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An Olmec colossal head: thought to be used by the Olmecs for ritual purposes.

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An Olmec colossal head: thought to be used by the Olmecs for ritual purposes.

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The Maya Empire, centered in the tropical lowlands of what is now Guatemala, reached the peak of its power and influence around the sixth century A.D. The Maya excelled at agriculture, pottery, hieroglyph writing, calendar-making and mathematics, and left behind an astonishing amount of impressive architecture and symbolic artwork. Most of the great stone cities of the Maya were abandoned by A.D. 900, however, and since the 19th century scholars have debated what might have caused this dramatic decline.

Locating the Maya

The Maya civilization was one of the most dominant indigenous societies of Mesoamerica (a term used to describe Mexico and Central America before the 16th century Spanish conquest). Unlike other scattered indigenous populations of Mesoamerica, the Maya were centered in one geographical block covering all of the Yucatan Peninsula and modern-day Guatemala; Belize and parts of the Mexican states of Tabasco and Chiapas and the western part of Honduras and El Salvador. This concentration showed that the Maya remained relatively secure from invasion by other Mesoamerican peoples.

Did you know? Among the earliest Maya a single language existed, but by the Preclassic Period a great linguistic diversity developed among the various Maya peoples. In modern-day Mexico and Central America, around 5 million people speak some 70 Maya languages; most of them are bilingual in Spanish.

Within that expanse, the Maya lived in three separate sub-areas with distinct environmental and cultural differences: the northern Maya lowlands on the Yucatan Peninsula; the southern lowlands in the Peten district of northern Guatemala and adjacent portions of Mexico, Belize and western Honduras; and the southern Maya highlands, in the mountainous region of southern Guatemala. Most famously, the Maya of the southern lowland region reached their peak during the Classic Period of Maya civilization (A.D. 250 to 900), and built the great stone cities and monuments that have fascinated explorers and scholars of the region.

Early Maya, 1800 B.C. to A.D. 250

The earliest Maya settlements date to around 1800 B.C., or the beginning of what is called the Preclassic or Formative Period. The earliest Maya were agricultural, growing crops such as corn (maize), beans, squash and cassava (manioc). During the Middle Preclassic Period, which lasted until about 300 B.C., Maya farmers began to expand their presence both in the highland and lowland regions. The Middle Preclassic Period also saw the rise of the first major Mesoamerican civilization, the Olmecs. Like other Mesamerican peoples, such as the Zapotec, Totonac, Teotihuacán and Aztec, the Maya derived a number of religious and cultural traits-as well as their number system and their famous calendar-from the Olmec.

In addition to agriculture, the Preclassic Maya also displayed more advanced cultural traits like pyramid-building, city construction and the inscribing of stone monuments.

The Late Preclassic city of Mirador, in the northern Peten, was one of the greatest cities ever built in the pre-Columbian Americas. Its size dwarfed the Classic Maya capital of Tikal, and its existence proves that the Maya flourished centuries before the Classic Period.

Cities of Stone: The Classic Maya, A.D. 250-900

The Classic Period, which began around A.D. 250, was the golden age of the Maya Empire. Classic Maya civilization grew to some 40 cities, including Tikal, Uaxactún, Copán, Bonampak, Dos Pilas, Calakmul, Palenque and Río Bec; each city held a population of between 5,000 and 50,000 people. At its peak, the Maya population may have reached 2,000,000.

Excavations of Maya sites have unearthed plazas, palaces, temples and pyramids, as well as courts for playing the famous Maya ball game ulama, all ritually and politically significant to Maya culture. Maya cities were surrounded and supported by a large population of farmers. Though the Maya practiced a primitive type of "slash-and-burn" agriculture, they also displayed evidence of more advanced farming methods, such as irrigation and terracing.

The Maya were deeply religious, and worshiped various gods related to nature, including the gods of the sun, the moon, rain and corn. At the top of Maya society were the kings, or "kuhul ajaw" (holy lords), who claimed to be related to gods and followed a hereditary succession. They were thought to serve as mediators between the gods and people on earth, and performed the elaborate religious ceremonies and rituals so important to the Maya culture.

