Archaeologists from Brigham Young University and UCLA say their work at recently excavated ruins deep in the Guatemalan jungles has pushed back the origins of Mayan civilization to at least 600 B.C. _ about 400 years earlier than the oldest Mayan ruins previously known.
"It now appears the most sophisticated society in the New World may have emerged hundreds of years earlier than anyone previously believed," said Richard Hansen, a BYU graduate and a research associate at the University of California at Los Angeles' Institute of Archaeology."What we have here is nothing less than the earliest Maya city known in the lowlands. And the best part is it's built over the top of an earlier village."
Because the village is preserved beneath the city _ called Nakbe _ Hansen says scientists are in a unique position to unveil the Maya transition from simple village life to a city life with complex social distinctions, uniform religious ideology and a government that could order the construction of public buildings and causeways.
Experts in Mesoamerican prehistory are calling it a breakthrough that could revolutionize understanding of Mayan civilization, particularly the Maya transition from an agrarian village life to a complex city-centered culture.
That research could turn upside down many time-honored theories of how and when Mayan civilization emerged.
Archaeologists have traditionally held that Maya cities emerged rather suddenly about 300 A.D. from a simple village lifestyle that dominated the jungle lowlands of Guatemala, Honduras and the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico.
From 300 A.D. to 900 A.D., the Mayans became an increasingly sophisticated civilization manifested by huge cities with elaborately sculpted limestone buildings, hieroglyphic-inscribed stone slabs and breathtaking temple pyramids soaring above the steamy jungles of southern Mexico and northern Central America.
Nakbe is located only a few miles from El Mirador, a Late Preclassic Mayan city excavated by Ray Matheny of Brigham Young University and Bruce Dahlin of Catholic University from 1978-1982. El Mirador pushed back to about 200 B.C. the emergence of Maya civilization, and now Nakbe pushes it back another 400 years.
Together they offer a glimpse of a culture flourishing at least 900 years earlier than traditionally held.
"Nakbe kind of throws a wrench in traditional theories of how and when Maya civilization came to be," said Don Forsythe, a ceramics expert at BYU involved in the Nakbe research.
"At Nakbe we find complex building on a large scale, and perhaps the emergence of kingships, in the Middle Preclassic _ a time when the Maya are supposed to be nothing more than village dwellers."
Previously, the most sophisticated architecture from the Middle Preclassic was simple villages on elevated mounds up to 6 feet high. However, temple mounds at Nakbe range up to 150 feet high.
The beginning of Mayan civilization has remained a mystery since archaeologists first hacked their way through the dense jungles in the 1800s. While the Classic Mayan cities of 300-900 A.D. have been well-documented, scientists have always held that evidence of the beginnings of Mayan civilization must have been destroyed or were buried beneath Classic cities like Tikal, Uxmal and Copan.
But research at Nakbe and El Mirador as well as recent work at nearby sites like Edzna, Cerros and Lamanai now indicates the Maya had a network of cities long before the great Classic cities.
Those early cities were abandoned at various times as populations shifted to other areas. Nakbe, for example, may have been abandoned about 300 B.C., and it appears the Nakbe population shifted to neighboring El Mirador, which dates to about 200 B.C. and earlier. El Mirador itself was later abandoned.
Nakbe was first spotted in 1930 by archaeologists performing an aerial survey of the area. Maps were made in the 1960s, but no research was done at the site until Hansen's crew ventured to the site.
It took researchers with 123 pack mules three days of cutting their way through the dense vegetation with machetes and wading through swamps, often in muck up to their stomachs, to reach the ruins.
Hansen became interested in Nakbe while a graduate student at BYU during the El Mirador excavations. Nakbe's jungle-covered temple mounds were visible from El Mirador, and at that time it was believed that Nakbe was a satellite community to the much larger El Mirador.
When researchers finally reached the site, they found looters had already dug a trench into one building. While exploring the trench, Hansen found the looters had missed a broken stela _ a 10-foot high limestone slab with a scene carved into the rock of two royal individuals facing each other.
"It was very, very old, and stylistically it was clearly of Preclassic origin," Forsythe said. Researchers say the content of the stela may hold the key to understanding the emergence of kingships among the Maya.
