♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Buried in the jungles
of Central America, the pyramids of the ancient Maya
sat abandoned for centuries. ♪ ♪ Now evidence is painting
a clearer picture of the sophisticated
civilization that produced complex cities, art,
and writing. From above... You can tell the computer,
"Get rid of all the jungle." NARRATOR: From below... JAIME AWE:
You can develop a climatic record for thousands and thousands
of years. NARRATOR:
From the bones... JULIE HOGGARTH:
It tells us when these individuals lived, what people ate. NARRATOR:
And revealing a great
Maya metropolis. The seventh-largest city
in the world. So it's a perfect planned city. NARRATOR:
And yet, over a thousand
years ago, the Maya left most of these
great cities. Why? From a civilization governed
by divine rulers... IYAXEL REN:
Only this dynasty can have contact with Maya deities. NARRATOR:
...comes a message
from the past... AWE:
It is the Maya now relating
to us many of the events during one of the most critical
periods of their history. NARRATOR:
...of a world in transition... AWE:
They're upping the ante. They're really beseeching
their gods. NARRATOR:
...and a story of the
resilient people who have survived and thrived. REN:
The Maya are still here. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
"Ancient Maya Metropolis," right now, on "NOVA." ♪ ♪ ANNOUNCER:
Major funding for "NOVA"
is provided by the following: ANNOUNCER:
As an American-based supplier to the construction industry, Carlisle is committed to
developing a diverse workplace that supports
our employees' advancement into the next generation
of leaders, from the manufacturing floor
to the front office. Learn more at Carlisle.com. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
For over a thousand years, hundreds of cities lay covered
in the forests of Central America, remnants of the ancient
Maya civilization. AWE:
The ancient Maya were one of
the most amazing civilizations
in the Americas. They developed this civilization in a jungle environment. NARRATOR:
The Maya built towering pyramids and elaborate temples
over the course of 2,000 years. Cities expanded across
Mesoamerica. Their culture had advanced
mathematics, agriculture, and astronomy. FRANCISCO ESTRADA-BELLI:
They had very intimate knowledge
of stars, of the movement of the
celestial bodies. They were also great farmers
and geo-engineers. AWE:
The Maya built, you know,
some amazing structures that still remain today
after more than a thousand years
of being abandoned. NARRATOR:
The Maya expressed themselves
with vibrant, stylized carvings, figures, and brightly colored
polychrome pottery. Their art was reflected
in their written language-- hieroglyphs that could be read
throughout the Maya world. ♪ ♪ More than a thousand years ago,
the majority of the great cities of the Southern Maya
were abandoned. Who were the Maya who lived
and ruled in these cities? How did they build
and sustain vast cities with huge populations in a tropical rain forest? Why did they leave them? These have remained
some of archaeology's most intriguing questions. ♪ ♪ (wildlife chirping, chittering) ESTRADA-BELLI:
The Maya were based in parts of
Southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras and Belize
and El Salvador. And there were great cities
in this region. Most of them
most people know about are located in the
Lowland region. So it's a tropical forest, and that's where a lot of
the archaeological work has been going on in the last
120 years. And that's where I work, as
well. NARRATOR:
Francisco Estrada-Belli
first started working in the Southern Maya Lowlands
in 1987. ESTRADA-BELLI:
In the beginning,
we didn't think you could have a civilization with very many people living,
you know, in a concentrated area because of the tropical
environment. Today, we know that they had
proper cities with thousands, sometimes
hundreds of thousands of residents. NARRATOR:
And their descendants
are still here. There are still millions
of Maya people living in this part of Central America. REN:
Contemporary Maya people, we share the same territory,
and we know that we share the same culture, but we also need to understand
that we are very diverse. Right now, there are at least
30 Maya ethnolinguistic groups. I am Iyaxel Cojti Ren. I am a Kiche Maya woman from
Chichicastenango, Guatemala. Around this town, there are
a few archaeological sites. And I always had question about
who live there, what's the relationship between the people who live there
and us? And then I discover that there
is actually a career called archaeology. NARRATOR:
For more than a hundred years,
archaeologists have uncovered the cities of the Maya, learning about their language,
culture, and society, a heritage that was deliberately
suppressed-- often violently-- by Europeans. ESTRADA-BELLI:
Since the conquest, the Spanish,
the glorious past of Classic Maya civilization
was a threat. And so in order to dispossess
the Maya and to better control them,
they created this narrative in which they claimed that the
current Maya were savage people that had nothing to do with
the great, sophisticated people that built the great cities. And so that attitude
has continued throughout the colonial period and up until
the present, and has affected early explorers
into the Maya Lowlands. And over the years, we have
created a narrative in which, you know, we have constantly and consistently underestimated the achievements
of Maya civilization. And so that has been
a pervasive misconception, and that is only changing
in very recent times. I think that a lot of
archaeologists also helped to create this mysterious
environment, but not, not contemporary
archaeologists. Maybe archaeologists
of the last generations. Because I know that currently, archaeologists are very
conscious and very critical about what collapse is when they are talking about
the Maya. (people speaking Spanish) NARRATOR:
Jaime Awe is the former head of the Institute of
Archaeology in his home country of Belize. He has spent the last three
decades studying Maya sites and working with the
Maya community. (speaking Spanish) AWE (voiceover, in English):
I've known Jorge Can
for 26 years. I hired him to work with us, and over the years, he's now
the chief conservator for the Belize Institute
of Archaeology. NARRATOR:
Excavating Maya cities
is a monumental job. (speaking Spanish) NARRATOR:
Jorge Can has made it
his life's work. CAN:
I love my job, what I'm doing. I really love it and I got a
passion of it, and... I could say the majority of this
archaeological site is my office.
