The Mythology of All Races, Vol. 11: Latin-American

by Hartley Burr Alexander

The culture of the Maya is distinctly related, either as parent or as branch, to the civilizations of Mexico.[72] Affinities of Haustec and Maya works of art indicate that the ancestors of the two branches were not separated previous to a considerable progress in civilization; while, in a broader way, the cultures of the Nahuatlan, Zapotecan, and Mayan peoples have common elements of art, ritual, myth, and, above all, of mathematical and calendric systems which mark them as sprung from a common source. The Zapotec, situated between the Nahuatlan and Mayan centres, show an intermediate art and science, whose elements clearly unite the two extremes; while the appearance of place-names, such as Nonoual and Tulan, or Tollan, in both Maya and Nahua tradition imply at least a remote geographical community. The Nahuatlan tribes, if we may believe their own account, were comparatively recent comers into the realm of a civilization long anteceding them, and one which they, as barbarians, adopted; the Maya (at least, mythically) remembered the day of their coming into Yucatan. On the basis of these two facts and the undoubted community of culture of the two races, it has been not implausibly reasoned that the Toltec of Nahua tradition were in fact the ancestors of the Maya, who, abandoning their original home in Mexico, made their way to the peninsula, there to perfect their civilization; and the common association of Quetzalcoatl ("Kukulcan" in Maya) with the migration-legends adds strength to this theory. Nevertheless, tradition points to the high antiquity of the southern rather than of the Mexican centres of civilization; and as the facts seem to be well explained by the assumption of a northern extension of Mayan culture in the Toltec or pre-Toltec age, followed by its recession in the period of its decline in the south, this may be taken as the more acceptable theory in the light of present knowledge. According to this view, the Nahua should be regarded as the late inheritors of an older civilization which they had gradually pushed back upon its place of origin and which, indeed, they were threatening still further at the time of the Conquest, for even then Nahuatlan tribes had forced themselves among and beyond the declining Maya.

When the Spaniards reached Yucatan, its civilization was already decadent. The greater cities had been abandoned and were falling into decay, while the country was anarchical with local enmities. The past greatness of Mayapan and Chichen Itza was remembered; but rather, as Bishop Landa's account shows,[73] for the intensification of the jealousies of those who boasted great descent than as models for emulation. Three brothers from the east—so runs the Bishop's narrative—had founded Chichen Itza, living honourably until one of them died, when dissensions arose, and the two surviving brothers were assassinated. Either before this event, or immediately afterward, there arrived from the west a great prince named Cuculcan who, "after his departure, was regarded in Mexico as a god and was called Cezalcouati; and he was venerated as a divinity in Yucatan also because of his zeal for the public good." He quieted the dissensions of the people and founded the city of Mayapan, where he built a round temple, with four entrances opening to the four quarters, "entirely different from all those that are in Yucatan"; and after ruling in Mayapan for seven years he returned to Mexico, leaving peace and amity behind him. The family of the Cocomes succeeded to the rule, and shortly afterward came Tutul-Xiu and his followers, who had been wandering in the interior for forty years. These formed an alliance with Mayapan; but eventually the Cocomes, by introducing Mexican mercenaries (who brought the bow, previously unknown there) were able to tyrannize over the people. Under the leadership of the Xius, rising in revolt, the Cocomes were overthrown, only one son out of the royal house escaping; and Mayapan, after five centuries of power, was abandoned. The single Cocom who escaped gathered his followers and founded Tibulon calling his province Zututa, while the Mexican mercenaries settled at Canul. Achchel, a noble who had married the daughter of the Ahkin-Mai, chief priest of Mayapan and keeper of the mysteries, founded the kingdom of the Cheles on the coast; and the Xius held the inlands. "Between these three great princely houses of the Cocomes, Xivis, and Cheles there were constant struggles and cruel hatreds, and these endure even now that they have become Christians. The Cocomes say to the Xivis that they assassinated their sovereign and stole his domains; the Xivis reply that they are neither less noble nor less ancient and royal than the others, and that far from being traitors, they were the liberators of the country in slaying a tyrant. The Cheles, in turn, claim to be as noble as any, since they are descended from the most venerated priest of Mayapan. On another side, they mutually reviled each other in the matter of food, since the Cheles, dwelling on the coast, would not give fish or salt to the Cocomes, obliging them to send far for these, while the Cocomes would not permit the Cheles the game and fruits of their territory."

PLATE XVIII

Temple 3, ruins of Tikal. After Memoirs of the Peabody Museum, Vol. V, Plate II.

Such is the picture which Bishop Landa gives of the conditions in the north of the peninsula at the time of the Conquest, about a century after the fall of Mayapan; and native records and archaeology alike sustain its general truth.[74] At Chichen Itza the so-called Ball Court is regarded as Mexican in inspiration, while in the same city exist the ruins of a round temple similar to those which tradition ascribes to Kukulcan, different in character from the normal Mayan types. Reliefs representing warriors in Mexican garb also point to Nahuatlan incursions, which may in fact have been the occasion for the dissolution of the Mayan league of the cities of the north—Chichen Itza, Uxmal, and Mayapan—in the Books of Chilam Balam represented as powerful in the day of the great among the Maya of Yucatan.