Around the stela were enormous quantities of broken pottery, all dating from 600 A.D. to 800 A.D., a period contemporaneous with much later lowland cities like Tikal, Copan and Palenque.
When researchers began digging into the site, they found pottery (65,000 fragments have been found so far) and thousands of other artifacts all dating to the Middle Preclassic, a period from 800 B.C. to 300 B.C.
"These ceramics are not very well known by Mayan scholars because they are usually buried so deep (at other Maya sites)," said Forsythe. "We also found figurines typical of the Middle Preclassic, all associated with very large buildings."
Carbon 14 dates put the occupation of the buildings at 800 B.C. to 400 B.C.
What surprised researchers at Nakbe was there seems to have been a flourishing occupation through about 300 B.C., then the site may have been abandoned until about 600 A.D. when Mayan culture was in full blossom.
The presence of Classic Period ceramics near the Nakbe stela may indicate that Mayans continued to revere the perhaps ancient stela long after the city itself was abandoned. "That is extremely intriguing," Forsythe added.
*****
(Additional information)
Chronology
Early Preclassic: 1500 B.C. to 900 B.C. Not yet found in the Maya lowlands.
Middle Preclassic: 900 B.C. to 300 B.C. Previously thought of as simple village life, but scientists have now found the Mayan city of Nakbe.
Late Preclassic: 300 B.C. to 100 A.D. Typically thought of as developmental to Maya but now recognized as having already achieved full civilization, as seen at El Mirador.
Protoclassic: 100 A.D. to 300 A.D. A transitional phase between developmental and later Classic civilization.
Early Classic: 300 A.D.to 600 A.D. Typified by emergence of hieroglyphic writing, ball courts, very large ceremonial centers and the burial of kings in in pyramids.
Late Classic: 600 A.D.to 900 A.D. Same as Early Classic, but sites become much larger and Mayan population grows significantly. A Mayan abandonment between 850 A.D. and 900 A.D. marks the end of the period.
Post-Classic: 900 A.D.to 1520 A.D. A period in which Maya culture loses its complexity.
*****
(Additional information)
2 archaeologists to dig for truth about Mayans
Archaeologists Richard Hansen of the University of California at Los Angeles and Don Forsythe of Brigham Young University will test a number of theories when they return to Nakbe later this year to resume their research:
-What was the role of long-distance trade in the emergence of an organized society? Researchers at Nakbe have found evidence for large-scale trade in seashells and obsidian, both of which had to be imported and both of which held social significance to Mesoamerican people.
Seashells were used as bells and were often sewn into the clothing of the elite for public ceremonies. Larger shells were used as trumpets. The obsidian was important for its role in ritual blood-letting.
"The social need for those kind of items may have provided the impetus for the creation of social classes and a ruling elite to control the trade in those items," Hansen said.
-How did the Maya create a major civilization in the harsh environment of the Guatemalan lowlands? When archaeologists set up camp at Nakbe, they had to haul water by mule from four miles away. No water sources have been found at Nakbe, but water collection systems to channel the runoff have been found.
"Perhaps the need to cope with extremely harsh environmental factors such as water shortages created the need for social administration and government to maintain a quality of life," Hansen said.
That administration could have been responsible for the construction of an elaborate system of causeways across the swamps to access neighboring farm areas as well as neighboring communities to allow for local trade.
-What was the role of religious ideology in the creation of major Mayan ceremonial centers? Based on research at Nakbe and neighboring El Mirador, scientists have noted a consistency in certain architectural forms, stone sculpturing and art.
"It appears that the Maya elite reached a point (during the construction of Nakbe) that they institutionalized an ideology to consolidate their position and authority," Hansen said. "That consolidation seems to appear a lot earlier than anyone had previously thought."
Hansen sees the emergence of kingship and theology as key to understanding later Maya culture, where the king became divine and had divine ancestry.
Hansen and Forsythe will be joined on the excavation by a Texas A&M researcher who specializes in prehistoric agricultural systems and pollen analysis. Researchers from the Smithsonian Institution and the University of San Carlos in Guatemala are also involved.
The researchers have a long-term contract with the government of Guatemala to excavate Nakbe as well as map and explore other sites in the area that are relevant to their research.
"We still need a lot more work at a lot more sites in that area to draw a clearer picture of what was really going on," Forsythe said.