The Maya
2,000 BCE O.S. – 13 Mar 169746 items
americasancient worldKings, calendars and city-states in the forest
The Maya never had an empire. For three thousand years the forests of Guatemala, southern Mexico, Belize and Honduras held dozens of kingdoms, each with its own holy lord, that fought, married and traded with one another. This timeline runs from the first ceremonial plazas at Ceibal and Aguada Fénix, through the rivalry of Tikal and Calakmul and the Classic collapse, to 13 March 1697, when Spanish soldiers took Nojpetén, the island capital of the Itza and the last independent Maya kingdom.
How it is built
The periods archaeologists use are bands, one after another: Early, Middle and Late Preclassic, Early, Late and Terminal Classic, and the Postclassic, with the Spanish conquest overlapping its end.
Three reigns get their own bands: Pakal at Palenque, Yuknoom Ch’een the Great at Calakmul and Jasaw Chan K’awiil at Tikal. So does Tikal’s hiatus, the century and more it spent under its rivals’ shadow.
Events that the inscriptions date to the day carry their Long Count in the notes, so you can read the date as a Maya scribe carved it.
Filter by tag to follow one thread: war, dynasties, writing, calendar, architecture, colonialism. Smaller threads follow art, women, religion, books and climate.
Architecture, sculpture, and painting, all the arts which embellish life, had flourished in this overgrown forest; orators, warriors, and statesmen, beauty, ambition, and glory, had lived and passed away, and none knew that such things had been, or could tell of their past existence. — John Lloyd Stephens at Copán, 1839
Dates
Classic Maya monuments count the days since a zero date in 3114 BCE, the Long Count. Every day-precise date here is converted from that count with the GMT correlation (584283), which radiocarbon dating of a carved wooden lintel from Tikal supports, and shown in the proleptic Julian calendar, the convention for dates before 1582. Many books, Martin and Grube’s among them, use the constant 584285 and so give every such date two days later.
Preclassic dates rest on radiocarbon and pottery and carry a range of years. Spanish dates before 1582 are Julian too; the fall of Nojpetén in 1697 is a Gregorian date, as the Spanish wrote it.
Items
Ceibal’s first ceremonial plaza
Aguada Fénix, the largest Maya monument
The earliest Maya writing, at San Bartolo
The San Bartolo murals
Tikal Stela 29, the oldest dated lowland monument
Siyaj K’ak’ arrives at Tikal
K’inich Yax K’uk’ Mo’ founds Copán’s dynasty
Tikal defeated in a “star war”
Dos Pilas defeats Tikal
Lady Six Sky arrives at Naranjo
Pakal is laid in the Temple of the Inscriptions
Tikal defeats Calakmul
Lady K’abal Xook’s bloodletting, on Yaxchilan Lintel 24
Quiriguá captures and beheads the king of Copán
Copán’s Hieroglyphic Stairway
Dos Pilas falls
Quiriguá raises Stela E
The Bonampak murals
Ceibal Stela 10 names the old powers
Tikal’s last stela
The last Long Count date, at Toniná
The Dresden Codex
Mayapan falls
The Madrid Codex
Alvarado burns Q’umarkaj
Cortés visits the Itza at Nojpetén
Mérida founded on the ruins of T’hó
Landa’s auto-da-fé at Maní
Friars smash the Itzas’ horse idol
Avendaño reads the prophecies to Kan Ek’
Nojpetén falls