CHAPTER 14 THE RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS OF MESOAMERICA 511Figure 14.3It can therefore be said without exaggeration that much of the social, intellec-
tual, and artistic energy of Mesoamerican states of this period focused on highlight-
ing the sacred cosmic authority that ordained and underwrote their existence.
The Postclassic Period
The “Postclassic” designation of the period (A.D. 850–1521) is a Eurocentric mis-
nomer, for it attributes to this phase a general “decline” in quality of the arts, engi-
neering, and statecraft. In reality, the beginning of this period in the Mayan area is
actually an arbitrary date at which the lowland Mayas stopped making inscriptions in
what is known as their long count calendrical system. This abrupt change in the cal-
endrical recording was also associated with the so-called Mayan “collapse,” a time at
which many of the major lowland Maya cities were apparently abandoned and in
some cases destroyed. Whatever the radical shift of fortune of lowland Mayan elite
and why it happened (for details, see Chapter 1), life went on; and the subsequent
cultural expressions of all parts of Mesoamerica, including the lowland and high-
land Mayas, were substantial to extraordinary. It was, for example, in the Early Post-
classic period that the renowned Toltec civilization began its ascendancy as a
quasi-mythical “golden age” culture to which many subsequent Mesoamerican cul-
tures, both Mayan and Mexican, would look back with reverence and awe.
If the Postclassic was a period of warfare and political expansion on the part of
numerous states in their effort to establish larger spheres of interest, it was obviously
Palanque,
Tablet of the Foliated Cross
from MAYA COSMOS bySCHELLE, AND JOY PARKER.
COPYRIGHT (C) 1993 BY LINDA
SCHELLE, DAVID FREIDEL,
AND JOY PARKER. Reprinted
by permission of HarperCollins
Publisher.DAVID FREIDEL, LINDA,,