Maya cities were the centres of population of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica. They served the specialised roles of administration, commerce, manufacturing and religion that characterised ancient cities worldwide.Sharer & Traxler 2006, p.71. Maya cities tended to be more dispersed than cities in other societies, even within Mesoamerica, as a result of adaptation to a lowland tropical environment that allowed food production amidst areas dedicated to other activities. They lacked the grid plans of the highland cities of central Mexico, such as Teotihuacán and Tenochtitlan.Graham 2005, p.4. Maya monarchs ruled their kingdoms from palaces that were situated within the centre of their cities.Martin & Grube 2000, p.15. Cities tended to be located in places that controlled trade routes or that could supply essential products.Sharer & Traxler 2006, p.85. This allowed the elites that controlled trade to increase their wealth and status. Such cities were able to construct temples for public ceremonies, thus attracting further inhabitants to the city. Those cities that had favourable conditions for food production, combined with access to trade routes, were likely to develop into the capital cities of early Maya states.
The political relationship between Classic Maya city-states has been likened to the relationships between city-states in Classical Greece and Renaissance Italy.Martin & Grube 2000, p.21. Some cities were linked to each other by straight limestone causeways, known as sacbeob, although whether the exact function of these roads was commercial, political or religious has not been determined.
Architectural organization
Maya cities were not formally planned like the cities of highland Mexico and were subject to irregular expansion, with the haphazard addition to all of the palaces, temples and other buildings.Olmedo Vera 1997, p.34. Most Maya cities tended to grow outwards from the core, and upwards as new structures were superimposed upon preceding architecture.Miller 1999, p.25. Maya cities usually had a ceremonial and administrative centre surrounded by a vast irregular sprawl of residential complexes. The centres of all Maya cities featured sacred precincts, sometimes separated from nearby residential areas by walls.Schele & Mathews 1999, p.23. These precincts contained pyramid temples and other monumental architecture dedicated to elite activities, such as basal platforms that supported administrative or elite residential complexes.Schele & Mathews 1999, p.24. Sculpted monuments were raised to record the deeds of the ruling dynasty. City centres also featured plazas, sacred ballcourts and buildings used for marketplaces and schools. Frequently causeways linked the centre to outlying areas of the city. Some of these classes of architecture formed lesser groups in the outlying areas of the city, which served as sacred centres for non-royal lineages. The areas adjacent to these sacred compounds included residential complexes housing wealthy lineages. Art excavated from these elite residential complexes varies in quality according to the rank and prestige of the lineage that it housed. The largest and richest of these elite compounds sometimes possessed sculpture and art of craftsmanship equal to that of royal art.
The ceremonial centre of the Maya city was where the ruling elite lived, and where the administrative functions of the city were performed, together with religious ceremonies. It was also where the inhabitants of the city gathered for public activities. Elite residential complexes occupied the best land around the city centre, while commoners had their residences dispersed further away from the ceremonial centre.Olmedo Vera 1997, p.35. Residential units were built on top of stone platforms to raise them above the level of the rain season floodwaters.
Population estimates
Until the 1960s, scholarly opinion was that the ruins of Maya centres were not true cities but were rather empty ceremonial centres where the priesthood performed religious rituals for the peasant farmers, who lived dispersed in the middle of the jungle.Martin & Grube 2000, p.6. Since the 1960s, formal archaeological mapping projects have revealed that the ceremonial centres in fact formed the centres of dispersed cities that possessed populations that at some sites could reach tens of thousands.
+Estimated populations Site name Location Maximum population PeriodBonampakChiapas, Mexico6,000-8,000Late ClassicCobaQuintana Roo, Mexico50,000Sharer & Traxler 2006, p.554.Late ClassicCopánCopán Department, Honduras15,000-21,000Sharer & Traxler 2006, p.688.Late ClassicCalakmulCampeche, Mexico50,000Braswell et al. 2005, p.171.Late ClassicCaracolCayo District, Belize140,000UCF Anthropology 2014.ClassicChichen ItzaYucatán, Mexico50,000PostclassicCivalPetén Department, Guatemala2,000-5,000Estrada-Belli 2011, p.77.Late PreclassicDzibancheQuintana Roo, Mexico40,000-50,000ClassicDzibilchaltunYucatán, Mexico 25,000-40,000Late PreclassicEdznaCampeche, Mexico25,000Late ClassicEl PilarCayo District, Belize; Petén Department, Guatemala180,000Late ClassicEk' Balam Yucatán, Mexico12,000-18,000PostclassicIchkabalQuintana Roo, Mexico100,000Late ClassicMayapanYucatán, Mexico12,000Late PostclassicMixco Viejo (Jilotepeque Viejo)Chimaltenango Department, Guatemala1,500Arroyo 2001, p.42.Late PostclassicMotul de San JoséPetén Department, Guatemala1,200-2,000Foias 2014, p. 90.Late ClassicPalenqueChiapas, Mexico8,000-10,000Late ClassicQuiriguáIzabal Department, Guatemala1,200–1,600Late ClassicQʼumarkajQuiché Department, Guatemala15,000Fox 1989, p.673.n2.Late PostclassicRío AzulPetén Department, Guatemala3,500Sharer and Traxler 2006, p. 326.Early ClassicSanta Rita, CorozalCorozal District, Belize7,000Sharer & Traxler 2006, p.615.Late PostclassicSayilYucatán, Mexico10,000Sharer & Traxler 2006, p.545.Terminal ClassicSeibalPetén Department, Guatemala10,000Late PreclassicTikalPetén Department, Guatemala100,000Late ClassicUxmalYucatán, Mexico25,000Late PostclassicValerianaCampeche, Mexico30,00-50,000Late PreclassicXunantunichCayo District, Belize10,000Terminal Classic