(laughs) (speaking Spanish) NARRATOR:
Jorge is a Yucatec Maya
conservator. His work is reclaiming
and preserving his own culture. CAN:
I could say we, Maya, built it
and then we continue that tradition over here, because we are the ones who are
continuing that work over here. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Most major excavations have
focused on large structures-- the impressive temples and
palaces of the ancient Maya. These were the homes
of the elite. But most of the cities'
population were not elite. Critical information
about their homes, their lives, and why they left is buried
under jungle. You know, today's visitor,
when they come to the site, they walk around
and they see that section where we have been able to
afford to excavate and conserve. But in reality, you know, hidden under all this jungle are hundreds of other buildings that are practically untouched. ♪ ♪ (wildlife chirping) NARRATOR:
Clearing tropical forest
is labor-intensive. It takes a long time
to excavate a site. At the Maya site of Caracol,
located in Southern Belize, the challenge of mapping a city
covered in jungle spurred a creative solution, one that changed
tropical archaeology forever. Early in their careers,
Diane and Arlen Chase had worked on other sites
nearby, but in the 1980s,
they surveyed Caracol, and have returned every year
since. ♪ ♪ DIANE CHASE:
We spent more than 20 years
trying to document how large Caracol was, how extensive the road system
was. ARLEN CHASE:
We started mapping in 1985. What mapping meant was that when
we were mapping here initially, I was carrying a transit
over my shoulder and we would literally cut into
the jungle. NARRATOR:
Maps were painstakingly drawn
by hand over two decades, but recorded only a fraction
of the city. The Chases were convinced
there was a vast metropolis buried under
the tropical jungle, but the process was so slow, they had no way to prove
the actual size of Caracol. ARLEN CHASE:
And so we started looking for
another technology to use in 2005. And eventually we got led to the
fact that LiDAR might do this. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
LiDAR-- Light Detection
and Ranging-- was initially used for
atmospheric measurements. ARLEN CHASE:
This was the first place
in the tropics to ever use LiDAR in a broad-scale sense. They'd done little pockets of it here and there,
especially in Europe. But no one had ever tried to do
a broad scale to see if you could lift the trees
and see what was underneath the forest. NARRATOR:
LiDAR sends thousands of
laser beams of different wavelengths
and then measures the time for the reflected beams
to return. The lasers were able
to penetrate the jungle canopy and create high-resolution
images of the ground below. The result was a revolution
in tropical archaeology. LiDAR is actually God's gift
to the tropical archaeologist, because you can tell
the computer, "Get rid of all the forest,
get rid of all the jungle." And what you have left
is bare earth. And you see the courtyards,
you see the temples, you see the palaces,
the reservoirs. What some other archaeologists
did when they first had access to LiDAR is, they used the
LiDAR, and then they did a ground check. They would go and look and see if they saw a feature,
and they would look, say, "Oh, is that on the ground in the place where the LiDAR
showed us?" When we did the LiDAR, we were
able to double-check our maps, rather than the other way
around. NARRATOR:
The years of mapping Caracol
by hand finally paid off. We had the ground check first,
and then we used the LiDAR. NARRATOR:
LiDAR has opened up
an incredible window on ancient structures,
but also issues around access, to try and keep the data
from looters. In Caracol,
the LiDAR and the Chases' maps combined to provide a blueprint
for understanding a city-sized bank of LiDAR data. Archaeologist Adrian Chase
has spent years modeling the city of Caracol
one hilltop-- called a plazuela-- at a time. ADRIAN CHASE:
I started working on the LiDAR at the start of 2010. Using different LiDAR
visualizations, I went through the data set
systematically to try and identify and digitize as many of the plazuela
household groups as I could. Each one of these little squares
is an extended family household. But all the ridge tops
are covered in them. NARRATOR:
The computer modeling of the Caracol LiDAR allows us
to see an amazing Maya city in precise detail, a city of
great size and sophistication. ADRIAN CHASE:
The initial map had
78 structures. And then with the LiDAR,
we now have over 7,000 household structures that are
raised households. NARRATOR:
While Europe was in
the Dark Ages, the world of the Maya
was thriving. The population estimate of about
100,000 people at 700 A.D. Based on sort of the rough data
that you can get for that time period,
it would have made Caracol the seventh-largest city
in the world. It's a big city. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
