AGRICULTURE IN THE MAYAN CIVILIZATION

Before 1000 B.C. the tropical lowlands of the Map area were apparently only used as a very large hunting and gathering zone. After that date, pioneer farmers began to settle along the major rivers of the south and along the Caribbean coasts of the Yucatan peninsula. These villagers were already using pottery, but it was of different kinds, indicating probable ethnic differences among the early settlers. Population growth and settlement must have been reasonably rapid, because by 600 B.C. the whole of the lowlands was fiued with villages, and the people were using a sort of standardized red pottery with a waxy finish. Small clay figurines probably were used in shamanistic curing rituals. Low platforms are the only possible temple buildings at most villages, and religion seems to have been largely family and small community oriented. Most of these egalitarian vifiages show no signs of social differentiation.


Two exceptions, however, hint at future drastic change in these patterns. At the southern lowlands center of Nakbe, a large temple made of stone, mortar, and plaster was built about 620 B.C. (Hansen 1991), and another, which may be as old, was erected at Rio Azul. The latter temple also has large incised designs in its plaster. These two centers are about 60 km (ca.37 miles) from one another and located on a lake and river, respectively. 
The smctures are much too large to have been built by a village and are too sophisdcated to be the first efforts at such large-scale construction. Neither shows any Olmec influence in spite of being contemporary with late Olmec sites. These temples must have been created by masses of people from a number of villages who were somehow persuaded and organized for the effort. The implication is that there was some type of elite leadership in being, alrhough they may have been sdll of the category that we know as "complex chiefdoms" (Wright 1994). These were historically to be found in Polynesia and were capable of large-scale building efforts of the same kind as at Nakbe and Rio Azul. In other words, state-level organization had not yet been developed. We can confidently call these places large egional centers of the kind that appeared in the Central Valley of Oxaca at about the same time and in the Valley of Mexico later. 


In the case of the Maya, the potential for social control existed because of the need for stored water hr the annual drought of at least 120 days from February to May. This is a climatic characteristic of the tropical forests of Central America. If larger-than-villageesized human populations were to survive year-round in these zones, then large reservoirs were needed to carry them through the long dry seasons. Leadership groups seized upon these possibilities and organized large numbers of people to create water storage facilities and then apparently also used control over the people to bolster and cement their own superior status. Whether the need for larger water storage facilities drove the development of more complex social organization or the need for more concentrated popdations in order to build religious structures motivated the growth of large centers is still undetermined. 
What is certain is that although population fluctuadon constantly occurred, it was only one of a series of factors that interacted to produce the particular features of Lowland Maya civilization. By 250 B.C., the landscape was filled with large numbers of villages, small and large centers, and some megacenters, five of which are known.


With one exception, all were located on large shallow lakes; from north to south they were Edzna, Calakmul, El Mirador, Tikal, and Tayasd. Edzna was exceptiond-its water supply was guaranteed by an immense canal in the center of a large shdow valley and by feeder ditches dug along the sides ofthe vafley. Each of these five sites is distinguished by access to water and also by huge buildings erected during the 500-year period from 250 B.C. to A.D. 250. Calakmul and Tikal both have very large temples dating from the period; measured by bulk, El Mirador has probably the largest structures ever built in the Maya area. Clearly, by 250 B.C., the Maya had developed an elite class capable of mustering huge amounts of manpower for construction. Further, by the end of the period, most important centers were also fortified, indicating competition among the leadership groups and the rise of organized violence.


Tikal is one of the best known in terms of early fortifications, and its dry moat and parapet systems total about 25 km (15.5 miles) in length. The center is located on a ridge between two large swamps that lie to the east and west. These are natural barriers filled with thorny vines and trees, marshy ground, and canal networks, all of which would also exact a high price in time and disoxanizadon from any military force trying to move through them. The northern and southern approaches are covered by defensive lines. These fortifications are so long that the best means of utilizing them would be by a defense in depth with patrols, outposts, main line defensive points, and "fire brigades." All of this espeaks the possibility of a remarkable sophistication in tactics.


The Late Preclassic fortress of Becan is more compact and the defenses more formidable in that the moats are deeper and the parapets steeper. Inside are very steep and defensible buildings with towers. This center is more like the medieval castles of Europe with their outlying walls and inner keeps, El Mirador depended on its massive basal platforms and walls, whereas Calakmul was surrounded by difficult swampy terrain and had massive wds. Edzna, in the north, had a fortsed keep or citadel located in the major canal and surrounded by water. Alol of these military features bespeak a period of intense competition between elites who had gained control of their respective regions. The myth of the 'peaceful Maya" is far from the realities that are reflected early in the record. Eventually, several centers either dropped out of competition or became quiescent. Tayasd seems to have lost its political base. Not all failures were polidcd or military, however. El Mirador was probably abandoned because its shallow lakes went dry. This ecological disaster foreshadowed the continued and finally catastrophic problems that would ovenwhelm later Maya civilization. 


By A.D. 250, the Maya had achieved fttlly civilized status, with several large capital cities, several levels of subordinate adminishative centers, a controlling elite who formed an aristocracy, intensive food production partly based on wedand gardening, and a capable and vigorous military system. State-level political systems organized the lowlands into a number of competitive local and regional units. Tens of thousands of commoners supported aristocrats who traced their descent from the gods and recorded their genedogies and porrraits on stone sculpture. Writing, calendars, and complex art glorified the upper classes. Immense efforts created grandiose temples to the ancestors and gods and provided burial places for rulers and their relatives. Multiroomed structures hnctioned as palatial residences for the elites as well as offices and other administrative rooms. Acres of pavement were created by the use of high quality plaster over graded baUasts of stone, gravel, and pebbles. 


The remaining forests went down under the increasing impact of farming, construction, and woodcutting. The slaked lime needed for mortar and plaster required huge amounts of fuel to burn off the impurities from raw limestone. Fifty small trees were required for each commoner family house, and thus a thousand families generated a demand for fifiy thousand trees. More people were required for the state enterprises of monumental architecture, warfare, and intensive food production. Demitri Shimkin (personal communication, 1970) has pointed out that state-level societies fir these and other reasons tend to encourage population growth. The controlling elites have their own agendas. They want people to do construction labor, fill up the armies, act as servants, and carry out countless tasks that aristocrats seem to have no difficulty in imagining. It seems to have been so in the Maya case and is an example ofthe interactive nature of the various evolutionary factors involved in the creation of a civilization. 


We leave the Maya at the end of their first florescence and return to the Valley of Mexico, where developments occurred in the early part of the Christian era that would affect all of Mesoamerica.

 By Richard E.W. Adams  In the book 'Ancient Civilizations of the New World' (Essays in World History), Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, USA & Oxford UK, 1997 p. 39-42

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