The Lost Chronicles of the Maya Kings - Hardcover

Drew, David

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520226127 ISBN 13: 9780520226128

Publisher: University of California Press, 2000

Synopsis

Since the end of the eighteenth century, explorers and archaeologists have made spectacular discoveries in the tropical forests of Central America, the home of the ancient Maya. Across much of present-day Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras, dozens of their great cities have now been located, many still buried in remote parts of the jungle. Every year fresh reports emerge of the finding of previously unknown pyramids, temples and the tombs of kings. These discoveries offer renewed testimony to the special genius and sophisticated nature of Maya civilization, which reached the height of its glory at the time of the European Dark Ages.

Among all the ancient peoples of the Americas, the intellectual achievements of the Maya were the most astonishing – in maths, astronomy and calendrics, and above all in their system of hieroglyphic writing. For a very long time their script could not be fully understood. But recently, major advances in decipherment have begun to shed a whole new light on the Maya world and those who ruled it. From temple walls and stone stelae planted in the plazas of their cities has come written history: the Chronicles of the Maya Kings.

Drawing on a wealth of sources – from the accounts of early explorers and archaeologists to the most recent research – David Drew charts the course of Maya discovery and presents answers to many of the mysteries their civilization has posed: the nature of Maya religion, the extent of warfare and human sacrifice in their society, how they were able to support vast populations in the fragile forest environment and why, by the time of the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century, most of their great cities were already lost and forgotten in the jungle. He examines Maya political systems, their achievements in art and architecture and stresses that they are not a lost or dead people. Millions of Maya still live in the region today and, as David Drew shows in this fascinating book, their society illuminates that of their ancestors.

About this title

Review:

Much has been learned in recent years, through archaeological excavations and the decipherment of hieroglyphs, about the world of the ancient Maya peoples of Mesoamerica. But an important question continues to engage scholars: why did their powerful empire, extending from southern Mexico to Nicaragua, collapse so swiftly and completely, hundreds of years before the European arrival brought other New World empires to ruin? Popular-archaeology writer David Drew examines the existing evidence and the sometimes contentious scholarly literature in The Lost Chronicles of the Maya Kings, a well-crafted portrait of the Mayan world, in which religious orthodoxy, constant warfare, and political struggle held sway as leaders such as Smoking Frog, Shield Skull, and Flint Sky battled for supremacy.

Drew shows that there were really two Mayan empires: an "international one" verging on the Toltec and Mexica lands to the north, and an isolationist, conservative one to the south. Both constructed impressive, crowded cities marked by monumental architecture and elaborate royal tombs. Both fell victim to overpopulation and environmental failure, as drought and the depletion of the soil combined to produce famine. With them came the abandonment of the great cities. "It must be a gauge of the catastrophe and the severity of damage to the environment that in the years to come no attempt was made to revive a single one of them," Drew writes. The Mayan civilization emerged anew after the collapse, if at a much less ambitious scale--only to fall again as European-introduced diseases killed half a million Mayas between 1520 and 1547.

Drew's account of the Mayan empire's rise and fall is among the best general-interest books on this enigmatic era of New World history; scholars may prefer Martin and Grube's Chronicle of the Maya Kings and Queens. --Gregory McNamee

About the Author:

David Drew is an archaeologist who has worked in Latin America for more than twenty years. He has also written and presented many television documentaries for BBC and A&E series such as Chronicle, Timewatch, and Footsteps.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0520226127
• ISBN 13: 9780520226128
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 461