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87-682: The Pacific Ocean forms the southern and western limits of the Southern Maya Area. Within this area and in addition to these sites are found the major centers of Kaminaljuyu , Takalik Abaj , Chocolá , El Sitio, El Jobo, La Blanca , Ujuxte , Palo Gordo, El Baúl , Cotzumalhuapa , Monte Alto , Semetabaj, El Portón, Zacualpa, Zaculeu , Balberta , and La Montana; many of these sites are believed to have been built and populated by speakers of Maya languages, and others by speakers of other Mesoamerican languages, including Xinca , Lenca , Mixe–Zoquean , and Pipil ; accordingly, in consideration of

174-524: A Maya Lowlands origins for Maya civilization held sway. More recently, the debate was rejoined with discoveries along the southern Pacific coast of Mexico and in Guatemala that greatly antedate developments in the Lowlands. The known parts of Kaminaljuyu lie on a broad plain beneath roughly the western third of modern Guatemala City . Soils are rich because of frequent volcanic eruptions; volcanic ash in

261-442: A choker on one skeleton, jade earplug flares, an unusually large number of shells, a fine obsidian blade, a tortoise shell, metates , and various fine pottery pieces including a whistling jar and a carved tripod vessel. Several coarse brown ware vessels heaped against the wall of the tomb probably originally contained food prepared for the after-life journey of the dead. The Esperanza tombs of Mounds A and B are notable because of

348-542: A fragment – and euhemerism, an incensario and stela cult, and warfare to procure captives for royal sacrifice. Many of the artifacts from Las Charcas not associated with burials were found in pits. There were principally two types of pits: shallow bowl-like pits and bottle-shaped pits. The shallow pits were possibly used for digging clay to be used in building and later to hold refuse. Carbonized avocado seeds, maize cobs and remnants of textiles, basketry, mats and rope fragments have been found in those that are bottle-shaped. It

435-699: A high average considering the abundance of small pre-Classic bowls...at least 500,000 complete vessels had been used, broken, and their fragments incidentally incorporated in the fill of this one mound." What Kidder, Jennings, and Shook referred to as the Middle Cultures are now understood as the Middle Preclassic period, which lasted from 1000 to 400 BC, and the Late Preclassic period, dating from 400 BC to 250 AD. In its "Miraflores" heyday, enormously eclectic sculptures were placed around

522-588: A language or language family may be considered a cultural universal, linguistics seemingly points to the Southern area as the aboriginal home of the Maya. Another theorized stimulus, forerunner, or “mother” to the Maya, at least with regard to certain hallmark traits of Maya civilization – writing and the Maya calendar – is the Olmec phenomenon. Archaeology does tend to support a movement through time and space, west from

609-774: A monopoly over the ocean navigation to and from the United States. Stephens obtained a charter from the state of New York and incorporated the Ocean Steam Navigation Company . The company acquired two steamships, the Washington and the Hermann which made journeys to Europe. When the Panama Railroad Company was founded in 1849, Stephens was chosen as vice president. He visited Panama and New Granada to make arrangements for

696-454: A nexus and intermediary between powerful foreign entities and as a religious "pilgrimage" site. Enormous obsidian beds lying 20 km northeast of Guatemala City and known as El Chayal (Kakchikel Maya for "obsidian") are long presumed to have been the most important material basis for Kaminaljuyu's ascendance as the greatest polity in the SMA as well as its continuation as the preeminent city in

783-555: A pattern that continued after the Conquest, with Spanish encomiendas still exploiting this vital resource and other agricultural products, and which constituted the beginning of the transformation of much of Guatemala into a vast farm growing cash-crops for export. Returning to the fact that "Southern Maya Area" risks being a misnomer, that the Southern Maya Area comprised a volatile mix of peoples, languages, and cultures with correspondingly dynamic interactions provides more support for

870-528: A result of their explorations, Stephens and Catherwood argued convincingly that the Mayans built the ancient Central American cities in contrast to the theory that ethnic groups from European or Asian civilizations had built them. Stephens's books served to inspire Edgar Allan Poe , who reviewed three of Stephens's books for the New York Review and Graham's Magazine . At the time England enjoyed

957-606: A scenario really feasible only if one accepts the Cultura Madre concept of Olmec civilization as opposed to the primus inter pares argument and if one interprets artifacts as “Olmec” and not simply “Olmecoid” – conceivably would have been catalyzed by the threefold attractions of cacao, in Soconusco, Mexico; the Guatemalan piedmont, centrally in which lie Chocolá and Escuintla, Guatemala; obsidian, from enormous beds in