Maya Arts and Culture

The Classic Maya built many of their temples and palaces in a stepped pyramid shape, decorating them with elaborate reliefs and inscriptions. These structures have earned the Maya their reputation as the great artists of Mesoamerica. Guided by their religious ritual, the Maya also made significant advances in mathematics and astronomy, including the use of the zero and the development of complex calendar systems like the Calendar Round, based on 365 days, and later, the Long Count Calendar, designed to last over 5,000 years.

Serious exploration of Classic Maya sites began in the 1830s. By the early to mid-20th century, a small portion of their system of hieroglyph writing had been deciphered, and more about their history and culture became known. Most of what historians know about the Maya comes from what remains of their architecture and art, including stone carvings and inscriptions on their buildings and monuments. The Maya also made paper from tree bark and wrote in books made from this paper, known as codices; four of these codices are known to have survived. They are also credited with some of the earliest uses of chocolate and of rubber.

Life in the Rainforest

One of the many intriguing things about the Maya was their ability to build a great civilization in a tropical rainforest climate. Traditionally, ancient peoples had flourished in drier climates, where the centralized management of water resources (through irrigation and other techniques) formed the basis of society. (This was the case for the Teotihuacan of highland Mexico, contemporaries of the Classic Maya.) In the southern Maya lowlands, however, there were few navigable rivers for trade and transport, as well as no obvious need for an irrigation system.

By the late 20th century, researchers had concluded that the climate of the lowlands was in fact quite environmentally diverse. Though foreign invaders were disappointed by the region's relative lack of silver and gold, the Maya took advantage of the area's many natural resources, including limestone (for construction), the volcanic rock obsidian (for tools and weapons) and salt. The environment also held other treasures for the Maya, including jade, quetzal feathers (used to decorate the elaborate costumes of Maya nobility) and marine shells, which were used as trumpets in ceremonies and warfare.

Mysterious Decline of the Maya

From the late eighth through the end of the ninth century, something unknown happened to shake the Maya civilization to its foundations. One by one, the Classic cities in the southern lowlands were abandoned, and by A.D. 900, Maya civilization in that region had collapsed. The reason for this mysterious decline is unknown, though scholars have developed several competing theories.

Some believe that by the ninth century the Maya had exhausted the environment around them to the point that it could no longer sustain a very large population. Other Maya scholars argue that constant warfare among competing city-states led the complicated military, family (by marriage) and trade alliances between them to break down, along with the traditional system of dynastic power. As the stature of the holy lords diminished, their complex traditions of rituals and ceremonies dissolved into chaos. Finally, some catastrophic environmental change-like an extremely long, intense period of drought-may have wiped out the Classic Maya civilization. Drought would have hit cities like Tikal-where rainwater was necessary for drinking as well as for crop irrigation-especially hard.
READ MORE: What Caused the Maya Collapse
All three of these factors-overpopulation and overuse of the land, endemic warfare and drought-may have played a part in the downfall of the Maya in the southern lowlands. In the highlands of the Yucatan, a few Maya cities-such as Chichen Itza, Uxmal and Mayapán-continued to flourish in the Post-Classic Period (A.D. 900-1500). By the time the Spanish invaders arrived, however, most Maya were living in agricultural villages, their great cities buried under a layer of rainforest green.

Do The Maya Still Exist?

Descendants of the Maya still live in Central America in modern-day Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and parts of Mexico. The majority of them live in Guatemala, which is home to Tikal National Park, the site of the ruins of the ancient city of Tikal. Roughly 40 percent of Guatemalans are of Mayan descent.

Source

The Mayan Civilization. Stanford.edu.

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The Maya Empire, centered in the tropical lowlands of what is now Guatemala, reached the peak of its power and influence around the sixth century A.D. The Maya excelled at agriculture, pottery, hieroglyph writing, calendar-making and mathematics, and left behind an astonishing amount of impressive architecture and symbolic artwork.

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The Maya calendar system was complicated, developing a calendar that kept track of time by using different units that range in length.

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The Maya calendar system was complicated, developing a calendar that kept track of time by using different units that range in length.

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Human sacrifice was conducted using blood-letting (ritualized cutting) performed by the community, but run by the priest. 

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Human sacrifice was conducted using blood-letting (ritualized cutting) performed by the community, but run by the priest. 