These "Books" are historical chronicles written after the Conquest by members of native families—chiefly the Tutul-Xiu—and from them, as key events of Yucatec history, a few events stand forth so conspicuously that possible dates can be assigned to them. "This is the arrangement of the katuns [periods of 7200 days] since the departure was made from the land, from the house of Nonoual, where were the four Tutul-Xiu, from Zuiva in the west; they came from the land of Tulapan, having formed a league."[75] So begins one of the chronicles, indicating a remote migration of the Xiu family from the west—an event which Spinden and Joyce place near 160 a. d.[76] The next event recorded is a stay, eighty years later, at Chacnouiton (or Chacnabiton), where a sojourn of ninety-nine years is recorded; and thence the migration was renewed, Bakhalal, near the Gulf of Honduras, being occupied for some sixty years. Here it was that the wanderers "learned of," or discovered, Chichen Itza, and hither the people removed about the middle of the fifth century, only to abandon it after a century or more in order to occupy Chacanputun, on the Bay of Campeche. Two hundred and sixty years later this seat was lost, and the Itza returned, about the year 970 a. d., to Chichen Itza, while a member of the Tutul-Xiu founded Uxmal, these two cities joining with Mayapan to form the triple league which, for more than two centuries, was to bring peace and prosperity and the climax of its civilization to northern Yucatan. This happy condition was ended by "the treachery of Hunac Ceel," who introduced foreign warriors (Mexicans, as their names indicate) into Chichen Itza, overthrew its ruler, Chac Xib Chac, and caused a state of anarchy. For a brief period power centred in Mayapan, which ruled with something like order, until "by the revolt of the Itza" it also lost its position and was finally depopulated in 1442, this disaster being closely followed by plagues, wars, and a terrific storm, accompanied by inundation, all of which carried the destruction forward.

This reconstruction of northern Yucatec history, however, gives no clue to the origin or life of the cities of the south—Palenque, Piedras Negras, and Yaxchilan in the lower central valley of the Usumacintla; Seibal on its upper reaches, not far from Lake Peten, near which are the ruins of Tikal and Naranjo; while, south-east of these, Copan, on the river of the same name, and Quirigua mark the boundaries of Mayan power toward Central America. These cities had been long in ruins at the time of the Conquest; their builders were forgotten, and their sites were hardly known; nor do the sparse traditions which have survived in the south—the Cakchiquel Annals and the Popul Vuh—throw light upon them. Were it not for the ingenuity of scholars, who have deciphered the numeral and dating system of their many monuments, their period would have remained but vague surmise; nor would this have sufficed without the aid of the Tutul-Xiu chronicles to bring the readings within the range of our own chronological system. The problem is by no means a simple one, even when the dates on the monuments have been read; for the southern centres employed a system—the "long count," as it is called—of which only a single monumental specimen, a lintel at Chichen Itza, has been discovered in the north. Nevertheless, with the aid of this inscription, and with the probable identification of its date in the light of the Books of Chilam Balam, scholars have arrived at something like consensus as to the period of the southern floruit of Mayan culture. This falls within the ninth Maya cycle (160 a. d. to 554 a. d., on Spinden's reckoning), for it is a remarkable fact that practically all the monuments of the south are of this cycle; and as the archaeological evidence indicates an occupancy of nearly two centuries for several of the cities, it is clear that the southern civilization, like the northern of a later day, was marked by the contemporaneous rise of several great centres. Morley[77] suggests that the south may even have been held by a league of three cities, as was later the case in the north, Palenque dominating the west, Tikal the centre and north, and Copan the south and east. Two archaic inscriptions—on the Tuxtla Statuette and the Leiden Plate, as the relics are called—bear dates of the eighth cycle, the earlier falling a century or more before the beginning of our era; and these, no doubt, imply a nascent civilization which was to reach the height of its power in the fifth century, when the cities of the south produced those masterpieces of sculpture which mark the climax of an American aboriginal art, which was to disappear, a century later, leaving scarcely a memory in the land of its origin.

As restored by Morley,[78] the history of Mayan civilization falls into two periods of imperial development, each subdivided into several epochs. The older, or parent empire is that of the south; the later, formed by colonization begun while the old civilization was still flourishing, is that of the peninsula. Morley's scheme is as follows:

Old Empire
I.	Archaic Period	Earliest times to	c. 360 a. d.
II.	Middle Period	c. 360 a. d. to	c. 460 a. d.
III.	Great Period	c. 460 a. d. to	c. 600 a. d.
New Empire
IV.	Colonization Period	c. 420 a. d. to	c. 620 a. d.
V.	Transitional Period	c. 620 a. d. to	c. 980 a. d.
VI.	Renaissance Period	c. 980 a. d. to	c. 1190 a. d.
VII.	Toltec Period	c. 1190 a. d. to	c. 1450 a. d.
VIII.	Final Period	c. 1450 a. d. to	c. 1537 a. d.