History
Middle Preclassic Period During the Middle Preclassic Period (1000-400 BC), small villages began to grow to form cities.Olmedo Vera 1997, p.26. Aguada Fenix in Tabasco, Mexico is the oldest Maya city known, the site was built in 1000 BC, it is thought to have been built by communal labor, an early form of social organization and development where it is believed that many tribes decided to establish a major settlement marking the beginnings of the Maya civilization. PDF Aguada Fenix includes early monumental buildings and the oldest and biggest Maya structure by volume with 1400 meters long, 400 meters wide and 15 meters high. Aguada Fenix was abandoned around the year 750 BC for unknown reasons, after this, several sites started to flourish along the Maya Lowlands. By 500 BC these cities possessed large temple structures decorated with stucco masks representing gods.Martin & Grube 2000, p.8. Nakbe in the Petén Department of Guatemala is the earliest well-documented city in the Maya lowlands,Sharer & Traxler 2006, p.214. where large structures have been dated to around 750 BC. Nakbe already featured the monumental masonry architecture, sculpted monuments and causeways that characterised later cities in the Maya lowlands.
Late Preclassic Period In the Late Preclassic Period (400 BC - 250 AD), the enormous city of El Mirador grew to cover approximately .Olmedo Vera 1997, p.28. It possessed paved avenues, massive triadic pyramid complexes dated to around 150 BC, and stelae and altars that were erected in its plazas. El Mirador is considered to be one of the first capital cities of the Maya civilization. The swamps of the Mirador Basin appear to have been the primary attraction for the first inhabitants of the area as evidenced by the unusual cluster of large cities around them.Hansen et al. 2006, p.740.
The city of Tikal, later to be one of the most important of the Classic Period Maya cities, was already a significant city by around 350 BC, although it did not match El Mirador.Martin & Grube 2000, pp.25-26. The Late Preclassic cultural florescence collapsed in the 1st century AD and many of the great Maya cities of the epoch were abandoned; the cause of this collapse is as yet unknown.
In the highlands, Kaminaljuyu in the Valley of Guatemala was already a sprawling city by AD 300.Demarest 2004, p. 75.
Classic Period
During the Classic Period (AD 250-900), the Maya civilization achieved its greatest florescence. During the Early Classic (AD 250-300), cities throughout the Maya region were influenced by the great metropolis of Teotihuacan in the distant Valley of Mexico.Martin & Grube 2000, p.9. At its height during the Late Classic, Tikal had expanded to have a population of well over 100,000.Sharer & Traxler 2006, p.1. Tikal's great rival was Calakmul, another powerful city in the Petén Basin.Olmedo Vera 1997, p.36. In the southeast, Copán was the most important city. Palenque and Yaxchilán were the most powerful cities in the Usumacinta region. In the north of the Maya area, Coba was the most important Maya capital. Capital cities of Maya kingdoms could vary considerably in size, apparently related to how many vassal cities were tied to the capital.Martin & Grube 2000, p.19. Overlords of city-states that held sway over a greater number of subordinate lords could command greater quantities of tribute in the form of goods and labour.Martin & Grube 2000, p.21. The most notable forms of tribute pictured on Maya ceramics are cacao, textiles and feathers. During the 9th century AD, the central Maya region suffered major political collapse, marked by the abandonment of cities, the ending of dynasties and a northward shift of population. During this period, known as the Terminal Classic, the northern cities of Chichen Itza and Uxmal show increased activity. Major cities in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula continued to be inhabited long after the cities of the southern lowlands ceased to raise monuments.Becker 2004, p.135.
Postclassic Period The Postclassic Period (AD 900-c.1524) was marked by a series of changes that distinguished its cities from those of the preceding Classic Period.Arroyo 2001, p.38. The once-great city of Kaminaljuyu in the Valley of Guatemala was abandoned after a period of continuous occupation that spanned almost two thousand years.Sharer & Traxler 2006, p.618. This was symptomatic of changes that were sweeping across the highlands and neighbouring Pacific coast, with long-occupied cities in exposed locations relocated, apparently due to a proliferation of warfare. Cities came to occupy more-easily defended hilltop locations surrounded by deep ravines, with ditch-and-wall defences sometimes supplementing the protection provided by the natural terrain. Chichen Itza, in the north, became what was probably the largest, most powerful and most cosmopolitan of all Maya cities.Sharer & Traxler 2006, p.559. One of the most important cities in the Guatemalan Highlands at this time was Qʼumarkaj, also known as Utatlán, the capital of the aggressive Kʼicheʼ Maya kingdom.
Conquest and rediscovery