LiDAR exposed a vast metropolis
under the jungle. DIANE CHASE:
LiDAR absolutely changed
our whole view of the Maya. And it helped us show the world what we knew
because we'd walked Caracol, how big the place really was and how much of a human-changed
landscape this place was. One has to imagine
a completely different-looking landscape than this. What we'd be seeing is terraces,
agriculture, road systems, causeways, and households,
and not jungle. NARRATOR:
The city of Caracol was a feat
of urban engineering. Reshaping the hillsides
to bare rock, the Maya built networks
of terraces for their crops. So, these individuals
that are living out here have agricultural fields
right around them. They've got corn, they've got
beans, they've got squash. It's a sustainable community. NARRATOR:
In Caracol, Maya homes
were grouped together on the plazuela hilltops. DIANE CHASE:
We're inside a plazuela group. The Maya houses were built usually inside a plaza, with a series of structures
facing each other. So, this is a Maya household,
a typical Maya household. There would have been
stairways made of stone and then foundation walls
made of stone. But the rest would have been
pole and thatch. The eastern structure is usually
the mortuary structure, and that's what's behind me,
is the structure where the Maya would have,
would have buried their dead and conducted some of their
ritual offerings. What we found in this particular
building is a mortuary shrine. It has caches, things that are
specially deposited, hidden ritual caches. So I'm gonna just
put both hands around it. NARRATOR:
The quality of the objects left in the caches show
that even non-elite Maya were able to own fine goods. This is a heavy boy. Okay. You got it? You got it. You got it. All right. All right, looks good--
it's whole. It's whole! It's whole. It's cracked. Okay. But it is whole. ♪ ♪ ARLEN CHASE:
One of the things that we found
that's really interesting is a work of art in the form
of a cylinder vase. And the cylinder vase is clearly
carved by a master artist. You would probably think, "Oh, it should come
from an elite tomb." And it came out of a minor crypt
in a residential group. REN:
Sometimes we can focus only
about the, the function of an artifact,
how it was produced. But I think we need to keep in mind that there are
human beings behind those artifacts. There is a culture that we want
to know better. (simmering) NARRATOR:
Some objects are still
used today. The traditional foods
prepared with them tie the modern Maya to the past. Like the grinding stone
and tray, the mano and metate. REN:
The contemporary Maya people
still practice, not only Maya traditions,
but Mesoamerican traditions. It's one of the traits that
distinguish Maya culture, the consumption of
specific food-- and the metate is always
present-- the tortilla, the tamalitos. TIMOTEA MESH:
This is what the ancient Mayas
would have made before. The grinding stone is the most
ancient way of, of grinding the corn. As long as we have the dough,
from there, we can prepare different types
of meal with the corn dough. The corn tortillas are basically like the bread of our meals. JOSEFA CANTO:
So the grill doesn't need
no oil, no nothing. Just lie your tortilla there. MESH:
I grew up seeing
all this kind of food, making tortillas, grinding corn, harvesting beans and squashes,
preserving. ♪ ♪ REN:
These ingredients were present
in Maya diet. You still have these Maya
inscription, Maya hieroglyphic, text that mention these, these
words, and oral tradition talks about
the importance of this food for Maya. Because it's so connected
with identity, I think people continue
producing these traditional dishes. NARRATOR:
Also used to grind cacao beans
into cocoa, manos and metates were produced
in Caracol. Many other goods were imported. ♪ ♪ DIANE CHASE:
It may seem like Caracol is in
the middle of nowhere today. It was actually, you know, a
very key place. It was located on a trade route. There was the ability to get
access to goods in a way that might not necessarily be
the case in other places. Nowhere on site did you have to
walk more than maybe 20 minutes to get to a market. Some of the pottery
that is on site would have been in the market. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Murals uncovered in 2004
in the ancient city of Calakmul offer an intimate glimpse
of a Maya market. ♪ ♪ At the end of the network
of paved limestone roads was the core of the city
and a huge central pyramid. DIANE CHASE:
The way we see Caracol today
is nothing like the Maya would have seen it. The downtown itself, the,
the buildings would have been painted largely white and red, the floors all completely
plastered. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
At the heart of every Maya city
was the divine ruler, the head of power and religion. ESTRADA-BELLI:
So for all intents and purposes,