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The characteristics of Mesoamerican religion were formalized during the Classic period from approximately 150 to 950 CE.

Religion was an important tool to spread the general belief of Inca superiority over their subjects,  influenced by earlier and contemporary Andean traditions.

Its ideological function was to comfort individuals,  and justify wars and the authority of the ruling elites, helping create social unification

The Olmec were polytheistic, with several deities, worshiping various gods related to nature, appearing in surviving sculptures, stone carvings, and other artistic forms.

These religious practices were passed on to all subsequent civilizations in Mesoamerica, up until the 16th-century CE.

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Around 300 BCE in the Late Pre-Classic period, Mayan city-states were ruled by what was thought to be a kind of human-god hybrid king.

The Maya did not unite as an empire and instead stayed as individual polities

Today, it is still unclear as to whether the Olmec followed one specific political system.

The Mayans developed a hierarchical government ruled by a monarch and the aristocracy

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Mesoamerica is a region in North America, located between Mexico and Central America.

It is made up of modern-day countries of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and northern Costa Rica. They lived near the Gulf of Mexico from 1200-400 B.C.E.

The major Olmecs sites are San Lorenzo, La Venta, Laguna de los Cerros, and Tres Zapotes in modern day southern Mexico.

They lived in hot, humid lowlands along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in present-day southern Veracruz and Tabasco states in southern Mexico.

The Maya ruled in present-day Guatemala and the Yucatan. The political centers were at Tikal and Chichen Itza.

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Olmec | Definition, History, Art, Artifacts, & Facts

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Olmec, the first elaborate pre-Columbian civilization of Mesoamerica (c. 1200–400 BCE) and one that is thought to have set many of the fundamental patterns evinced by later American Indian cultures of Mexico and Central America, notably the Maya and the Aztec.

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The economy of the Olmec and Mayans were mainly based on agriculture, trade, and labor

The Olmec traded amongst themselves, and with the Mokaya, They traded crocodile skins, feathers, salt, cacao, and desirable stones such as jadeite

The Mayans had two specific categories of goods: prestige and subsistence items

Prestige items were items such as gold and ritual items. Subsistence items were those used daily like food.

The Maya traded cacao beans with The Tainos of the Caribbean island of Cuba and the Quechua from South America.

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The social classes of the ancient Mesoamerican civilizations were thought of as pyramids.

On the bottom of the pyramid where the slaves and farmers, they took up most of the population.  The next social class is artisans and merchants.  Then, above them, are the nobles and priests.  Lastly, at the top of the pyramid is the king.

At the top of Maya society were the kings, or “kuhul ajaw” or holy lords, thought as mediators between the gods and the people on earth, performing religious ceremonies and rituals.

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Olmec art was revolutionary for its time, establishing the first major widespread styles in Mesoamerica.

Olmec art is best known for colossal sculpture in volcanic stone and intricate works in jade

Mayan art was highly influenced by their predecessors, the Olmec

They built many monumental structures including tall pyramids and palaces and painted murals on the walls

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The term Mesoamerica is derived from the Greek and means "Middle America." It refers to a geographical and cultural area which extends from central Mexico down through Central America, including the territory which is now made up of the countries of Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. It is therefore seen as partly in North America, and encompassing a large part of Central America.

The term Mesoamerica was first used by Paul Kirchoff, a German-Mexican archaeologist who coined the term in 1943 and was instrumental in defining it. His definition was based on geographic limits, ethnic composition, and cultural characteristics at the time of the conquest.

Cultural anthropologists and archaeologists mainly use the term Mesoamerica, but it is handy for visitors to Mexico to be familiar with it when trying to grasp an understanding of how Mexico developed over time and the different ancient civilizations that originated here. Many people are only familiar with the Aztecs and the Maya, but there were, in fact, several other important civilizations in the region.

Cultural Features of Mesoamerica

Some of the famous ancient civilizations that developed in this area include the Olmecs, Zapotecs, Teotihuacanos, Mayas, and Aztecs. These cultures developed complex societies, reached high levels of technological evolution, built monumental constructions, and shared many cultural concepts.

Although the region is very diverse in terms of geography, biology, and culture, the ancient civilizations that developed within Mesoamerica shared some common features and characteristics and were in constant communication throughout their development.