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1044-561: A simple chiefdom. Over many years Shook and Kidder developed the Kaminaljuyu ceramic sequence, and it remains, with refinements by Shook and Marion Popenoe de Hatch, one of the most secure and reliable ceramic chronologies in Mesoamerica, although some doubts remain about the absolute dates due to a paucity of radiocarbon anchors (a revision by Inomata, et al. to the following chronology, based on Bayesian analysis, would push forward

1131-613: A site studied by Michael Coe that yielded the first secure ceramic sequence from early on in Preclassic times. Since Coe's work, John E. Clark and other scholars from the New World Archaeological Foundation have found, at Paso de la Amada and other sites, ceramics that refine Coe's sequence and deepen it in time, pushing it back to c.  2000 BC. This applies to the earliest nuclear centers, fine pottery, figurines, and other manifestations of

1218-529: Is both a reality - as John Lloyd Stephens first discovered - and a scholarly construct, with strands in the weave composed of actual patterns and “emergent” entities and characteristics but also of patterns and agentive decisions historically in the scholarly world, these, themselves, retroactively considered and reconsidered. Maya scholarship long has considered the ancient Maya in a temporal and geographic sense to have come into being, thermometer-fashion – as things began to “warm up,” socially and culturally – at

1305-535: Is carved, on the front, with three seated, throned rulers, each one framed by two bound, kneeling, nude captives, each ruler and his paired victims vertically positioned within a lower, a central, and an upper register. Almost annually, fragments of once very large sculptural monuments are found in Guatemala City often during unregulated municipal demolition and construction. Many monuments were carved with Preclassic hieroglyphic texts (Kaplan 2011), underscoring

1392-634: Is evidenced, as well, throughout the Classic period, with the appearance of the Cotzumalguapan culture – its sites ca. 60 kilometers east of Chocolá – and its emphasis on cacao and warfare, indicative of competition over this most highly prized commodity in Mesoamerica, and throughout the Postclassic, as ethnohistory records the enormous amounts of products, including cacao, exported from the South,

1479-554: Is the work of Franz Termer at Palo Gordo. Work by Carnegie archaeologists A. V. Kidder and Edwin M. Shook at Kaminaljuyu has been fundamental in moving attention to the origins of Maya civilization to the South. Since their work, many other sites have been identified and at which investigations have either been carried out or are contemplated in determining the role of the Southern area in the trajectory of Maya civilization. The notion of an aboriginal Maya stimulus – linguistic, cultural, and ethnic strands interweaving together from late in

1566-407: Is thought these pits were used for cooking, storage and refuse containers. Hand-modeled clay female figurines are also highly characteristic of Las Charcas culture. Those found at Kaminaljuyu are generally of reddish-brown clay and some have a white slip. The female figurines often depict pregnancy and are thought to have been offerings to promote fertility in the fields. Usually, the arms and legs of

1653-577: Is “Maya civilization”? What is “Maya”? What is “civilization”? What allows us to call this or that civilization “great”? One way to conceptualize the quandary of seeking first cause/s is to understand that such an effort leads to infinite regression unless a metaconcept is accepted which, in the case of Maya civilization, is whatever it is primordially that made “Maya” “Maya.” Another way is to focus on ahistorical processes - environmental circumscription, peer polity interaction , and other theories. Despite these seemingly terminologically pitfall-laden inquiries,

1740-533: The sacbeob , the “white ways” or “high roads” that networked among them. Some of the debates between Southern Maya area scholars and what might be called the “autochthonous school” of Maya scholarship – those advocating a unique or primary role to antecedents to Classic Maya civilization in the Northern Petén – are based as well on highly theoritized accounts of expansion of Maya peoples as interpreted by changing ceramic spheres. While some evidence supports

1827-477: The Carnegie Institution of Washington – one of the most important archaeological research entities in the history of Maya scholarship – brought excited attention by scholars to the significance of the SMA. This excitement turned to consensus about the priority of high social and cultural developments in the South when Shook and Kidder published their report on Mound E-III-3, a "Miraflores" mound and

