the bones of individuals who were larger and more robust than the average citizen – again the nobility were taller and ate a better diet than commoners. Royal individuals were buried with the paraphernalia for bloodletting, but the royal headdress continued to be used for generations.
The development of Uaxactún paralleled that of Tikal, with six temples built on a small acropolis, with massive stucco sculpture
s and masks, depicting a sacred mountain and monster sitting in primordial waters and with the heads of the Vision Serpent on either side. Jaguar masks flank the stairways leading to the central edifice. ‘It is here, at Uaxactún, that we see Maya kings memorializing themselves for the first time.’31
At the time of El Mirador’s demise, Tikal and Uaxactún were more or less equals. Tikal was ruled by a dynasty founded by Yax Moch Xoc between AD 219 and 238. He and his successors depicted themselves in the inscriptions as shamans with an ancient royal ancestry but also with a close relationship to the mysterious jaguar. Here too, as with the Olmec, the jaguar was represented as the master of the Underworld, as the powerful, preternatural symbol of kingship, of bravery in war, and religious authority in general. Sometimes, sacrificial victims are shown cowering at the ahua’s feet, the capture of noble prisoners being an important criterion of royal power, and of the king’s sacred ability to nourish the gods with noble blood.
The equality of Tikal and Uaxactún produced a rivalry which climaxed during the reign of Great Jaguar Paw, the ninth ruler of Tikal’s long-lasting dynasty. Great Jaguar Paw captured Uaxactún on 16 January AD 378 and this appears to have been warfare on an unprecedented scale, undertaken for territorial conquest rather than for captives to provide blood for the gods.32
Teotihuácan, in the Valley of Mexico, was also coming on stream at that time and may have influenced events in Yucatán. Certainly, by the late fourth century artefacts from Teotihuácan are common at Tikal as it forged widespread trade links.
New war cults took hold in Mayan life at this time, for Tikal’s leaders now timed their wars for specific points in the cycle of Venus, a planet associated with war, and the Tlaloc-Venus costume became a standard part of royal regalia. In this way, Smoking Frog from Tikal became the ruler of Uaxactún, the battle memorialised for generations.
Tikal now entered a period of great prosperity until, in the mid-sixth century, it was overthrown by the rulers of Caracol, who in turn embarked on years of conquest, eventually being overtaken by a newly resurgent Tikal in the late seventh century, when a number of new massive buildings were constructed. Its rulers were depicted as under the protection of the Jaguar God and large numbers of captives of the wars were sacrificed in elaborate ceremonies. The latest evidence shows that Tikal finally declined because it ran out of resources. Traditionally, its temples used wood from the sapodilla tree, very strong but easy to carve. After AD 741, however, sapodilla was replaced in temple construction by logwood, ‘a smaller, gnarly tree that is almost impossible to carve’. David Lentz, the palaeoanthropologist who carried out the study, says the temple builders would never have accepted logwood if they had not run out of sapodilla.33
Palenque, the most westerly of all Maya cities, and unique in having a distinctive four-storey tower, is also distinguished by having the most complete written history, with the most detailed inscriptions. These show that its recorded history begins with the accession of Bahlum Kuk ( Jaguar Quetzal) on 11 March AD 431, a dynasty that was to endure until 799. Another of Palenque’s unique distinctions was the discovery, in 1952, of a hidden staircase in the heart of the Temple of Inscriptions, itself the most famous mortuary temple. The stairway descended into the bowels of the pyramid to the tomb of Pacal, its great ruler who had reigned for sixty-seven years, the outside of his sarcophagus containing a magnificent carving showing Pacal’s fall down the World Tree into the Underworld. His son built yet more monuments, the inscriptions now regarded as attempts to rewrite history, to glorify still further the dynasty and make it appear older than it really was. (Place was important in the Mayan system. The location of the World Tree, where the sky was raised up, was regarded as the Navel of the World, where all began.) But Palenque also collapsed, in the ninth century, its people returning to farming in villages ‘around the ruins of their once-great city’.34
Copán, in modern Honduras, was at the southern end of Mayan territory but it too was relatively long-lived. It is also known for the fact that it had more inscriptions and sculptures than any other Mayan city. Its pyramids and plazas, its altars and stelae, cover an area of about thirty acres. The site had been inhabited in some form since about 1400 BC but it wasn’t until AD 400 that it became a city, with monumental buildings, including a ball court. The inscriptions (many contained on a fabulous Hieroglyphic Stairway), show that all the kings of Copán claimed descent from a founder, Yax K’uk Mo’ (Blue Quetzal Macaw) in about AD 435. Several rulers had long reigns, some lost their heads in wars, and among the artefacts found in royal tombs were sacrificial knives and stingray spines for bloodletting. The city collapsed in about AD 830.