Some of the shared features of the ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica:

a diet based on corn, beans, and squash

similar myths of origin

calendar system

writing systems

a ball game played with a rubber ball

religious practices of bloodletting and sacrifice

Besides these commonalities, it's important to realize that there is also great diversity among the groups that developed within Mesoamerica, as they each had different languages, customs, and traditions.

Timeline of Mesoamerica

The history of Mesoamerica is divided into three major periods. Archaeologists break these down into smaller sub-periods, but for general understanding, these three are the major ones to comprehend.

The Pre-Classic period stretches from 1500 B.C. to 200 A.D. During this period there was a refinement of agricultural techniques which allowed for larger populations, a division of labor and the social stratification necessary for civilizations to develop. The Olmec civilization, which is sometimes referred to as the "mother culture" of Mesoamerica, developed during this period, and some of the great urban centers of the following period were founded during this time.

The Classic period, from 200 to 900 A.D., saw the development of great urban centers with the centralization of power. Some of these major ancient cities include Monte Alban in Oaxaca, Teotihuacan in central Mexico and the Mayan centers of Tikal, Palenque and Copan In Honduras. Teotihuacan was one of the largest metropoles in the world at the time, with an estimated population of 200,000 people at its peak, and its influence stretched over much of Mesoamerica.

The Post-Classic period, from 900 A.D. to the arrival of the Spaniards in the early 1500s, was characterized by city-states and greater emphasis on war and sacrifice. In the Maya area, Chichén Itza was a major political and economic center, and in the central plateau, the site of Tula, a Toltec site came to power. Toward the end of this period, in the 1300s, the Aztecs (also called the Mexica) emerged. The Aztecs had previously been a nomadic tribe, but they settled in central Mexico and founded their capital city Tenochtitlan in 1325, and rapidly came to dominate most of Mesoamerica. This was the group that held most of the power at the time of the arrival of the Spaniards.

More about Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica is commonly divided into five different cultural areas: West Mexico, the Central Highlands, Oaxaca, the Gulf region, and the Maya area.

The term Mesoamerica was originally coined by Paul Kirchhoff, a German-Mexican anthropologist, in 1943. His definition was based on geographic limits, ethnic composition, and cultural characteristics at the time of the conquest. Cultural anthropologists and archaeologists mainly use the term Mesoamerica, but it is very useful for visitors to Mexico to be familiar with it when trying to grasp an understanding of how Mexico developed over time.

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The term Mesoamerica is derived from the Greek and means "Middle America." It refers to a geographical and cultural area which extends from central Mexico down through Central America, including the territory which is now made up of the countries of Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador.

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Mesoamerica is a historical region and cultural area in North America. It refers to the diverse civilizations that shared similar cultural characteristics, including the Olmecs, Zapotecs, Teotihuacan's, Mayas, and Aztecs which developed complex societies, reached high levels of technological evolution, and built monumental constructions.

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Having secured their food supply, the Mesoamerican societies turned to intellectual pursuits, with advances in mathematics and astronomy, guided by their religious rituals.

Many of the Mesoamerican peoples, derived a number of cultural traits, as well as their number system from the Olmec.

The Olmecs may have been the first people to convert latex of the rubber tree into something that could be altered, originating the practices of the Mesoamerican Ballgame used for sacrifices.

The Maya developed the most elaborate and sophisticated writing system of Mesoamerica, including both pictographs and symbols for syllables.

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The mysterious Olmec civilization, located in ancient Mexico, prospered in Pre-Classical (Formative) Mesoamerica from c. 1200 BCE to c. 400 BCE and is generally considered the forerunner of all subsequent Mesoamerican cultures including the Maya and Aztecs. With their heartlands in the Gulf of Mexico (now the states of Veracruz and Tabasco), Olmec influence and trade activity spread from 1200 BCE, even reaching as far south as present-day Nicaragua. Monumental sacred complexes, massive stone sculptures, ball games, the drinking of chocolate, and animal gods were all features of Olmec culture which would be passed on to those peoples who followed this first great Mesoamerican civilization.