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1914-643: The Popol Vuh . We are left with the developments in the South still attributable fundamentally to their own autochthonous emergence, excepting, as mentioned, the evidence of some kind of Olmec influence spreading east to west across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, south along the Pacific coast, and west to east through the Guatemalan piedmont to the highlands, at Kaminaljuyu, and then east still farther. This putative march of Olmec missionaries, warriors, and/or traders –

2001-619: The "Miraflores" period – once a name for a Late Preclassic ceramic phase, now split into two, the Verbena and Arenal. Preclassic remains, particularly from this epoch, are extremely abundant at Kaminaljuyu; Shook and Kidder noted that in Mound E-III-3 "...an average of...200 sherds per cubic meter [were found...the mound] in its final stage [having] a volume of some 75,000 cu. m [yielding] the astounding total of approximately 15,000,000 fragments...[A]llowing 30 sherds to represent one vessel –

2088-406: The 1990s, Marion Popenoe de Hatch and Juan Antonio Valdés conducted excavations in the southern districts of the site, and a Japanese team investigated a large mound near the modern archaeological park. Emphases since the 1970s on Classic Maya hieroglyphic texts and discoveries of great sites in the northern Petén turned attention away from the SMA, and a long period ensued during which proponents of

2175-722: The Governor's House, the Nunnery Quadrangle, and the Pyramid of the Magician . Catherwood also drew a famous view of the well at Bolonchén . Catherwood's drawings and lithographs showed, without question, the Maya to have been the authors of some of the most artistic and intellectual works of pre-Columbian America. Besides large constructions, they produced works of artistic refinement such as stone and plaster sculptures, frescoes, painted pottery, and bas-reliefs in wood. As

2262-537: The Guatemalan piedmont, located not more than sixty kilometers east of Chocola, Cotzumalguapa, of Middle Classic trajectory, is renowned for carved stone sculpture intimately associating decapitation and other sacrifice with cacao, associations we must conclude are representative of fierce warfare over this commodity, and copious ethnohistory from early after the Spanish Conquest makes reference to “chiefs” and chiefdoms fighting over production and distribution of

2349-529: The Maya calendar its arrow-of-time character, just as the 0 date for the Christian calendar divides Western time-keeping into an absolute divide by virtue of which an infinite counting of both past and future time is permitted as opposed to “cyclical time.”) As mentioned, one of the arguments in favor of the Southern area as “more seminal” to those of the Petén is based on the presently inarguable fact that by far

2436-624: The Maya world by the third to fourth century AD of dated texts on carved monuments, and by the disappearance of these texts on monuments by the 10th century AD. (Consensual acceptance of one correlation between the Maya Long Count and the Gregorian calendar – known as the Goodman-Martinez-Thompson or "G.M.T.” correlation – has come only fairly recently. In this correlation, a beginning date of August 12, 3114 BC, gives

2523-401: The Maya world. 14°37′58.08″N 90°32′56.76″W  /  14.6328000°N 90.5491000°W  / 14.6328000; -90.5491000 John Lloyd Stephens John Lloyd Stephens (November 28, 1805 – October 13, 1852) was an American explorer, writer, and diplomat. He was a pivotal figure in the rediscovery of Maya civilization throughout Middle America and in

2610-583: The Maya “collapse” in the 10th century AD. Mayanists from the New World Archaeological Foundation as well as other institutions have pioneered the efforts to discover the radix of Maya civilization from work at such sites as Chiapa de Corzo and Izapa building on efforts by Michael Coe at La Victoria, on the southern Pacific coast of Mexico, and followed up by the work of scholars such as John E. Clark , Barbara Voorhies, Barbara Stark, Robert Sharer and others. Notable, as well,

2697-498: The Middle Preclassic the community was large enough to produce heavy refuse deposits. Cotton was grown as well as maize; palaeobotanical research also has identified annonas , avocados , cacao , black beans , palm nuts, plums, and sapodilla ( zapote blanco ). Arboriculture developed – with groves of crop trees grown in terraces down to the edges of great ravines. Specialists practiced loom-weaving and were expert potters. Large-scale workshops for obsidian tool-making were spread around

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2784-629: The Minister of Public Education in Guatemala City, requested archaeologists Alfred Kidder, Jesse Jennings and Edwin Shook to investigate. Villacorta gave the site its name from a Kʼicheʼ word meaning "mounds of the ancestors." When first mapped scientifically by E. M. Shook over a period of decades from the 1930s on, at least half of which were from before the end of the Preclassic period (250 AD). Kidder, Jennings, and Shook's monograph, published by