It seems that during the late eighth and early ninth centuries AD, chaos reigned in the Yucatán Peninsula. In the south, the cities collapsed but not in the north, where they lasted until the Spanish Conquest. Why this should be so is unclear. One theory is ecological: environmental degradation, crop failure, drought, malnutrition and starvation. Certainly eighth-century skeletons from Copán show signs of distress. More intriguing are the political theories, that in rigidly hierarchical societies, where the charisma of rulers depended on their elaborate ritual displays, based on shamanistic beliefs, such rulers actually only had a weak control over events (especially ‘supernatural’ events like volcanoes or earthquakes) and were never able to establish stable political entities which, eventually, collapsed. Moreover, they had no draft animals, no wheeled carts, nor the technology to clear good roads through the forest, nor horses to ride large distances. Under such systems, the size of Mayan political entities was naturally limited and the need for sacrificial victims for their religious beliefs may simply have imposed too many burdens on such societies.
LIGHTNING AND THE CLOUD PEOPLE
North and west of the Mayan area, in two valleys, two cities, or city-states, emerged that were to have major consequences. These were Monte Albán and Teotihuácan. In the Valley of Oaxaca, where Monte Albán would develop as the centre of the Zapotec civilisation, maize and bean agriculture had been present by about 2000 BC and one site, San José Mogote, boasted some simple buildings as early as 1350 BC. Shell trumpets, figurines of dancers and masks were all found there, and fish spines linked to bloodletting. By 1000 BC, the central precinct extended for 50 acres and by 600–500 BC the first hieroglyphics and calendars appear, together with were-jaguar designs, and the Feathered Serpent, almost certainly ‘inherited’ from the Olmec.
At about this time, at a strategic point where the three arms of the Oaxaca Valley intersect, a major centre was established. The new settlement, Monte Albán, grew quickly and was soon home to 5,000 people, forming the first real city in Mesoamerica. Two things stand out about the site. One, it is without arable land or water. Two, its pyramids and palaces and plazas are so immense and intricate that they must have formed some sort of symbolic landscape. Here, nearly two miles of stone walls were built, not as fortifications but as an attempt to isolate the lofty citadel from the valley below. Richard Blanton, of Purdue University in Indiana, believes that Monte Albán was a ‘neutral’ city on an infertile hill set up to act as a political capital, to provide defence at times of trouble for people who, otherwise, did not need to come together. There is, however, no sign that the citadel was ever attacked, so it seems more likely that it was a purely symbolic centre, symbolic of power and dominance, in an area where the local peoples didn’t compete, because it was economically worthless.
The city rose in importance and size and reached a population of ~15,000 by 200 BC. By then a powerful elite ruled over the Valley of Oaxaca, surrounding the immense plaza at Monte Albán with stone temples and palaces, notably the Temple of Danzantes, between 500 and 200 BC. This contains a number of stone slabs which show male nudes in strange ‘rubbery’ poses, as though they were swimming or dancing, with down-turned mouths in the Olmec fashion. No fewer than 140 figures are shown in this way, but the feeling now is that these are not swimming or dancing figures, but corpses, noble ene
mies slain by the Monte Albán elite: some have scroll motifs on their groins, as if they had let blood from their penises. As Brian Fagan puts it, ‘the connotations of ritual bloodletting provide a strong link to the underlying shamanistic beliefs that fueled and nurtured Mesoamerican civilisation.’35
The city, which straddled three hills, was elaborately hierarchical, with elite tombs for those of noble birth, fifteen residential areas, each with its own plaza, enormous central precincts and imposing ball courts. There is also the mysterious Mound J, an arrow-shaped structure that points south-west and is honeycombed with vaulted tunnels. There are forty slabs on the lower walls of this building showing sacrificed corpses and the mound points to a bright star at certain times of the year. Is this a war memorial to a war fought on a propitious date?
Monte Albán reached the height of its influence between 200 BC and AD 200, when its population was about 25,000, after which it did not expand but traded with Teotihuácan and remained prosperous until the eighth century when it declined, after the Zapotec leaders lost popular support.
The Zapotec civilisation is often considered alongside the Mixtec, or Mixteca, slightly to the west, on the Pacific coast of Mesoamerica, with its capital at Tilantongo. The Mixteca were the most highly stratified people in Mesoamerica, placing immense importance on birth order, with rulers occasionally marrying their full siblings to ensure high rank for their offspring. Barbro Dahlgren’s analysis of pre-Hispanic codices lists eleven royal marriages between a male and his brother’s daughter, fourteen with a sister’s daughter, one to a half-sister, and four to a full sister. Increasing endogamy generally among the Mixteca eventually caused adjacent valleys to separate out. And their rulers eventually became so differentiated from ordinary people that there was a separate vocabulary for the various parts of the royal body when contrasted with those of ordinary citizens.36