we can say that from the very beginning,
Maya kings had this divine essence to them, or were perceived as, as gods. NARRATOR:
Christophe Helmke,
an archaeologist and epigrapher, reads Maya glyphs, which often tell
of ancient rulers. HELMKE:
The titles that these
people bear is usually the title "ajaw." As time goes on,
not all kings are equal. There are some that are stronger
than others, and those kings start to
distinguish themselves as being so-called k'uhul ajaw. Literally, that means something
along the lines of godly. ESTRADA-BELLI:
So the kings were
the supreme priests, as well as the political leaders
of the state. So the divine king
is technically in charge, but what he's really
in charge of is the religion. REN:
The k'uhul ajaw is like
a divine lord. They are the intermediaries between the Maya deities
and the local population. Well, ceremony had, had a huge
role in the Maya society. In fact, almost everything Maya
people did and still do today begins with a large or small
ceremony, from birth,
to accession to the throne, to war, and every action was celebrated
by a religious ceremony and we see that in the carvings,
on stone monuments. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Stelae were monuments
carved with hieroglyphs, recording the glory of the ruler
and his legitimacy to rule. REN:
The ideology of that time is that only this dynasty
can have contact with Maya deities. It's a combination
of ideology and politics. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Although every Maya city
had its own divine ruler, they were all interconnected
by trade and alliances. DIANE CHASE:
Each of these Maya sites
is a little tiny city-state. What we're starting to realize
is, throughout Maya history, the sites were more in
connection with each other. They're largely peaceful
and they engage in trade. And so over time,
these different states become dependent on each other
for specific goods. One of the things that we see
in the Maya world is the rise of some very large supercenters, big cities,
places like Caracol in Belize, Tikal in Guatemala, Calakmul
in Mexico. NARRATOR:
Through the Maya Classic period,
from 250 to 700, the Maya cities and populations
grew to a peak. Yet by the year 900,
almost all the great cities of the Southern Maya
were abandoned, even Caracol. DIANE CHASE:
We're at the top of Canaa, and this is the royal palace. We know, when they left Canaa at
the end of the Classic period, that they left pretty quickly. And one of the places that
gives us those clues is, is, right here in that
doorway, there was a very young child who was left on the floor
unburied, which is not a typical Maya way
of doing things. There was violence. There are evidences of weaponry,
mace heads, and other kinds of things
that are on the floor. The downtown of Caracol
was burnt around A.D. 895, and then the downtown
is completely abandoned. The site itself is, is abandoned
shortly thereafter. The site is completely abandoned
for a thousand years. ♪ ♪ Once they're gone, they're gone, and the forest comes back
and takes over the site. NARRATOR:
The beginning of decline
for Classic Maya cities began around 750,
when people started to leave. What would cause the Maya
to leave their farms, homes, and spectacular cities? Archaeologist Julie Hoggarth
is studying factors that disrupted the ancient Maya
way of life. HOGGARTH:
Around 750, we start to see
the beginnings of decline in Classic
Maya society. We start to see the cities
being abandoned, the end of monumental
construction, the end of carved monuments. NARRATOR:
In the ninth century, cities
across the Southern Maya world were following the same pattern: the last recorded dates appeared
on their monuments, and then abandonment. AWE:
With this progression,
we also see the decline of the whole economic system, not just the political system. So, trade networks
start to fall apart. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
What changed for the
ancient Maya? One of the clues was found
deep in the caves of Belize. AWE:
Some years ago, some colleagues
of mine from the University of California,
Santa Barbara, as well as
the University of New Mexico, collected a speleothem in Yok
Balam cave in Toledo District. That study was really a major
breakthrough for us. NARRATOR:
Speleothems, better known as
stalactites or stalagmites, can take centuries to form. Acidic rainwater dissolves
the rock, and drips down into the cave, forming annual layers
like tree rings. Variations in the record
of oxygen molecules-- or isotopes--
from one layer to the next reflect the temperature
and moisture outside the cave. To pinpoint the age
of each ring, the amounts of two elements,
uranium and thorium, are compared. They reveal a thousand-year-old
weather report. AWE:
What you're looking at is the
oxygen isotopes in each ring. Today we can also date
each of these rings, so you can develop
a climatic record for thousands and thousands