2871-541: The Miraflores period, c. 400–100 BC. The SMA is long believed to have been seminal in the development of Maya civilization. Kidder, Jennings, and Shook referred to Kaminaljuyu's artifacts as representative of what they called a "Middle Culture" which they believed represented the earliest phase of complex social and cultural development in Mesoamerica. This reflected their conclusion about the great antiquity of developments at Kaminaljuyu and their belief that Kaminaljuyu

2958-610: The Olmec heartland in Tabasco and Veracruz, Mexico; across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, down the Pacific coast of Mexico and Guatemala, and east from the coast through the piedmont - where Chocolá and Takalik Abaj are found - and highlands beyond Kaminaljuyu. However, such a scenario depends on how much or little one attributes a formal unity to Olmec civilization. Discussions of the Southern Maya area as important if not essential to

3045-971: The Paleoindian or Archaic periods – derives primarily from reconstructions of Maya linguistics. Ironically, a non-Maya stimulus also is considered, the Olmec ; as at Takalik Abaj, direct Olmec influence seems to have come to Chocolá , as the remarkable monument known as the "Shook Panel" was found some ten kilometers south of the site. Beyond these two “emergent” factors, processual archaeology continues to look at functionalist and highly theoretical aspects of social and cultural process, including egalitarian-to-hierarchical communities and other cultural evolutionary sequences, for example, those of Service and Fried, and of environment, “man-land interactions,” and zero-sum finite resource responses (e.g., “carrying capacity”). Rough and sometimes illogically and erroneously inspired characterizations of social and cultural development derived from evolutionary biology threaten to muddy

3132-401: The Petén, may date to as early as 300 BC, but these texts are very short in length and do not bear Long Count or Calendar Round dates. Calendrical origins, themselves, from the most compelling evidence, must be attributed to a thin latitudinal band stretching across southern Guatemala, and including sites such as Chocolá and Takalik Abaj. In addition to hieroglyphics and calendrical innovations,

3219-1006: The Preclassic south compared to the Mirador Basin must be based principally on absolute dating, although this problem, itself, becomes difficult to resolve when events are dated by C (“calibrated” or “uncalibrated”) – still the most widely used absolute dating method in Mesoamerica – and which cannot be rendered more fine-grained than ca. 100 years and often is less precise. Accordingly, the debate about temporal priority will remain unresolved unless and until other absolute dating methods such as archaeomagnetics and luminescence (hitherto, thermoluminescence), are applied more widely, or Long Count -dated texts, e.g., Cycle 6, are found earlier than those found thus far, which are Cycle 7. While relative dating methods – principally ceramic – are highly reliable, having been cross-referenced from many sites, and with sophisticated statistics available, unless anchored to absolute dates, these remain uncertain especially when

3306-572: The Southern Maya Area . In the Southern Maya Area, in times called Classic for the Maya in the Lowlands to the north, tantalizing evidence exists of an abhorrence of a vacuum in the materially very rich breadbasket of the Area – and, as mentioned, particularly of a continuation of what must have been an extraordinary intensively cultivated commodity of enormous importance in Mesoamerica, and the Maya, in cuisine, ideologically, and even as currency, cacao. In

3393-489: The Southern Maya Area during the Classic period. Distinctively black in color, obsidian from the Chayal beds found at sites throughout the Lowlands as well as the Southern Maya Area supports this assumption, although the specifics of control, whether formally under Kaminaljuyu's hegemony or more informally representing a vital material resource whose wealth accrued to the city more or less in direct relation to proximity, remain in

3480-461: The Southern Maya Area is almost as much a theoretical construct as it is a geographical and temporal reality. This is because topics such as cultural evolution, complex societies, early urbanism, and the construction of (ancient) identity, all framed and discussed in highly abstract ways, necessarily are raised. If the Southern Maya Area is a part of Mesoamerica delineated from the rest of Mesoamerica spatially, temporally and, in one specific sense – by

3567-423: The Southern area is noted for sites that, early on in the trajectory of Mesoamerica civilization, can be characterized as fully urban, and also for the appearance of long-distance trade in such vital commodities as obsidian and cacao, for the first true cults of sacred rulership or kingship, for masterfully carved monumental art, and for a very complex ideology and religion, probably based on some primordial version of

