The Fall of the Ancient Maya
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It was 1502. In the Gulf of Honduras, an extraordinary meeting was about to take place in a hollowed-out tree-trunk canoe. 25 Maya. Men, women and children made their way across open water towards an island. With them, goods to trade with other indigenous communities. In their boat was packed brightly coloured cotton clothing, flint knives, hardwood swords... At their feet lay the most precious cargo of all, cacao beans. Suddenly they noticed something on the horizon. What looked like three floating islands with tall trees stripped bare, standing upright with ropes hanging down. As they paddled closer they saw dark masses moving. Only faces and hands could be seen. But unlike the mire, these faces were covered in hair.
The mire had never seen anything like it. As the canoes got close to the islands, those aboard discovered they were in fact enormous boats. Or ships, I should say. Rope ladders were thrown down by the odd-looking crewmen. And, setting an example, the Maya chief climbed up. Gifts were exchanged. Amazement on both sides. Neither could speak the other's language, but they examined each other's clothes, faces and ornaments with awe and wonder. This was the first contact between the Maya and the ships of Christopher Columbus on his fourth voyage of discovery. It wouldn't be for another nine years when a Spanish ship wrecked off the coast of Cozumel that the Spanish set foot on Maya land. Those first steps were the death knell of the great Mesoamerican civilisations, Aztec, Inca and Maya.
All brought to their knees by disease and the violence of Europeans who had come searching for gold and souls to save. What's interesting about the Maya in particular is that when the Spanish arrived, they found a society already in decline. A civilization where the great cities had already been abandoned, where populations were dwindling, and where monuments were already strangled by vegetation, with little explanation as to why. For the Maya, the Spanish conquest was merely the final blow in a long unraveling, something that still puzzles experts today. So, what exactly happened to the Maya? You're listening to Dan Snow's History, and this is part two of our mini-series as we continue our journey deep into the jungles of Belize to trace the rise and fall of this once mighty ancient culture that mastered the sweltering tropics of the rainforests and the arid mountains of Central America, who built one of the world's most extraordinary ancient civilizations,
and then fell apart. This is episode two, The Maya Collapse.
The Maya Collapse
This Belizean jungle is something else. It's a verdant wonderland of colour. I've never seen so many different shades of green. It's so thick that you cannot see sometimes more than a metre or two from the trail that I'm hiking along. Now, in these rainforests, there's jaguar, pumas, ocelots and jaguarundies and there are howler monkeys. Then above me in the canopy, I can hear the calls of the toucans and the... parrots and parakeets and if you stop for a second you just catch a little flit of them going from branch to branch, a little dash of colour in amongst the green of the trees. I really can appreciate why The Maya believed that the natural world was divine, it was alive with spiritual forces.
Anthropologists describe their worldview as animistic, that is to say that they believe that mountains and caves and rivers and animals and something as mundane as maize could possess sacred power. For them, the forests and the rain and the landscapes, they weren't just resources.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–14:39
2
What caused the Maya civilization to begin declining before the Spanish arrived?
14:39–17:49
3
How did the Belizean jungle environment shape Maya religious practices?
17:49–29:51
4
Why are caves like Akhtunchapat (Centipede Cave) considered sacred ritual spaces for the Maya?
29:51–47:19
5
What evidence do archaeologists find of human sacrifice and fertility rituals inside the caves?
47:19–57:08