of years. The results indicated that
during the early Classic period, weather conditions were
really, really good. It's also at this time that, you know,
Maya populations are expanding. But then you start to get into
the second half of the late Classic period, and that's when things really
start to change. NARRATOR:
The analysis showed that
starting around the year 750, the weather fluctuated
between very dry and very wet conditions. HOGGARTH:
So what we see in the eighth century, towards
the end of the eighth century... (thunder rumbling) ...is the climate going back
and forth between high precipitation
and low precipitation for about 50 years. So you can imagine the impacts
that would have had if you're trying to plant your
crops, and every year is something
different. ♪ ♪ And as we transition into the
ninth century, what we see is this period of
almost a century where you have prolonged
drought, severe drought. The ancient Maya were very
resilient. They'd persisted through
droughts in the past. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
What was different about
the droughts at the turn of the ninth century
that contributed to widespread social disruption? ♪ ♪ One answer is in the bones
of the ancient Maya. ♪ ♪ HOGGARTH:
Hey, guys. NARRATOR:
Julie Hoggarth is using
a new technique to analyze more than a thousand
years of Maya population to understand their diet,
lifestyle, what changed, and when. HOGGARTH (voiceover):
Another major revolution in radiocarbon dating is the development of
high-precision radiocarbon. So in the past,
you might have plus or minus 100 years. With high-precision dates,
you get plus or minus 15 to 20, uncalibrated. So what that does is,
it brings in your error pretty significantly. NARRATOR:
In the laboratory
at Baylor University, a tiny sample of bone tells
a very detailed story. So we have a bone sample here. And we just need a small
piece of bone. (voiceover):
What you need to do
is to purify the bone collagen
before you date it in order to get a reliable date. Now, the radiocarbon dating tells us when
these individuals lived, and the stable isotopes
tell us what people ate. NARRATOR:
A study published in 2019 showed the diet of the ancient
Maya in the Belize Valley changed over time. HOGGARTH:
A drought that occurred
in the early Classic period, around 250, 300 A.D.,
what we see is that the diet was much more varied during that
time for the ancient Maya. And it appears that the effects of the drought
were not as harsh. But what we see in the
late Classic is, that's really not the case. They didn't have as much
diversity in their diet. NARRATOR:
With more than a century
of wet weather, the Maya cities grew rapidly, shifting the Maya diet
from a mix of wild foods and agriculture
to rely more on corn. AWE:
Over time, it becomes very clear that the Maya began to extend their production
of corn. There are some great things
about corn, because you can produce lots
of it and you can store it. But there are also some problems
with corn, and that is that
it requires a lot of land, and then it relies on precipitation. NARRATOR:
The reliance on corn, combined with extended droughts, might have fueled a crisis,
especially for those in power. HOGGARTH:
So you can imagine how, when things do start
to go south, and you have no rain,
as things get worse and worse, ancient Maya rulers would have been increasingly
appealing to the gods for rain to come,
because they are meant to be the rain-bringers--
they are deities themselves. And so, without rain, part of their rulership
falls apart. HELMKE:
When things go bad, you pretend that everything
is going fine. You stick to the status quo
as long as you possibly can. And when that doesn't work, then
you have to find alternatives. One of the ways that political
leaders would try to address the situation is by, you know,
increased ritual activity. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
To ensure fertility, prosperity,
and life-giving rain, the k'uhul ajaw divine lords
would offer a sacrifice to the gods of their
own sacred blood. ESTRADA-BELLI:
Bloodletting was a big component
of Maya religion. It was an effort to reestablish
the balance in, in the universe. And you would make an offering
so that, you know, you, you'll be able to be rewarded. (birds chirping, fire crackling) NARRATOR:
Divine rulers didn't just offer
sacrifices at temples. Sometimes they went to where
the gods lived. ♪ ♪ In 1989, Jaime Awe was the first
archaeologist to visit what is now, in consultation with local Maya
communities, a national archaeological
reserve. AWE:
The Maya believed that caves was
the location where many
of their gods lived. One of the most important gods
that lives inside of caves is the rain god. Cave rituals began probably as early as the Maya settled
this region, going back to about 1200 B.C. And the Maya, it appears, as,