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3654-825: The Temple of the Inscriptions, the Temple of the Cross , the Temple of the Sun, and the Temple of the Foliated Cross. They continued investigating Maya ruins with a return trip to Yucatán in October 1841. According to Stephens's book about the trip, they visited a total of 44 Mayan sites such as Chichen Itza , Izamal , Kabah , the gateway at Labná , Mayapan , Sayil , Tulum , Uxmal , and Xtampak . In Uxmal, they documented

3741-684: The Valley of Guatemala mark a major occupation of the area at sites such as El Naranjo; at this latter site, as well as at El Portón some 50 kilometers to the north and Takalik Abaj , about 130 kilometers to the west in the lower piedmont, plain uncarved upright shaft stones called stelae , mark the first appearance of a cult of time-reckoning and which became one of the bases for the institution of Maya kingship . The architecture of Middle Preclassic structures consisted of hardened adobe bricks that served, later, as foundations for raised platforms and pyramidal temples. Excavations indicate that from early in

3828-680: The age of 13, he enrolled at Columbia College , graduating at the top of his class four years later in 1822. After studying law with an attorney for a year, he attended the Litchfield Law School . He passed the bar exam after completing his course of study and practiced in New York City. Stephens embarked on a journey through Europe in 1834 and went on to Egypt and the Levant , returning home in 1836. He later wrote several popular books about his travels and explorations. He

3915-424: The ancient city. Religious practices that would later be further developed throughout Mesoamerica were elaborating during the early Middle Preclassic at Kaminaljuyu, including the erection of mounds to serve as substructures for small shrines or funerary/administrative temples, the development of a complex pantheon of deities – probably based on some primordial mythology and cosmology of which the Popol Vuh represents

4002-419: The argument that the South took part in seminal developments and a vault upward socially and culturally to Classic Maya civilization, in a manner at least co-equal to the northern Petén. It may be argued in favor of a greater unity in the Southern Maya Area than the ethnic and linguistic diversity might otherwise indicate simply by virtue of the fact that a “Preclassic collapse” occurred extending through much of

4089-500: The beginnings of complex society and culture in Mesoamerica. The earliest pristine ballcourt and evidence of a ranked society (a rich child's burial), indicative of emerging social hierarchization, were found at Paso de la Amada. And nearby at La Blanca, archaeologists discovered a quatrefoil made of baked clay buried near Mound 1, one of the largest and earliest temple mounds in Mesoamerica, indicating an early fount of what later became core Maya ideology. Controversy remains about

4176-494: The birth of the cult of kingship, and hieroglyphic writing . While stelae and hieroglyphic writing from the Preclassic abound in the Southern area, proponents of the Lowlands , i.e., the Mirador Basin, as the origin locus for Maya civilization assert that the first Maya societies to reach the level of the state, accordingly, base their claim fundamentally on size and scale of construction, as well as on myriad evidence of distinct connections between these northern cities including even

4263-506: The calendar, kingship, masterful art, and complex religion, receives further support continuing through time in the Early Classic and evidence of interaction with Teotihuacan , the single greatest ancient city of Mesoamerica and the religious if not imperial capital for much of central Mexico, with hegemony extending far and wide. Such a profound material basis for the unique importance of the Southern area to civilizational developments

4350-559: The ceramic phases by as much as 300 years, setting the Miraflores apogee to a 100 BC – AD 100 time frame). With Inomata, et al's revision in mind, the first significant settlement dates to the Arévalo phase, c. 900–800 BC, with indications of dense populations no later than c. 400 BC. By the end of the Las Charcas culture (800–350 BC), Kaminaljuyu was developing "religious and civic institutions." Scattered Las Charcas remains throughout

4437-628: The chocolate bean and/or its processed forms. Kaminaljuyu Kaminaljuyu (pronounced / k æ m i n æ l ˈ h uː j uː / ; from Kʼicheʼʼ , "The Hill of the Dead" ) is a Pre-Columbian site of the Maya civilization located in Guatemala City. Primarily occupied from 1500 BC to 1200 AD, it has been described as one of the greatest archaeological sites in the New World —although

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4524-473: The city, in plazas, and in front of platforms and temples. Brightly colored murals and giant masks adorned the sides of edifices. Monuments included effigies of toads, bats, owls, jaguars, and serpents; particularly important was the Principal Bird Deity , a symbol of celestial power often invoked in the iconography of kingship. Early versions of other Classic Maya deities were depicted, including

