The ancient Maya city of Cival may represent that
most tantalizing of archaeological prospects: a find that forces a
sweeping reanalysis of all conventional thinking about an ancient
culture. Although the
Maya left behind many fabled and enduring monuments, there are
relatively few written records of their 2,000-year hold over modern day
Mexico and Central America. Consequently,
archaeologists are required to decipher Maya history in blurry
hindsight, with finds such as those made at Cival potentially forcing
vast revisions of our image of the Maya.
Located in east-central
Guatemala, Cival was not considered to be of any extraordinary
scholarly or historical significance until a team of archaeologists, led
by the Vanderbilt University researcher Francisco Estrada-Belli,
uncovered a massive 15-by-9-foot (5-by-3-meter) stone
mask abandoned by looters and hidden in a tunnel. The mask depicted a fanged deity likely associated with
maize, the Maya's principal crop. This deity, in turn, is a symbol
of Maya royalty, who typically claimed to be descended from the maize
god.
The significance of the Cival mask--and its twin
counterpart, found later in the same tunnel--was that Estrada-Belli
dated the mask to 150 B.C., well before the Maya were thought to have
developed a pronounced
class system that included royalty. If Estrada-Belli's initial conclusions were correct, the Maya likely anointed
theocratic kings centuries earlier than previously thought, making
the Cival mask a discovery that could radically alter our understanding
of the pace of Maya cultural development.
Historians have divided Maya history into three
periods: the Preclassic (also called Formative), from 2500 B.C. to 300
A.D.; the Classic, from 300 to 1000 A.D.; and the Postclassic, which ran
from 1000 A.D. until the Spanish
conquistadors subjugated most of Latin America in the early 1500s. The Preclassic Period saw the Maya evolve from tribes of
hunter-gatherers to
village-centered farmers, with rudimentary forms of Maya pottery, sculpture, and architecture appearing in parallel with this transformation.
As villages grew in size, conventional thinking
suggested that the Maya developed a complex class structure, with
religious rulers establishing authority in response to the social
pressures of a burgeoning population. Thus was born the Classic Period,
when the ruling class began erecting the vast
pyramid complexes and sacred monuments for which the Maya are best
known, all while undertaking advanced astronomic and mathematic studies.
The Postclassic Period saw Maya society inexplicably dissolve, with
cities neglected or abandoned and royal authority discarded for a
reversion to a rural, agrarian society.
According to the aforementioned
chronology, the Cival masks, which are a symbol of a royal
institution, should not have appeared for roughly another 400 years.
Spurred on by this discrepancy, Estrada-Belli began to take a fresh look
at the entire Cival site and found further evidence that a complex
religious ruling class may have held power during the Preclassic Period.
Estrada-Belli's team eventually found a collection
of buried offering jars filled with ornate jade axes and smaller
carvings, which were indicative of more advanced dynastic rituals than
should have been present during the Preclassic Period. Moreover,
excavations of the surrounding area found that at its peak Cival was a
city with a population of 10,000 and an urban layout meticulously planned to give inhabitants an unobstructed view of the autumnal
equinox. These features indicate an advanced society with knowledge
of astronomy, architecture, and collective government, all of which was
tied to religious ritual. None of these accomplishments should have been
present before the Classic Period, yet the foundations for many of
Cival's earliest buildings were likely laid around 300 B.C., 600 years
earlier than anyone thought possible.
As Estrada-Belli has begun to present his findings
from Cival, all evidence suggests that this was a city ahead of its time
and that the grandeur of Maya history began centuries earlier than
conventional wisdom allows. If these findings are confirmed by the
discovery of other artifacts, especially at other archaeological sites,
the chronology of the Maya may have to be rewritten.
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