The rise and fall of Piedras Negras

Was Royal Infighting Behind Maya City's Fall? Stefan Lovgren
for National Geographic News
October 6, 2003

An extensive archaeological excavation has unearthed a lost city that is
believed to be one of the crowning jewels in the ancient civilization of
the Maya.
For six years, researchers have deciphered hieroglyphics and scrutinized
palaces in Guatemala's remote Piedras Negras, near the Mexican border.
The study shows a city that began as an agricultural center as early as
400 B.C. and disintegrated under royal power struggles around 1,400
years later, around the same time the entire Mayan civilization began to
collapse.

Archaeologists have discovered a city in the remote Piedras Negras of
Guatemala that may have been one of the crowning jewels of Maya
civilization. They believe the capture of the king led to the abrupt
demise of the city around 800 A.D.
Stephen Houston, an archaeologist at Brigham Young University in Provo,
Utah, and one of the lead researchers for this project, received
assistance to do this work from the National Geographic Society's
Committee for Research and Exploration

"We were able to basically write the biography of a city," said Stephen
Houston, an archaeologist at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah,
and one of the lead researchers. "It's a persuasive narrative about how
a city grew, how it thrived, and how it died." Houston's research was
partially funded with a grant from the National Geographic Society
Committee for Research and Exploration. The cause of the sudden demise
of the great Maya society, which once ranged from Mexico's Yucatán
peninsula to Honduras, is fiercely debated by Maya experts. This latest
research suggests the culture collapsed not from drought, as some
experts believe, but from the loss of the royal court.

"The city came to a catastrophic end in about 800 A.D. when the last
known king of the site was taken captive by a neighboring kingdom,"
Houston said. "Once the king and his royal court are gone, the city's
reason for existence no longer seems to be there."

Abandoned City
Loggers that came to harvest tropical hardwood discovered Piedras Negras
in the 1880s. In the 1930s, archaeologists from the University of
Pennsylvania in Philadelphia began studying the site, but World War II
interrupted the research, and for almost 60 years no archaeologist went
back.
Continuing the excavations took on added urgency after the Mexican
government announced plans to build a dam that would flood part of the
site, which is situated along the Usumacinta River. But before Houston
and his team could return to Piedras Negras, they first had to convince
Marxist guerrillas, who used the site as a hideout in Guatemala's
long-running civil war, to leave. They also had to decide how to reach
the site: a five-hour hike through the bush from Mexico or a nine-hour
boat ride down some hair-raising Guatemalan rapids—no easy feat for a
team bringing in 120 workers. When the archaeologists finally began
their work in 1997, they were amazed at how well-preserved the site was.
Still, to the untrained eye, it didn't look like much. While some
architecture is still standing, most is in ruins.
"Walking around, a person may not realize he's on a major archaeological
site," said Houston.

The Acropolis
The early settlers probably came to Piedras Negras around 400 B.C.,
before the start of the Maya period, and established farms in the
fertile valley. The archaeologists have found ceramics dating back to
that time.
The site exploded in size far later, around 400 A.D., when many of the
temples were built and the kingship may have been introduced. A visitor
entering from the river would have first seen the red-painted royal
palace rising several stories, partly obscured by a haze of burning
incense. "You would have smelled the city before coming close to it,"
Houston said.
But unlike many Maya reconstructions, which depict the cities as
shining, well-maintained settlements, Piedras Negras was probably in a
constant state of disrepair. It went through two major construction
phases. First, mortuary pyramids containing the tombs of early kings
were built. Then, around 700 A.D., the city was almost covered in
masonry.
Like in many ancient cities, the population remained small. Even at its
peak, Piedras Negras probably never had more than 5,000 residents. The
Maya kings were not only executive rulers, but also considered sacred,
responsible for rituals such as bloodlettings and incense burnings. In
the late classic Maya period—from 550 to 800 A.D.—a clear pattern
emerges where the rulers were succeeded by their sons. This is also when
the palace, or "the Acropolis," a vast, sprawling set of patios and
courtyards, becomes more inaccessible to the public. "You get a feeling
of social exclusivity in later dynasties," said Houston. "The very
feeling of kingship changes, and it's expressed in the changing
buildings of the site."

The dynasty is rocked when the line of succession breaks and several
brothers seem to succeed one another as king. There are even hints of an
abdication. Finally, the last known king is kidnapped by a neighboring
kingdom.
"It looks like a great deal of violence took place in the royal palace,"
Houston said. "We're finding shattered buildings and shattered
monuments."

Without the king, the royal palace soon begins to fill with
squatters—debris and trash. Within a generation or two, most people
abandon the city.
"Piedras Negras shows us how Mayan cities were built around their
kings," said Houston. "When the kings thrive, so does the city. When the
kings are taken out of commission, the cities also seem to wither and
die."

The End of the Maya
The sudden demise of the Maya civilization is one of the greater
archaeological mysteries of our time. There are several competing
theories explaining the collapse, with some experts pointing to
overpopulation, while others suggest environmental degradation and
deforestation.

One of the most popular theories argues that a long period of dry
climate, punctuated by three intense droughts, caused the end of the
Maya.
Houston, however, doesn't agree with the drought theory. "We do know
that a lot of these cities had extreme difficulty around this time and
maybe this had something to do with diminished rainfall," he said.
"But the fact is that Piedras Negras runs along a river that was never
dry. They would always have had water to maintain their agricultural
base."

He says there is no evidence of widespread massacres or rampant disease.
Instead, he believes, the collapse began when people lost faith in the
hierarchy.
"We do have evidence that points to a lot of turbulence and difficulties
among those who were organizing the city and helping to run it as a
collective entity," said Houston. "In the end, people simply voted with
their feet. They didn't find Piedras Negras such a good place to live,
so they left."

© 2003 National Geographic Society. All rights reserved.





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