you know, as time went by and cave use intensified, started going deeper
and deeper into the cave. ♪ ♪ We're just over a kilometer
from the main entrance to Actun Tunichil Muknal, or Cave of the Stone Sepulcher. I was the first archaeologist
to come into this cave, and I realized that it provided
a unique opportunity to study a cave
that had been unlooted. I was also struck by the sheer
quantity of archaeological remains
inside the cave. The ancient Maya would often come into the caves and bring
offerings to their gods. Many of the ceramic vessels in which they would bring food
in as offerings would sometimes be smashed
or terminated. The termination
sometimes included just taking a little piece off
the rim, sometimes cutting a hole,
which we call a kill hole, or sometimes even smashing the vessel completely. NARRATOR:
The offerings to the gods are just as they were when
the ancient Maya left more than a thousand years ago. We have a pot back here that
you can see, it looks like it was made
yesterday, but it's actually almost
a thousand years old. And it had three legs, and the Maya knocked them off, and then they smashed
the vessel. So right here,
you can see the two legs that came off the bottom
of that one vessel. If you lift them up, there are three little rattles that would've
been inside of the leg. And then we look at the
charcoal dates or the radiocarbon dates
that we get, and that helps us to fine-tune when many of these activities were taking place. And what we find is that it
coincides with increased cave ritual during the time of the decline
of the large cities. And we also start to see an increase or a ramping-up of human sacrifice in this cave. And so they're upping the ante. They're really, you know,
beseeching their gods to come out and make rain to, you know,
ensure that there's balance in their universe. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
These were not the only
offerings made to the gods in a desperate time. ESTRADA-BELLI:
When the Maya king had a captive, there was a royal status
that was very significant not only
for political importance, but also for its
religious value. The blood of kings was
the ultimate gift. Maya sacrifice is, is not something that was
terribly common. And that was part of the cycle
of warfare and part of the religious
system, but of course, every civilization
of the ancient world killed their enemies. Now, warfare has been going on
from the, you know, early establishment
of Maya society, but from around 750 A.D.,
it's accelerating as time goes by. HELMKE:
All of this is creating a whole crescendo of reactions. It's building more warfare,
more social antagonisms, et cetera, et cetera. NARRATOR:
In the small Maya city
of Baking Pot in Belize, an excavation in 2015 uncovered an intriguing object, opening a new window into this
turbulent time in Maya history. AWE:
Julie Hoggarth and I decided, "Well, let's come here "in the palace complex
and excavate the northeastern corner
of this area." This is pretty atypical
for Baking Pot. Very atypical. NARRATOR:
One of the enigmas of many
ancient Maya cities is the termination
or abandonment deposits found outside the palace. ♪ ♪ This area of the site is in the
ceremonial part of Baking Pot, but more importantly, where we are in this corner is at the entrance into the
royal palace complex. As soon as we hit maybe,
you know, a meter, half a meter
below surface, we started to come across
these huge deposits. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Inside the deposit
were high-quality goods, mostly smashed. HOGGARTH:
We're finding musical
instruments, we're finding figurines. AWE:
We're finding large deposits of artifacts. And it's in the middle
of this deposit where we found the Komkom vase. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Scattered in the deposit were pieces
of an elaborate vase, decorated with the symbol
of the lord of Komkom, a city whose location
is still a mystery. AWE:
Whenever we discover any object that has hieroglyphic
inscriptions, the first thing I tend to do is,
I take a photograph of it, and we send it off to Christophe
in Copenhagen. I first heard about the Komkom
vase when Julie sent me a message on
my mobile phone with a little photograph of four
conjoining shards of the Komkom vase. Then I immediately saw that this
was a very important find. And so, I just wrote back to
Julie right away and said, "Find more!",
with an exclamation point. And so they did. ♪ ♪ (camera clicking) I immediately saw that this was
going to be a lot of work, because there's 86 shards that we had to put back
together. By the end of the second day,
it had dawned on me that, wait a minute,
this is all glyphs, and it just keeps going
and going and going. ♪ ♪ And I realized this is the longest hieroglyphic text on a vase ever found
in the Maya area. NARRATOR:
Archaeologists believe
the Komkom text is the only story of its kind
ever found, written by the ancient Maya at a time of instability