4611-576: The city. In the 1960s Pennsylvania State University undertook extensive excavations at Kaminaljuyu, under the direction of William T. Sanders and Joseph W. Michels . The processualist and unilineal cultural evolutionary theoretical orientation of the Penn State project were in sharp contrast to the Carnegie work before and to the historical, cultural-historical, sometimes epigraphy- and art-historically driven paradigm of Lowland Maya research after. In

4698-430: The creation of History have been native genius, diffusion, migrations, and so forth. Historical linguists long have posed that a proto-Maya language had as its homeland the western highlands of southern Guatemala. While the issue remains somewhat controversial, no viable competing theory yet has been offered, although qualifications to the original view of Maya linguistic origin continue to be provided. Accordingly, since

4785-425: The digging of the tomb. The tomb contains the remains of eight people. One corpse received special treatment, as evinced by the considerable amount of jewelry and the offerings left with it. The bodies were borne into the tomb on fabric mats or animal hides of which only traces remain. Among the objects found as offerings in the tomb were jade beads around the necks of two of the corpses, wafer-like disc shells forming

4872-405: The discussion just as traditional yet persistent cultural historical characterizations leave many questions unanswered, given their emphasis on description as opposed to explanation. By this token a theoretical dichotomy exists between advocates of autochthonous developments, that is, developments occurring from internal - often functionalist - processes, and those proposing that more fundamental in

4959-444: The exact nature of this presence remains controversial. Teotihuacán, like the later Aztec empire, was drawn to the Southern area undoubtedly because of its rich resources of obsidian and cacao. Dating to Esperanza times and later in the Classic period, twelve ballcourts have been found, possibly indicating an emphasis on the resolution of conflicts through ritual game-playing rather than war, which would underscore Kaminaljuyu's role as

5046-557: The extant remains are distinctly unimpressive. Debate continues about its size, integration, and role in the surrounding Valley of Guatemala and the Southern Maya area . Kaminaljuyu, when first mapped scientifically, comprised some 200 platforms and pyramidal mounds . The site was largely swallowed up by real estate developments. A portion of the Classic Period center is preserved as a 0.5 square km park—a fraction of

5133-422: The fact that, as Coe observes, "the elite of [Kaminaljuyu] were fully literate at a time when other Maya were perhaps just learning that writing existed." In the last twenty years, archaeologists have studied sophisticated water control systems in the southern precincts of "Miraflores" Kaminaljuyu, indicating an extensive bureaucracy and concomitant social hierarchy must have been in place to supervise and maintain

5220-427: The figures are mere stumps but some attempt at a realistic body shape has been made. The head has received the most attention to detail. The nose was pinched into the relief and nostrils were made by punctuating the clay. The eyes and the mouth were formed by strategically applied lumps. The figurines often have earplug flares. The apogee of Preclassic developments at Kaminaljuyu occurred during what scholars refer to as

5307-402: The form of hardened tuff reaches depths of several hundred meters in and around Kaminaljuyu, and deep clefts or barrancos mark the landscape. There are many mysteries, in addition to size and scale, that likely will remain unanswered about Kaminaljuyu. These questions are mainly about the role of the city as the greatest of the Southern Maya area (SMA) in Preclassic times, particularly during

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5394-709: The government of the Federal Republic of Central America fell apart in civil war. He later published an account of the events he witnessed in Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatán . Stephens and his traveling companion, architect, and draftsman Frederick Catherwood first came across Maya ruins at Copán , having landed in British Honduras (now Belize ). They were astonished at their findings and spent two weeks mapping

5481-584: The greatest number of Preclassic hieroglyphic texts are found in the South; for example, numerous texts were carved on monuments from Kaminaljuyu, the greatest city in the Southern area and one of the great ancient cities in world cultural patrimony. Several of the earliest calendrical texts, as well, are found in the South at, for example, Takalik Abaj and El Baúl , although the very earliest – by ca. 60 years – confirmed thus far are found at Chiapa de Corzo and Tres Zapotes , that is, from sites with an Olmec (or “ epi-Olmec ”) identity. Glyphs found at San Bartolo , in

5568-538: The highlands, with Kaminaljuyu as the main beneficiary of trade in this “steel of the New World;" and blue jade, hallmark of Olmec lore and treasure, from a great outcrop above the Motagua River east of Kaminaljuyu. That the Southern area originally constituted a truly astonishing source of material wealth, indeed a breadbasket, may have underlain the primordial appearance of cultural achievements such as writing,

