were inherited. As religious subjects provided not only la-
bor for the construction of temples but also food and other
goods, priests ate well and wore elaborately tailored ceremo-
nial dress.
Priests routinely buried the fi gures that middle-class ar-
tisans carved from stone and jade. Th e demand for jade prob-
ably fueled commercial relations from central Mexico to the
Isthmus of Tehuantepec and as far as modern El Salvador.
Other important trading goods were salt, chert, basalt, obsid-
ian, and hard materials from which tools could be fashioned.
Some luxury goods remained the property of the elite. Rub-
ber from the Gulf Coast was made into balls used in ritual
games, jaguar skins and scepters were traded among rulers,
and the priestly caste dealt in jade jewelry and fi gurines. Th e
elite also collected iron ore, cotton, cacao, shells, and exotic
feathers, such as those from the quetzal.
With respect to the economic activity of the masses, a
request for a single monolithic stone head would have re-
quired countless man-hours of peasant labor. Historians
estimate that it took 800,000 man-days to raise the massive
La Venta pyramid, the largest structure of its time in ancient
Mexico. Th us, given the degree of domination the priesthood
achieved, subjects must have been spiritually devoted or fear-
ful of the wrath of their gods, or of the rulers themselves. Th e
oppression of the lower classes and the system of forced labor
may have brought about discontent and the violent ends met
by the communities at both San Lorenzo and La Venta.
THE MAYA
While scattered cultures developed in the more hospitable re-
gions of Central America throughout the centuries following
the rise of the Olmec, none attained a level of societal and
economic complexity comparable to the Maya. Th e Mayan
civilization began developing around the same time as the
Olmec were fl ourishing on the Gulf Coast, and by 300 c.e.
Mayan city-states were evolving throughout eastern-central
Mesoamerica. Th e Maya came to occupy the Yucatán Pen-
insula and modern Mexican land south to the Gulf of Tehu-
antepec, as well as modern Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador,
and the western half of Honduras. As such, they found them-
selves in an ideal position to benefi t from trade between the
Olmec and other Mesoamerican cultures to the west and the
remainder of Latin America to the southeast. In general, Ma-
yan society was never explicitly unifi ed by political means;
rather, commerce served as the most signifi cant regional uni-
fying factor.
Th e regions inhabited by the Maya, particularly the
tropical lowlands, were not exceptionally fertile. Water re-
sources were relatively scant, with few rivers and lakes pro-
viding uninterrupted supplies. One early irrigation canal was
constructed in Kaminaljuyú, in the southern highlands, by
700 b.c.e. Around Edzná, on the Yucatán Peninsula, a more
substantial system of canals and reservoirs was developed by
100 c.e. Th is system spanned some 14 miles, allowed for ca-
noe traffi c, and facilitated the farming of fi sh. Th roughout the
lowlands the Maya used wells and aguadas, smaller reservoirs
lined with clay. Th e aguadas around Tikal were substantial
enough to provide water for 70,000 people over a dry period
of 120 days. Underground reservoirs called chultunes were
also carved into bedrock and into the bottoms of natural de-
pressions, further expanding water-collection capacities.
Mayan farmers increased production by cutting ditches
for drainage and raising the level of the fi elds with the exca-
vated soil. To prevent the erosion of soil on sloping farmland,
terraces and platforms were carved into hillsides. Household
refuse was used as fertilizer to replenish the nutrients in the
soil, and crops with diff erent chemical properties were regu-
larly rotated; beans were typically planted alongside maize, so
that in the course of harvesting and replanting nitrogen pro-
duced by the beans could be extracted and used by the maize.
Most basically, ancient Mayans intensifi ed crop production
through mass contributions of labor. Only stone tools were
then in use, so farmers had to be more sensitive to annual
climatic cycles—plants were easiest to cut at the ends of dry
seasons, when they were more brittle.
Among the Maya trade in agricultural goods began as in-
dividuals and communities achieved surplus production. At
fi rst, exported crops were simply the excess supplies of food-
stuff s, largely maize, which were delivered to regions lacking
their own surpluses. Th e transportation of foodstuff s, how-
ever, was limited by the food’s perishability and also by the
fact that those doing the transporting would need to consume
por tions of t he load during t heir journey. Historia ns have ca l-
culated that when traveling by land, food carriers would have
been able to travel at most some 90 to 170 miles. By canoe
the feasible ratio by weight of foodstuff to person would have
been higher, allowing greater distances to be covered.
A number of products other than farmed foodstuff s were
valued and traded in ancient Mesoamerica and beyond. Cot-
ton and cacao beans, in particular, were major crops exported
from the Mayan region. Cotton grew in fair proliferation on
the relatively dry Yucatán Peninsula as well as in other locales
throughout eastern Mesoamerica. Both a brown and a whiter
variety were spun to form thread, which was dyed and woven
into highly marketable textiles, some featuring embroidery.
Cacao beans, which grow especially well in warm tropical
regions where the soil is rich and the rainfall is heavy, bore
particularly high economic value throughout Latin America.
While they were originally used simply to brew chocolate
drinks consumed by the elite classes, over time, thanks in
part to their convenient size and countability, cacao beans be-
came used as currency. Cacao beans of extraordinary quality
were produced in the Soconusco lowlands, along the Pacifi c
coastal region in modern southeastern Mexico.
An additional crop grown largely for export was hemp,
derived from the agave plant, from which textiles and also
sandals were fashioned. Clothes produced with hemp were
almost exclusively worn by peasants, as the elite classes wore
only clothes produced with fi ner, soft er cotton. (Peasants also
would have used cloth made from pounded bark.) Obsidianeconomy: The Americas 373