The Olmec Enigma

The Olmec civilization presents something of a mystery, indeed, we do not even know what they called themselves, as Olmec was their Aztec name and meant 'rubber people'. Due to a lack of archaeological evidence their ethnic origins and the location and extent of many of their settlements are not known. The Olmecs did, however, codify and record their gods and religious practices using symbols. The precise significance of this record is much debated but, at the very least, its complexity does suggest some sort of organised religion involving a priesthood. The Olmec religious practices of sacrifice, cave rituals, pilgrimages, offerings, ball-courts, pyramids and a seeming awe of mirrors, was also passed on to all subsequent civilizations in Mesoamerica until the Spanish Conquest in the 16th century CE.

Around 900 BCE La Venta flourished as the new capital & eventually boasted a population of around 18,000.

Olmec prosperity was initially based on exploiting the fertile and well-watered coastal areas of the Gulf of Mexico to grow such crops as corn and beans (often twice-yearly) which allowed for an agricultural surplus. They also, no doubt, gathered the plentiful local supply of plant food, palm nuts and sea-life, including turtles and clams. By c. 1200 BCE significant urban centres developed at San Lorenzo (the earliest), La Venta, Laguna de los Cerros, Tres Zapotes and Las Limas. San Lorenzo reached its peak of prosperity and influence between 1200 and 900 BCE when its strategic position safe from flooding allowed it to control local trade. Typical Olmec trade goods included obsidian, jade, serpentine, mica, rubber, pottery, feathers and polished mirrors of ilmenite and magnetite.

Evidence of San Lorenzo's high culture includes the presence of mound structures, possibly an early ball court, carved basalt drains through one of the man-made mounds and the Red Palace structure with painted red floors and workshops. Around 900 BCE the site of San Lorenzo displays evidence of systematic destruction whilst La Venta, conversely, began to flourish, and becoming the new capital, it eventually supported a population of some 18,000.

The three sites of San Lorenzo, La Venta and Laguna de los Cerros all had a bilateral symmetry in their planning and at La Venta the first pyramid in Mesoamerica was constructed. It is the pre-meditated architectural layout of the religious centres of these settlements that is most striking, for example, at La Venta the buildings are placed symmetrically along a north-south axis with four colossal heads facing outwards at key points, seemingly acting as guardians to the complex. A huge ceremonial step pyramid (now a shapeless mound), sunken plaza once lined with 2-metre high basalt columns, and two smaller pyramids/mounds provide features that would be copied time and again at the major sites of later Mesoamerican cultures with whom equal attention was paid to the precise alignment of buildings. La Venta, as with San Lorenzo, suffered systematic and deliberate destruction of its monuments sometime between 400 and 300 BCE.

Religious Beliefs

As with other areas of Olmec culture, details of their religion are sketchy. Nevertheless, with an ever-increasing body of archaeological evidence it is possible to piece together some of the most important features of Olmec religion. The Olmecs seem to have had a particular reverence for natural places which connected with the important junctions of sky, earth and the underworld. For example, caves could lead to the underworld and mountains which had both springs and caves could offer access to all three planes. Important Olmec mountain sites were El Manatί, Chalcatzingo and Oxtotitlan.

The Olmecs also liked to mix animals to create weird & wonderful creatures such as the were-jaguar, a cross between a human & a jaguar.

The names of the gods of the Olmec are not known other than that they often represented phenomena such as rain, the earth and especially maize. For this reason, identifiable gods from Olmec art have been given numbers instead of names (e.g. God VI). The Olmecs gave special significance to the animals present in their environment, especially those at the top of the food chain such as jaguars, eagles, caimans, snakes and even sharks, identifying them with divine beings and perhaps also believing that powerful rulers could transform themselves at will into such fearsome creatures. The Olmecs also liked to mix animals to create weird and wonderful creatures such as the were-jaguar, a cross between a human and a jaguar, which may have been their supreme deity. We also know that they worshipped a sky-dragon and that they believed four dwarves held up the sky, possibly representing the four cardinal directions which, along with other Olmec gods, became so important in later Mesoamerican religions.