and disruption. AWE:
The Komkom vase starts
to tell us about events that took place
in February of 799 A.D. This is a critical period
in Maya history. I mean, this is the time when
many of the large cities start to decline, and many of
them start to be abandoned, depopulated. And then, bam, you know,
we have this Komkom vase that fills in sort of
this void around this specific time
period. It is the Maya now relating to us many
of the events that unfold during one of the
most critical periods of their history. It's difficult not to use
superlatives when you're describing it. It is a completely,
completely unique vase. There's nothing like it. AWE:
You had to have had a scribe who, one, knew to read Maya
script, and then to be able to exactly gauge the size
of these glyphs to be able to fit all this
narrative. ♪ ♪ REN:
These are prestige items produced by very skillful
artisans who not only are artists, but also have the knowledge
to write. NARRATOR:
The art of writing the
hieroglyphs was something the Maya had lost, the result of a deliberate
campaign to destroy their culture. ESTRADA-BELLI:
Well, the hieroglyphs, you know, their literature
is what is also a very important component of
the civilization that was lost
during the Spanish conquest. And that happened as a
deliberate consequence of the religious imposition that
the Spanish brought. And within a couple of
generations, that knowledge was lost, because nobody
could read the hieroglyphs. So the decipherment of the
hieroglyphs has been extremely important to
the modern Maya, the contemporary Maya, because there's been a great
interest in, on their part in trying to regain, you know,
their, that knowledge, and try
to reconnect with their past. NARRATOR:
Iyaxel Cojti Ren is
an epigrapher, an archaeologist who studies
ancient writing. She can read the Mayan glyphs. REN:
But right now, we only have
a few artifacts that tell us about the huge
knowledge they had in the past,
and it would be good that through the learning of
Maya epigraphy, we can recover that knowledge,
at least a portion of that. ♪ ♪ Since 2010, we starting organize
workshops to teach Maya epigraphy, but Maya culture in general-- about our own culture,
our own history. And it's not only about, "This is how you should read," but, "This is how we are sharing
knowledge." ♪ ♪ FRANK TZIB:
My name is Frank Tzib. I am from the beautiful village
of Oxmul Kah in Belize. I am a Yucatec Maya. Speaking Maya, I grew up learning about our
culture. I grew up practicing many of the
traditions that our culture has. That is why I learn how
to read glyphs. It's something very special
to us, the Maya. I started painting on pottery. (chuckles):
This is what I do now. NARRATOR:
Now modern Maya
are reading the glyphs and their ancestors' stories, like this one, made by an elite
artisan for the lord of Komkom. (Tzib speaking Yucatec Maya) (translated):
This vase is made for the
powerful one. He is the first of the land,
the young lord of Komkom. (speaking Yucatec Maya) HELMKE:
Most historical monuments
that we have, there are a few years between
each sentence. What we have here
are days between sentences. It seems to be a copy of
somebody's historical annal or diary that's being recorded,
and here there's a copy of it. NARRATOR:
Most inscriptions on Maya stelae are public records of conquests
or royal ascensions. Unlike any other known Maya
writing found, the Komkom vase contains
a personal record from inside major battles in a
war between two powerful rulers. HELMKE:
Komkom vase relates a series of fast-paced historical events from the end of February 799. NARRATOR:
The Komkom story tells of a
power struggle between two Maya cities. K'inich Lakamtuun ruled Yax-ha. Kanot Awhil
was the lord of Naranjo. The two rulers
had close family ties. The king of Naranjo
at this time, his mother was actually from
Yax-ha. So there's a huge amount of
family relations between the Naranjo dynasty
and the Yax-ha dynasty. NARRATOR:
Their cities were also
very close to each other. HELMKE:
Naranjo and Yax-ha are less than
a day's walk from one another. NARRATOR:
The story begins in Naranjo,
with the blessing of the gods. (Tzib speaking Yucatec Maya) (translated):
On the 19th day of February 799,
the fire was drilled. The priest of Naranjo
made the ceremonial fire. HELMKE:
With the start of the text
of the Komkom vase, is, they relate the drilling
of a fire. A lot of these fires
are so-called ritual fires. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
The first battle recorded
on the vase is the destruction of a small
city by the ruler of Naranjo. TZIB (translated):
Two days later, on the 21st, the city
of Sak Suutz' was burned. This is the will of the gods. NARRATOR:
The lord of Naranjo prepares
for a larger conquest, the city of Yax-ha. TZIB (translated):
Seven months and 14 days have passed since the striking of the sacred fire. The order was given for the
