64 UNIT 1 PREHISPANIC MESOAMERICA
that it disrupted polities’ abilities to function. In the Petexbatun region, extensive
studies of environmental impacts and human ecology reveal that these factors were
not significant for explaining collapse and abandonment.
Organizational changes may have been triggered by significant growth in the
elite population. The art and writing of late monuments at many sites like Yaxchilan,
Copán, and Palenque acknowledge powerful relatives, war captains, and queens who
are largely absent in early dynastic records that were reserved for Mayan kings alone;
and at Copán, nobles erected their own monuments. Late Mayan kings were forced
to a level of inclusiveness that likely foreshadowed the council institutions that suc-
ceeded them in the northern Mayan lowlands at sites like Chichén Itza. Nobles were
clearly challenging the institution of divine kingship in the decades prior to the
southern Classic “collapse.”
External pressures added to the disruptions of the ninth century. The intrusion
of outsiders from the Putun or Chontal Mayas from the Tabasco region into the
lowland Mayan area was once thought to have been a major factor in the Maya col-
lapse. Evidence for foreign intrusion at some sites is clear, particularly in the west-
ern lowlands at the site of Seibal; but it is now believed that the intruders found an
already unstable Mayan society and merely took advantage of an existing situation
rather than being the main cause of the decline. Some combination of these factors
was responsible for the collapse of Classic Mayan society in the southern lowlands,
although it is likely that the precise combination of factors varied from region to
region.
The collapse of Classic Mayan civilization in the southern lowlands did not mean
that the area was left entirely uninhabited. The population decline was dramatic
owing to both increased mortality rates and emigration, as elites and others appar-
ently fled to areas near the Caribbean coast and northern Yucatán. Yet some of the
population remained, choosing to live not in the abandoned cities but in the rural
areas. By the Postclassic period a thriving, if smaller and radically reorganized, Mayan
society survived with settlements such as the lake area of the central Petén, and at sim-
ilar lagoons of northeastern Belize. Further north, in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mayan
centers such as Chichén Itzá, Uxmal, Edzná, Sayil, and Labná thrived for one or
more centuries after the southern decline.
A brief look at three of the largest and most intensively studied Classic Mayan
cities—Tikal, Palenque, and Copán—will provide a fuller view of Classic Mayan cul-
ture and illustrate both similarities and differences among Mayan cities. The fol-
lowing discussion relies upon Martin and Grube’s book,Chronicle of the Maya Kings and
Queensfor specific names and events of Classic dynasties.Tikal. Tikal is the largest known Mayan center—the main residential area
covers 23 square kilometers, and over 3,000 structures have been mapped—and it
has been studied intensively by scores of archaeologists for many years (Figure 1.11).
Located in the Petén jungle of Guatemala, Tikal had a population of 50,000 at its
peak in the Late Classic period. From the numerous stelae and inscriptions found
on buildings, epigraphers have been able to reconstruct the political and dynastic
history of Tikal in some detail. An enduring dynasty ruled at Tikal from A.D. 378 to