CHAPTER 1 ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF MESOAMERICAN CIVILIZATION 69king acceded in A.D. 799, a fact recorded on a single pottery vessel. He erected no
monuments. The city was suddenly depopulated during the early ninth century.
Copán. The Copán Valley, located in Honduras at the southeastern edge of the
Mayan area, was first settled in the Early Formative period. The site of Copán grew
into an important Mayan city in the Early Classic period, and most of what is visible
at the site today are outer construction phases built during the Late Classic period.
Situated in a highland valley at around 2,000 feet above sea level, Copán is one of
the few Classic Mayan centers in an upland region. Copán has been the focus of
extensive research in recent years; the ceremonial precinct and several outlying
residential districts have been excavated, and epigraphers have made important
advances in the decipherment of the numerous hieroglyphic texts at the site.
According to inscriptions at Copán, the ruling dynasty was founded in A.D. 426,
and all subsequent rulers, sixteen in all, based their legitimacy on their descent from
the first ruler, K’inich Yax K’uk Mo’, or Great-Sun First Quetzal Macaw. Remarkably,
his installment, like that of Yax Nuun Ayiin of Tikal, seems ultimately linked to Teoti-
huacan involvment in Early Classic period Mayan dynastic lines. The evidence for this
pattern at Copán is impressive: Glyphic texts suggest that he was a nonlocal who ar-
rived to take power from another location; he is most often shown wearing Teoti-
huacan Tlaloc goggles; his first funerary shrine (nicknamed Hunal by archaeologists)
was a Teotihuacan style talud-tablero building covered with murals; and chemical
studies of his bones link him to the Tikal area. In what is probably his wife’s tomb, a
beautiful vessel seems to portray him in Teotihuacan style, perhaps in death within
his burial temple. Her bone chemistry indicates that she was locally born, and Yax
K’uk’ Mo’s son rebuilt his father’s funerary shrine in a more Mayan style. As at Tikal,
the descendants of foreign-sponsored founders were quick to assimilate their exotic
basis of legitimization into parallel local funds of power.
At Copán, like Palenque and Tikal, we know considerable details of Late Classic
period dynasties. For most of the seventh century, Copán was ruled by its twelfth
ruler, Smoke-Imix, a contemporary of Pakal I at Palenque and Jasaw Chan K’awiil at
Tikal. Under Smoke-Imix, Copán expanded its territory to its greatest extent, bring-
ing neighboring Quirigua and other centers into its orbit during his 67 years of reign.
His successor and son, Waxaklajuun Ub’aah K’awiil (18 Images of K’awiil), was re-
sponsible for transforming much of Copán’s ceremonial center into its currently vis-
ible form.
All of the stelae in the Great Plaza were erected by Waxaklajuun Ub’aah K’awiil
between A.D. 711 and 736, and they portray him in the guise of various patron gods
of the city. His impersonation of these deities emphasized his intermediary position
between earth and the supernatural realm, and they dramatized his transformative
capacities and ability to negotiate with supernatural entities on behalf of the living.
These stelae are hailed for their artistic achievements in three-dimensional stone
sculpture, which is primarily limited to modeled stucco in the Maya area (Fig-
ure 1.14).
Waxaklajuun Ub’aah K’awiil met an untimely end when he was captured and
beheaded by the ruler of Copán’s former subject city, Quirigua, in A.D. 738. As he had