A civilization that inexplicably abandoned its cities survives in the Yucatan jungles
"We are not myths of the past, ruins in the jungle – we are people struggling for equality." — Rigoberta Menchu, 1992 Nobel Laureate
From the top of Nohochmul Pyramid, above the forest canopy, I can see across the unbroken flatness of the Northern Yucatan to the distant horizon. Below me a small group of other tourists, having given up the climb, is making its way back down. I am alone for a while, standing on the narrow stone ledge surrounding the small summit-temple where a thousand years ago Mayan Priests performed ritual ceremonies to appease their Gods.
I tried to imagine the world as it was back then, when Coba, now only a pile of crumbling ruins in the jungle, was a thriving city-state with a population of 55,000 people. Back then the broad roads, called sacbeh, now barely discernable through the encroaching forest, were corridors of trade linking Coba with Chichen Itza, Tulum, Tikal, and dozens of other Mayan city-states as far away as Copan in northern Honduras. Nohochmul, highest of the Yucatan pyramids, laboriously built by human hands but dedicated to their all powerful, often vindictive Gods, may well be a symbol of what ultimately went wrong with Mayan culture.
During the height of its glory Mayan society was rigidly divided into an elite class of priests and rulers, and a lower order of workers and farmers. The priests, who were believed to have divine insight into the Machiavellian scheming of their many Gods, controlled all aspects of daily life, from the planting of crops to the offering of human sacrifice. It was a society obsessed with the measurement of time and, driven by a belief that time and fortune were cyclical and repetitive, they developed an accurate calendar, became accomplished astronomers, and chiselled a complex record of their history into temple walls and stone slabs, called stelae.
The great stone monuments that have become the legacy of Mayan culture were designed to glorify the Gods, rather than house the people. The pyramids, temples, sacred precincts, and ball courts were places of assembly where people gathered for religious, political or sporting events. Except for royalty and a few priests, the people lived in wood and thatch houses surrounding the city core and almost nothing of their lives is preserved in the archeological record.
When the Spanish arrived in the Yucatan in 1542, Coba and the rest of the great Mayan cities had been abandoned, their towering monuments and temples already overgrown by jungle vines. No one is exactly sure why: Inter-city war? Revolt against the oppressive rule of the priests? Crop failures? Over population of urban centres? Or, more likely a combination of all these things. What we do know is that the historical record carved into the stelae stopped abruptly long before the Spanish conquest.
When the Maya abandoned their cities they left behind the cult of the Gods and the all-powerful priests and kings who, for centuries, had controlled their lives. With the disappearance of the ruling class, many of the great intellectual achievements of Mayan society were also lost. The written language was left to fade away on stelae scattered among the crumbling ruins of pyramids and temples. Their knowledge of astronomy, once a shining example of Mayan science, was abandoned in the empty observatories where priests once predicted the mood of the Gods from the movement of the stars and planets. When they left, the people took with them their language, their knowledge of agriculture, and the basic skills needed to survive in the hostile environment of the Yucatan. Today more than five million of their descendants still live in the region that was once controlled by the city-states of the Mayan empire.
Most of the modern Maya of the Yucatan have been thoroughly integrated into Mexican society. At the Bahia Principe, the resort where we are staying, they are the waiters, drivers, hostesses, and gardeners. They are also businessmen and women who surf the net, work in banks, and pilot modern boats and aircraft.
But there is another group of Maya who, by choice or necessity, continue to live as their ancestors did – scratching a subsistence living out of the jungle. As tourists we see them from a distance – groups of children clustered around their tiny stick-and-thatch homes, a woman standing in a doorway or a man hacking at the meagre soil with a hoe.
As I picked my way back down Nohochmul pyramid and left the ruins of Coba behind I looked forward to meeting some of these people and learning more about their lives. A small group of us had arranged to visit a nearby village in conjunction with a clean-up campaign, part of an ecological program sponsored by one of the local tour companies.
The bus dropped us off at a siding on the gravel road and Miriam, our multilingual, Maya-speaking guide, led us along a narrow path through the jungle to the village. At the edge of the clearing an emaciated dog stretched his bony frame, observed us briefly with one bleary eye and went back to sleep. Outside the nearest house a frustrated old hen, tethered by one leg to a stake in the ground, clucked frantically in a futile attempt to gather up her free-ranging chicks. Except for smoke wafting through the thatched roof there was no sign of a human presence. The heat was oppressive.
Miriam explains that 185 people live in the village – 13 families each with 10 or 12 kids. The houses, scattered randomly among several interconnected clearings are typical "xanil nah", a design that has not changed for thousands of years. Four posts carry the roof beams and the walls are enclosed by vertical sticks. The floor is a raised platform of earth and the roof is covered by palm-leaf thatch. There are no chimneys or windows and no door on the opening to the single room inside.
As we approach the house the doorway fills with toddlers. Miriam calls out a greeting. The kids move aside and we step into the cool interior where a soft light filters through the walls. This is where the people spend the heat of the afternoon.
In one corner of the room Marta Elena smiles, waves a welcome and continues with her kitchen chores. She is kneeling at a low table beside the hearth, preparing tortillas over a smouldering open fire surrounded by rocks. The smoke drifts away through openings between sticks forming the walls. With amazing dexterity she fashions the dough into thin disks, places them on a curved metal sheet over the fire and gives them a quick turn before setting them aside, ready for the family's evening meal. Her infant daughter is sleeping soundly in a makeshift crib beside her and she patiently tolerates the efforts of her two-year old son to help with the tortillas.
A rough wooden bench in the other corner of the kitchen contains a few pots and pans, some vegetables from the garden, and a canister of water drawn from the well in front of the house. The other end of the room, cluttered with tools, stores, and household belongings, is the family sleeping area. I am puzzled that there are only five hammocks but am told that the kids double up.
The tortillas finished, Marta Elena scoops up her infant daughter and proudly shows her off to the visitors. Marta Elena is 33, she has eight children but she tells us through our interpreter that she hopes to have many more. Her husband, Alberto, comes in from the forest. An expert tree climber, he supports his family by harvesting and processing chicle, the milky white sap of the sapodilla tree. He offers to give us a demonstration and, with nothing more than a loop of rope and calloused bare feet he works his way high up the smooth slender trunk of a tree. Then, swinging his machete as he slides back down, he cuts diagonal slashes that guide the sap into small collecting buckets at the base. After many such trees he has enough sap to fill the large black kettle out by the well. There it is boiled over an open fire until it reaches the consistency of taffy, then poured into wooden moulds where it hardens into rubbery blocks ready for sale to an American chewing gum manufacturer.
As we prepare to leave, children carrying plastic garbage bags emerge from every corner of the village and we are reminded of what brought us here. The cleanup campaign involves giving the kids a token gift for each bag of garbage they collect. Today the gift is a cellophane-wrapped sucker on a stick and the kids line up for the exchange. Candy is not usually given but this is a special day. Next week the program moves on to another village. Betty hands out suckers and I help load garbage. The kids dance happily away with their suckers leaving behind a clutter of cellophane wrappers. Miriam shakes her head, "we try," she says.