Olmec Art

The most striking legacy of the Olmec civilization must be the colossal stone heads they produced. These were carved in basalt and all display unique facial features so that they may be considered portraits of actual rulers. The heads can be nearly 3 m high and 8 tons in weight and the stone from which they were worked was, in some cases, transported 80 km or more, presumably using huge balsa river rafts. 17 have been discovered, 10 of which are from San Lorenzo. The ruler often wears a protective helmet (from war or the ballgame) and sometimes show the subject with jaguar paws hanging over the forehead, perhaps representing a jaguar pelt worn as a symbol of political and religious power. The fact that these giant sculptures depict only the head may be explained by the belief in Mesoamerican culture that it was the head alone which bore the soul.

Another permanent record of the Olmecs is found in rock carvings and paintings. Often made around cave entrances they most typically depict seated rulers, as for example at Oxtotitlan, where a figure wears a green bird suit and at Chalcatzingo where another ruler sits on her throne surrounded by a maize landscape. At other sites there are also paintings of cave rituals, for example, at Cacahuazqui, Juxtlahuaca and Oxtotlan.

Intriguingly, the Olmecs often buried their sculptures, even larger pieces, perhaps in a ritual act of memory.

Jade and ceramic were other popular materials for sculpture and also wood, some examples of which were remarkably well preserved in the bogs of El Manati. One of the gods most commonly rendered in small sculpture was God IV, sometimes called the Rain Baby, who is a toothless human baby with an open-mouth, cleft head and headband, sometimes with the addition of strips of crinkled paper hanging at the side of his face (another feature seen in the gods of later cultures and representing the paper and rubber sap strips which were burnt during rites as the smoke was thought to propitiate rain).

Perhaps the most significant jade carving is the Kunz Axe, a ceremonial axe-head now in the American Museum of Natural History in New York. The jade has been worked to represent a were-jaguar creature using only jade tools and then polished, perhaps using a jade abrasive. Animals were a popular subject, especially those most powerful ones such as jaguars and eagles. Intriguingly, the Olmecs often buried their sculptures, even larger pieces, perhaps in a ritual act of memory.

Legacy in Mesoamerica

The Olmecs influenced the civilizations they came into contact with across Mesoamerica, particularly in sculpture in ceramic and jade and objects featuring Olmec imagery have been found at Teopantecuanitlan, 650 km distant from the Olmec heartland. In addition, many deities featured in Olmec art and religion such as the sky-dragon (a sort of caiman creature with flaming eyebrows) and the feathered-snake god, would reappear in similar form in later religions. The snake-god especially, would be transformed into the major gods Kukulcan for the Maya and Quetzalcoatl for the Aztecs. This artistic and religious influence, along with the features of precisely aligned ceremonial precincts, monumental pyramids, sacrificial rituals and ball-courts, meant that all subsequent Mesoamerican cultures would owe a great deal to their mysterious forerunners, the Olmecs.

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The mysterious Olmec civilization, located in ancient Mexico, prospered in Pre-Classical (Formative) Mesoamerica from c. 1200 BCE to c. 400 BCE and is generally considered the forerunner of all subsequent Mesoamerican cultures including the Maya and Aztecs.

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History of ancient Mexico, Mesoamerica Toltec, Maya, Aztec, Olmec, Zapotec history

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The Southern Maya Area (SMA) is a part of Mesoamerica, long believed important to the rise of Maya civilization, the period that is also known as Preclassic Maya. It lies within a broad arc or cantilevered rectangle from Chiapa de Corzo, in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in the northwest due south to Izapa and Paso de la Amada, from Chiapa de Corzo southeast to Copán, Honduras, and from Copán south to Chalchuapa, El Salvador.

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 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, 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 and deepen in time Coe's sequence, pushing back to ca. 2000 BC the earliest nuclear centers, fine pottery, figurines, and other manifestations of 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 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, 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 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 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, 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" 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 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 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, 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.

Two "emergents," linguistics and the Olmec

The notion of an aboriginal Maya stimulus - linguistic, cultural, and ethnic strands interweaving together from late in 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 theoretized 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 the , 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 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 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 ¹⁴C ("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 the scholar's focus is on the early periods of development in Mesoamerica.

"High Traits" of the Southern Maya

"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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 - 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 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, 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 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, 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 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 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 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 the chocolate bean and/or its processed forms.

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The Southern Maya Area (SMA) is a part of Mesoamerica, long believed important to the rise of Maya civilization, the period that is also known as Preclassic Maya.