destruction of Yax-ha. The middle of the city
of Yax-ha was axed. The lord of Naranjo ascended to control Yax-ha. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Then the Komkom vase makes fun
of the defeated ruler of Yax-ha. TZIB (translated):
And the powerless Yax-ha lord, K'inich Lakamtuun, fled. (mosquitoes buzzing) HELMKE:
K'inich Lakamtuun flees to a
place infested with mosquitoes. TZIB (translated):
He ascended to the place of many
mosquitoes, the Yax-ha lord. HELMKE:
The way they're poking fun
at him is, is extremely clear. There's no other example of a historical narrative
like that. TZIB (translated):
On the third day of September
799, it is the victory dance
of the Kek'(e) Ahk. The very end of the narrative, the whole narrative almost
builds up to this, is a dance. So the name of the dance would
be the frog-like turtle dance. ♪ ♪ K'inich Lakamtuun is one of the, the last known kings of Yax-ha. After the year 800, there are no more records
to K'inich Lakamtuun of Yax-ha, and in fact,
no more court monuments are raised after. AWE:
In many ways, the Komkom vase
truly cycles this period of decline and of conflict
in the Maya world. It casts a look back at a time of turmoil that in many ways marked the beginning of the
terminal Classic, the beginning
of the, the end process. (crowd yelling) It's created and made
and dedicated in 812, at a time when most Maya cities
have already collapsed or are undergoing abandonment. And it's found in a deposit that
marks the very end of the institution
of royal kingship at the site of Baking Pot. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
Yax-ha was only the beginning. Over the next 100 years, the ancient Maya inhabitants
left almost all the cities of the
Lowland Maya. ESTRADA-BELLI:
The timing of the abandonment
of Maya city varies. It wasn't an instantaneous
process in any shape or form. It was very prolonged process. First, we have the interruption
of carving of stone monuments. And so that seems to go away
first. And then the elites start
disappearing. NARRATOR:
At some point,
the combination of factors changed life
in the cities of the ancient Maya enough that one by one,
they were abandoned. DIANE CHASE:
For me, one of the, the greatest
factors had to do what, with what the people of Caracol
themselves did. ♪ ♪ Caracol's heyday was in what
we call the late Classic. So about 650, 700 A.D., Caracol was at it, its peak
in terms of population. At that point in time, everyone on site had access
to the same things. If the Maya had the same kind
of economy as us, in the late Classic, we would say there was
a big middle class. At the end of the Classic
period, we see a shift, and access to goods is cut off
to a larger degree. We have the haves
and the have-nots. This political system around the
k'uhul ajaw, or the divine ruler, this political system
demands a lot from the population
of lower social stratus. It's important to focus
on how the commoners react or think about this political
system, and for how long they accept it, and they started
to question it. ♪ ♪ (birds chirping) NARRATOR:
The final abandonment of the
Southern Maya cities ended a unique form of
civilization in that region, but the Maya adapted. ESTRADA-BELLI:
So the concept of collapse
has been very popular in our literature. You know, it has many negative
connotations. So to me, it's not so much a
question of the collapse as to the, you know,
what caused these people to, to move? REN:
I agree with several
archaeologists who say that Maya collapse has to be
understood as a transition. People don't stay to wait until something better
happen. They, they take their belongings and try to find
a better place to live. ESTRADA-BELLI:
There is no doubt
that very many cities, in the South, primarily,
were abandoned. At the same time, there were several cities
in the North that were booming. They actually probably received some of that population that
left the South right around the year 1000, when, you know,
the South was being depopulated. And the focus of civilization
really shift to the North, where it would remain until
the arrival of the Spanish, for another 400 years. ♪ ♪ NARRATOR:
When Europeans arrived, they devastated the Maya
with disease and violent religious
conversion, followed by centuries
of colonial exploitation. In spite of that, the modern
Maya continue to live and thrive throughout Mesoamerica. The Maya are still here,
are still in Guatemala, in Mexico, in Belize, in Honduras, in El Salvador. ♪ ♪ Definitely,
I think Maya culture is alive through Maya languages
and through Maya history. ESTRADA-BELLI:
The Maya are extremely
resilient people. They were able to survive
the epidemics and the slaughter
of the early colonial period. They were able to maintain their traditions
and their knowledge. It's really a success story
in that sense. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪
