The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire (61 page)

FIGURE 54.
   In this detail from a finely painted Moche vessel, nude prisoners of war are presented to a victorious ruler who sits atop a pyramid. The painted scenes on other Moche vessels show captives being sacrificed, with their blood being used to fill goblets like the one held by the ruler in this scene. Reproduced by permission of Christopher B. Donnan and the estate of Donna McClelland.

The chief of the Bemba mutilated subjects who insulted him, but compared to the Moche kings, he barely qualified for a learner’s permit.

Moche rulers had fabulous treasure in their plank coffins, and they clearly wanted to be portrayed as warriors. Nobles from lower-ranked lineages were buried in cane coffins, with fewer sumptuary goods. Judging by their graves, the highest priests, whether men or women, were of noble birth. Exceptional warriors seem to have been honored by being entombed with their rulers. The body parts of enemies were scattered on royal tombs like croutons sprinkled on a Caesar salad. It is likely that some ethnic minorities within the Moche state were treated as second-class citizens, but we cannot be sure without eyewitness accounts.

CALAKMUL: AN EARLY MAYA KINGDOM

Our next first-generation kingdom was created in the Mirador basin, a forested depression in the Maya lowlands. This basin straddles the border between northern Guatemala and the Mexican state of Campeche. The tropical setting contrasts with the temperate highlands of Oaxaca and the desert coast of Peru, but the social and political dynamics involved were similar.

Some 2,800 years ago there were large villages in the Maya lowlands, some covering more than 100 acres. Over the next millennium the evidence for rank societies grew. Sumptuary goods of jade and mother-of-pearl circulated widely. Leaders used corvée labor to build temples atop stone pyramids. Military competition was evidently intense, because archaeologists have found mass burials of young men with injuries typical of warriors.

One raid at the site of Cuello in Belize, carried out 2,400 years ago, left the façades of some public buildings destroyed and their perishable superstructures burned. Nearby was a mass grave of 26 men who showed signs of having been butchered. Some of these men showed healed fractures of the wrist and forearm, injuries likely sustained in previous battles.

At about this time, Nakbe emerged as a chiefly center in the Mirador basin. Laid out roughly east-west, Nakbe had two complexes of public buildings connected by a causeway. Archaeologist Richard Hansen found that these complexes included platforms as much as 24 feet high and pyramids rising 150 feet. Nakbe’s earliest stone monument depicts two men in chiefly regalia, one of them pointing toward the head of an ancestor.

One key to Nakbe’s rise was its intensive agriculture. Hansen discovered special garden plots, framed by low stone walls and filled with organic soil carried in from nearby swampy depressions. Rather than supporting themselves entirely with slash-and-burn agriculture, which requires constant clearing of the forest and the fallowing of old fields, the chiefly lineage at Nakbe had opted to create a man-made landscape of continuous productivity. By the time it began to decline in importance, 2,200 years ago, Nakbe had established a pattern for the next generation of Maya chiefly centers: huge masonry pyramids, plaza groups linked by causeways, the court for a ritual ball game, and a carved stone monument.

The paramount center that took over from Nakbe was El Mirador, only eight miles to the northwest. Some 1,850 years ago El Mirador had grown to be the largest community in the region, covering an estimated 107 acres. Archaeologists William Folan and Ian Graham and remote sensing expert W. Frank Miller discovered a series of roads radiating out from El Mirador and leading toward its satellite communities. One of the roads leads southeast toward Nakbe, while another leads north toward a place called Calakmul. This situation likely reflects chiefly cycling: El Mirador, once a satellite of Nakbe, had turned the tables and made Nakbe its satellite.

El Mirador copied the east-west layout seen earlier at Nakbe. Its leaders took advantage of a natural hill at the western limit of this ceremonial axis, crowning it with one of the largest stone temple complexes ever seen in the Maya region. The centerpiece of this complex was a pyramid 180 feet high. On its flat summit sat three smaller pyramids with temples. The largest of these temples had a stairway flanked with eight grotesque stucco masks, all featuring jaguar claws; these claws suggested the nickname El Tigre for the building. A second complex called Danta (Tapir) stood more than 200 feet high.

Elsewhere at El Mirador was an acropolis that may include the earliest palace known from the Maya area. This possible palace, combined with the evidence for high levels of corvée labor and a raised road system linking El Mirador to its subject communities, suggests that a consolidation of power was under way in the region.

We have seen that it often took several generations of aggressive rulers to create a kingdom. In this case a succession of rulers at Nakbe and El Mirador had brought Maya society to the threshold of monarchy. Roughly 1,750 years ago, however, El Mirador suffered the same fate as Nakbe. One of its own satellite communities, Calakmul, rose to prominence and seized control of the basin from its former overlords.

As so often happens, nearby satellite communities had learned key lessons of statecraft by observing El Mirador. Calakmul carried the process one step further by creating a kingdom that endured for seven centuries. And because its leaders erected hieroglyphic monuments to themselves, we can be sure that the Calakmul state was an individualizing monarchy.

The Size of the Calakmul Kingdom

Calakmul was founded on a hill rising more than 100 feet above the surrounding lowlands. We do not know how large Calakmul was when Nakbe and El Mirador came to power. All we know is that once El Mirador had begun to fade, Calakmul grew aggressively until it was one of the largest cities in the Maya lowlands.

Calakmul’s golden age was the period
A.D.
400 to 700. The city came to include more than 6,250 buildings spread over 11 square miles, with a population estimated at 50,000. Calakmul erected 117 stelae (free-standing stone monuments), the most of any Maya city. The hieroglyphic texts on many of these stelae mention kings and their accomplishments, using a calendar more accurate than the one employed by the sixteenth-century Spaniards.

Calakmul was the capital of a territory with an administrative hierarchy of four levels. At its peak, the city was surrounded by six Level 2 towns, including settlements with names such as Naachtun, Oxpemul, Balakbal, and Uxul. These Level 2 towns all appear to be spaced one day’s walk (about 20 miles) from each other and from the capital. Calakmul was linked to these towns by raised roads made of
sascab,
or crushed limestone. Each Level 2 town was in turn surrounded by Level 3 settlements, and so on down the hierarchy (
Figure 55
).

The heartland of the Calakmul kingdom was the 1,500-square-mile territory controlled by its Level 2 towns. Calakmul’s political influence, however, could be felt over an area greater than 10,000 square miles. We know this because subordinate Maya towns often referred to their overlords when they carved hieroglyphic texts. Calakmul’s subordinate towns did this by using an expression that can be translated “under the auspices of the Sacred Lord of Calakmul.” On occasion, places as much as 150 miles away used similar phrases. Calakmul’s attempt to annex such distant places, however, put it in direct conflict with other first-generation Maya kingdoms.

Three huge buildings dominated Calakmul’s main plaza. Structures 1 and 2 were pyramids. Structure 2 was similar to El Tigre at El Mirador; it measured 395 feet on a side at its base and rose 150 feet above the plaza.

FIGURE 55.
   During its heyday the Maya city of Calakmul was encircled by six smaller cities that constituted the second level in its political hierarchy. In this drawing the dashed lines indicate straight-line distances among cities; the solid lines, accompanied by numbers, represent sections of actual pre-Hispanic roads that linked the capital to its subordinate centers. Also shown are Nakbe and El Mirador, two earlier paramount centers. (The distance from Calakmul to Level 2 towns such as Naachtún was about 20 miles.)

Structure 3 was an unmistakable palace atop a 16-foot-high platform (
Figure 56
). This royal residence measured 85 by 55 feet and was divided into a dozen rooms. Its ceilings were vaulted, and small windowlike ventilators promoted the circulation of air while preserving privacy. At least eight of the rooms might have been residential, while others were halls of some kind. In the rear was a likely throne room, accessible only after traversing three stairways and four doorways.

Under the floor of an inner room, William Folan and his colleagues found the tomb of an unnamed king interred around
A.D.
400. The 30-year-old ruler wore jade ear spools and had been buried with three jade mosaic masks. Three jade plaques on his chest were incised with hieroglyphs. Other offerings included elegant pottery, a pearl, two spiny oyster shells, and a stingray spine for ritual bloodletting. The tomb was also equipped with a psychoduct, an opening in the wall through which the soul of the ruler could leave and return. We will see that the ancient Egyptians made similar arrangements for the pharaoh’s soul.

FIGURE 56.
   Structure 3 at Calakmul was a 12-room Maya palace, measuring 85 by 55 feet. Rooms 2–5 and 8–11 were probably residential. Room 12 was an entrance hall, and Room 7 may have been a throne room. A Maya ruler was buried in a tomb below Room 6.

Calakmul’s Relations with Other First-Generation States

A chain reaction, similar to the one described earlier for the Zapotec and Mixtec, rippled through the Maya lowlands. Once first-generation kingdoms had begun to form, neighboring societies hastened to nucleate in order to avoid being taken over. The largest early kingdoms in the Maya lowlands were headed by Calakmul and Tikal, two cities located 80 miles apart. Their stormy relationship is recorded in hieroglyphic texts, with precise dates given in the Maya calendar.

The alleged founder of Tikal’s royal lineage was a king named Yax Ehb Xook, who ruled just before
A.D.
100. Burial 85, beneath Tikal’s North Acropolis, is believed to be his skeleton. We do not know the name of this ruler’s counterpart at Calakmul because so many early monuments are badly eroded.

During the sixth century Calakmul engaged in military alliances to gain the upper hand. During the period 562–572 a Calakmul ruler named Sky Witness called upon the distant city of Caracol to help him defeat Tikal. As a result of two attacks, one in 579 and another in 611, Calakmul’s next ruler claimed victory over Palenque, a city in the Mexican state of Chiapas. In 619 his successor, Yuknoom Ti’ Chan, reinforced Calakmul’s earlier military alliance with Caracol by attending an event with the ruler of that city.

In
A.D.
650 a Calakmul ruler named Yuknoom Ch’een II defeated the town of Dos Pilas, some 70 miles southwest of Tikal. At that time the lord of Dos Pilas was the son of the Tikal ruler, so this defeat was an indirect slap to Tikal. The young prince of Dos Pilas fled the scene, taking refuge in the neighboring city of Aguateca. According to the hieroglyphic texts, by the time he returned to Dos Pilas, this prince had become a vassal of Calakmul.

Emboldened by success, the Calakmul ruler attacked Tikal in 657, forcing its ruler, Nuun Ujol Chaak, into exile. This was the apogee of Calakmul’s political power. In 677 the vassal ruler of Dos Pilas joined the Calakmul ruler in another attack on Tikal. This time, their hieroglyphic texts claim that they captured the Tikal ruler’s second in command.

Unfortunately for Calakmul, its golden age came to an end in August 695. Hieroglyphic texts allege that the Tikal ruler Jasaw Chan K’awiil I defeated a Calakmul ruler whose name has been translated as “Claw of Fire.” From that point on, Tikal held the upper hand over Calakmul.

In 849 one of Calakmul’s final rulers, a man named Chan Pet, attended a summit meeting with the kings of Tikal, Seibal, and Motul de San José. By then his kingdom’s political power was greatly diminished. Although Calakmul managed to put up one last monument in 909, that city faded from the scene not long afterward.