c. AD 100 – 250
The end of the Preclassic cities
Between about AD 100 and 250 building stops at many of the great Preclassic cities. El Mirador raises a wall 3 to 8 m high around the north, east and south sides of its West Group. By about AD 150 El Mirador, Nakbe and nearly all the large sites of the Mirador Basin are deserted. The cause is unknown. Richard Hansen points to the burning of forest for lime plaster, five tonnes of wood for each tonne of lime. In his account erosion then buries the fertile mud of the bajos under 2 to 3 m of clay, and the fields fail.
Stela 2 at El Mirador, a Late Preclassic monumentWikimedia Commons, Greg Willis, CC BY-SA 2.0 (El Mirador Stela 2.jpg)
In the highlands and on the Pacific coast, cities stop raising stelae with texts between about AD 100 and 300. Robert Sharer and Loa Traxler link this decline to newcomers from the western highlands. At Kaminaljuyu the old traditions change at the end of the Preclassic, perhaps with a new population. Seibal on the Pasión River loses most of its people and is almost empty by about AD 300.
The mounds of Kaminaljuyu outside Guatemala City, photograph by Alfred Maudslay, 1890sWikimedia Commons, Alfred Percival Maudslay, Public domain (Kaminaljuyu1890a.jpg)
Tikal and Calakmul, both sizeable Preclassic cities, survive into the Classic period. At Tikal rich burials appear in the 1st century AD, and the city grows as its large northern neighbours decline. Later texts at Copán and Tikal recall an event in AD 159 at a place in Petén, possibly El Mirador, linked to a figure called Foliated Ajaw.
The Lost World Pyramid at Tikal, part of an E Group begun in the PreclassicWikimedia Commons, Simon Burchell, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Mundo Perdido pyramid 5C-54, Tikal.jpg)
Sources
- Simon Martin and Nikolai Grube, Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens (2000), pp. 8, 25 to 26.
- Robert J. Sharer and Loa P. Traxler, The Ancient Maya (6th ed. 2006), pp. 279 to 280.
- Michael D. Coe, The Maya (6th ed. 1999), pp. 73 to 78.
Prev: Writing and kingshipNext: Tikal and the Classic kingdoms