5655-508: The hydraulics. These systems date to the "Miraflores" and endured through to the end of the Preclassic. Two major mounds excavated by Kidder, Jennings, and Shook contained tombs probably representing rulers from the Esperanza period. In Mound A the tomb is associated with a pit burial. All that remains in the pit burial of its original fill are worn igneous rocks, quantities of coarse sherds and human skull parts that had been cut through by

5742-523: The interment within them of elite-use ceramic vessels in unmistakable Teotihuacán style. Teotihuacán was the greatest ancient city in Mesoamerica, with far-flung hegemonic reach from its location in Central Mexico. During the Early Classic period in the Maya world, art and artifacts, as well as hieroglyphics, attest to specific intrusions by and influences from Teotihuacán at great Lowland cities such as Tikal , Piedras Negras , and Copán , although

5829-409: The largest known thus far from the site, and which contained seven structures built onion-skin fashion over and around each other through time. Two extraordinarily rich royal tombs were found within the edifices, probably representing consecutive rulers during the "Miraflores" Preclassic apogee of Kaminaljuyu. In the early 1950s Heinrich Berlin excavated a large mound in the ancient Preclassic core of

5916-588: The laying of the railroad. On his way to Bogotá , the capital of New Granada, he fell off his mule and sustained severe injuries from which he never fully recovered. He returned to the United States and was appointed President of the railroad. In 1841, Stephens was elected to the American Philosophical Society . While in Panama, he was struck down by malaria in the spring of 1852. He recovered sufficiently to return to New York, only to have

6003-470: The maize god, the Hero Twins , and a merchant god. The sculptural eclecticism is another indication of the Preclassic cosmopolitan and "international" character of Kaminaljuyu, the role of "port-of-trade" or "gateway" capital continuing through Classic times despite a major change of cultural traditions and, possibly, ethnic affiliation at the end of the Preclassic. Enormous thrones and stelae attest to

6090-443: The might and splendor of "Miraflores" Kaminaljuyu. Stela 10, a fragment of a gigantic throne, is carved with a decapitation narrative scene showing a ruler masked and attired to impersonate an underworld jaguar deity wielding a flint axe over what likely was a kneeling captive; the head of a jaguar deity floats to the right of the ruler/protagonist, invoked by the burning of blood in a sacrificial plate. The similarly gigantic Monument 65

6177-546: The most massive scale in the ancient Maya world include El Mirador , Nakbe , Tintal, Wakna, and others from the Mirador Basin , north of the greatest Maya city in Classic times, Tikal . Without doubt, these cities represent an extraordinary development in Maya civilization; however, their dating remains essentially Late Preclassic, and scant evidence is found of two of the hallmark traits of Classic Maya civilization: upright carved shaft stones called stelae , which marked

6264-477: The multilingual character of the Southern Maya Area, in many ways Southern "Maya" Area is a misnomer. Most of these centers developed to their apogees in the Preclassic period before declining or disappearing. In addition to these large sites, many Early Preclassic communities, found mostly along the Pacific Coast, bear witness to the seminal character of the Southern area; notably these include La Victoria,

6351-661: The original ruins field size of around 5 square km. The extant remains are distinctly unimpressive and are in a state of destruction with almost daily erasure of material. This is due to their location beneath urbanization and because they were constructed of hardened adobe , weaker than the limestone used to build in the Maya Lowlands. Over the past 100 years, more than fifty archaeological projects, large and small, have been mounted at Kaminaljuyu. In addition to excavations, scholars such as Alfred Maudslay and Samuel K. Lothrop have recorded sculptures and made maps of

6438-470: The origins of Maya civilization as scholars continue to search for and engage in debate about the roots or first pulses of what became an ancient civilization traditionally considered to have been one of the greatest of the world. Combined with the early frame of cultural development relative to elsewhere in Mesoamerica and given that the Southern area remains distinctly mysterious with respect to how and why complex societies developed as dramatically as they did,

6525-578: The planning of the Panama railroad . John Lloyd Stephens was born November 28, 1805, in the township of Shrewsbury, New Jersey . He was the second son of Benjamin Stephens, a successful New Jersey merchant, and Clemence Lloyd, daughter of an eminent local judge. The following year the family moved to New York City. There Stephens received an education in the Classics at two privately tutored schools. At

