Credit National Geographic

Today, we will introduce a chronology for the Maya, and then compare their cultural progress from earliest roots to cultural demise with the progress of Sumer in Mesopotamia. Finally, we will offer a video on the breaking of the code of the Maya language, something that I had long ago despaired I would ever see. Now, with the decipherment of the enormous body of writings on their monuments, we are coming to know what the Maya really did–not what romantics among us wished they did, but what their culture was really like. Their history is not pretty, but knowing the truth is far more important than wishful thinking: the truth sets us free from delusions.

Source of Table: Wikipedia article

The Archaic Maya grew slowly from local roots during the period 8000 BC to 2000 BC. Because we are not dealing in absolute values, it will be useful to compare the Maya’s cultural growth during this period to that of the Ubaid (see post 113) then living in the now submerged Tigris-Euphrates Valley under the Persian Gulf from 14,000 BC to 8,000 BC (see map dated 10,000 BP in post 82). By 10,000 BP the Gulf (and its Ubaid Neolithic agriculturalists) had risen with the sea level most of the way toward the present shoreline of Southern Mesopotamia, where the Ubaid would leave lasting, dateable artifacts of their material culture. Thus, we hypothesize the Ubaid in 8,000 BC were cultural peers of the Maya in 2,000 BC, while separated by (8,000 BC – 2,000 BC) 6,000 calendar years.

The Ubaid were the main root of the Sumer civilization that continued until ca. 1950 BC. In the table below, we make comparisons between the relative progress of the Maya and the Ubaid in achieving key cultural parities. Shrinking the Neolithic 6,000-year gap over the 5,000 year period would be evidence the Maya were catching up with the Sumer culture. Let’s see if they did:

Data sources for the above table include:

1. Eridu Temple
2. Maya Monumental Temples
3. Wheel
4. Draft Animal
5. Sumerian language
6. Maya script
7. Sumerian Chalcolithic
8. Sumerian Early Bronze Age
9. Uruk population
10. Tikal population

The Sumer culture ended with the fall of Ur III by 1950 BC, while the Postclassic Maya culture ended in 1539 AD: about 3500 years later. Sumer and Akkad had been crippled by the 4.2 KYA drought and never recovered. Mayan independence fell to superior Spanish technology.

The Maya seemed to have been catching up with the Western world, but far too slowly and erratically. Their failures to use the wheel and animal power to multiply their own human strength, and to develop the smelting of copper to produce far more intricate and durable weapons, tools and fittings were failure for which nature never forgave them.

Consequently, the Maya, as technological leaders of Mesoamerica, found out the hard way that some things won’t wait forever. History shows us that most civilizations have been subjugated when they encountered foes with a meaningful advantage in technology. We’ll never know what the Maya could have done.

The Maya had been clearly leading the other cities in Mesoamerica until the Extreme Weather Event of 535-536 AD, which appears to have kicked the ladder out from under Mesoamerican progress—and that of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere as well. In addition to that event, the Environmental Timeline for the First Millennium AD shows other substantial and credible threats to Mesoamerica (and the Northern Hemisphere). Whether the roadblock was internal or external, or a mixture of both, something big had obviously devastated Mesoamerica by the late-first millennium AD. We shall search for the causes of that tumultuous period next week.

Here is the video on the decoding of the Maya language.

Thanks for visiting, 

R. E. J. Burke