6612-549: The question of Maya origins is justified for professional focus and elaboration, since all historical topics are, by their nature, constituted not only by ascriptions weighting the given topic in importance and cast by this or that interpretation or interpretative context but also by “fact.” Of necessity, these kinds of questions are rooted in the history of scholarship about this or that topic, taking into account different or new emphases or de-emphases, usually generationally or paradigmatically determined. Accordingly, “Maya civilization”

6699-460: The realm of speculation. In addition to Chayal obsidian, the strategic location of Kaminaljuyu as a nexus for trade between the Pacific coast and piedmont and the Maya Lowlands – salt, fish, and shells from the coast, cacao and other agricultural products from the piedmont, jaguar skins, feathers, and other commodities from the Lowland jungles – underlay Kaminaljuyu's wealth and influence throughout

6786-408: The rise of Classic Maya civilization and must be related to discussions of the putative primacy of developments in the Northern Petén, and vice versa. Fundamentally, the debate is between those who put more weight on the temporal priority of complex cultural and social achievements in the South and those who favor northern Guatemala for these developments. Large Preclassic cities with structures boasting

6873-399: The scholar's focus is on the early periods of development in Mesoamerica. “High traits” of ancient Maya civilization prominently include hieroglyphic writing and the Maya Long Count calendar, with the former constituting one of a handful, worldwide, of pristine inventions of writing and the latter comprising the invention of the concept of zero and other mathematical achievements unequalled at

6960-475: The site. In 1925 Manuel Gamio undertook limited excavations, finding deep cultural deposits yielding potsherds and clay figurines from what later was called the "Middle Cultures" of Mesoamerica (from 1500 BC to 150 AD). A decade later, the importance of the site was confirmed when a local football club began cutting away the edges of two inconspicuous mounds to lengthen their practice field, discovering an impressive buried structure. Lic. J. Antonio Villacorta C.,

7047-496: The site. Stephens surmised that it must have been built by some long-forgotten people, as he could not imagine it was the native Mayans. However, Catherwood noted the facial resemblance to modern Mayans. Stephens was able to buy the city of Copan for a sum of $ 50 and had dreams of floating it down the river and into museums in the United States. They went on to Palenque , Quiriguá and Uxmal . They reached Palenque on May 11, 1840, and left in early June. While there, they documented

7134-423: The still unresolved question of its possibly crucial role in the origins of Maya civilization - one needs to understand that posing this large research question risks falling into ultimately meaningless, infinitely regressing arguments about how “origins” might be considered or defined – essentially arguments about qualitative or inevitably subjectively rendered entities or topics, giving way to questions such as, What

7221-522: The time in Europe as well as extraordinary achievements in astronomy. Beginning in the Late Preclassic period and proliferating exponentially during the Classic Maya period, Maya texts are dateable because correlation can be made between Maya Long Count dates and the Gregorian calendar. Accordingly, with great certainty we can speak of the Classic period as framed by the large-scale appearance throughout

7308-535: The “Chicanel Expansion,” one does not find Chicanel pottery in the southern Highlands nor, indeed, in any significant quantity anywhere in the Southern area in the Preclassic While evidence such as size and scale of site and of individual structures (e.g., El Tigre at El Mirador) is compelling, developments in the Southern area remain resilient against conclusive consensus. The temporal priority of plentiful as opposed to scant evidence of stelae and writing in

7395-620: The “bottom,” that is, in Southern Mesoamerica, in the Early Preclassic period: events and processes coalesced on the Pacific coast of what is now Guatemala and southern Mexico and in the piedmont and highlands of Guatemala and in northern El Salvador, moved north in Classic period times to the Maya Lowlands of northern Guatemala and southern Chiapas, Mexico; and migrated still further north into Yucatán following

7482-404: Was primordial for its cultural and social innovations. Since their work, investigations chiefly undertaken by scholars from the New World Archaeological Foundation on the southern Pacific coast of Mexico have greatly altered this view, deepening in time the incipience of complex social and cultural events in Mesoamerica. Cultures of this phase had a stable agricultural community organized probably as

7569-724: Was recommended for the post of Minister to the Netherlands in 1837, but President Martin Van Buren nominated Harmanus Bleecker , who served until 1842. In 1846 Stephens was a delegate to the state constitutional convention, where he was responsible for the introduction and adoption of a conciliation court (small claims court). Stephens read with interest early accounts of ruined cities of Mesoamerica by such writers and explorers as Alexander von Humboldt and Juan Galindo . In 1839, President Martin Van Buren commissioned Stephens as Special Ambassador to Central America. While there

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