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Festivals sparked first Maya cities
This week Inomata suggests that the collective activity of building temples and worshipping eventually encouraged integration of the diverse traveller groups and the growth of an urban centre, rather than the other way round.
Sébastian Homberger
“Before the pyramids dripped with the blood of human sacrifice, this was a cultural melting pot”
Festivals sparked first Maya cities Fred Pearce
THE great Central American jungle civilisation of the Maya is renowned for its stepped pyramids, temples and great urban plazas, where human sacrifice may have been routine. But a surprising story is emerging from detailed examination of archaeological remains. One of the Maya’s oldest known great cities, at Ceibal in Guatemala, began as a multicultural love-in. The first great pyramid builders of Central America, it turns out, were mostly travellers: hunters and gatherers of no fixed abode, who began meeting for ad hoc ceremonies and rituals in the jungle about 3000 years ago. The findings overturn conventional thinking that ancient cities all emerged from prosperous farming communities, and that big religious ceremonial complexes were only built in the most successful cities. In the case of the Maya, and some Middle Eastern cultures, it was the other way round. The first 12 | NewScientist | 28 March 2015
builders and worshippers were more new-age hippy festivalgoers than yeoman farmers or urban sophisticates. Only hundreds of years later did their successors settle, take up full-time farming and build a city. For the past decade, Takeshi Inomata of the University of Arizona in Tucson has been excavating the Ceibal site on the banks of the Pasión river, which once had some 10,000 inhabitants and sprawled over tens of square kilometres. His team’s latest investigations reveal that the city’s residential areas are much more recent than the first ceremonial pyramids and temples (PNAS, doi.org/25g).
Early builders “The ceremonial complex was the first architecture built at Ceibal,” Inomata says. “Durable residences were not built until two to six centuries later.” The first builders, in about 950 BC, were hunters, fishers, foragers and nomadic farmers,
Inomata and his wife Daniela Triadan have previously shown that Ceibal was not just the first citadel of the Maya, but probably the earliest of many ceremonial complexes built in the Central –Build it and they will come– American jungles over the past three millennia. who gathered periodically for Some researchers will take more the construction of ceremonial persuading that Ceibal was built buildings and community by nomads, though. Elizabeth rituals. While at work, they Graham of University College lived in temporary shelters London says that permanent before dispersing again. wood-built structures may have Even 250 years later, when the predated the masonry uncovered largest pyramids and temples by Inomata’s team but failed to were completed, only a small elite survive the ravages of nature. lived in permanent homes. The “We have to be careful not to fall rest came and went. Only in about into the trap of linking sedentism 300 BC did urban living become to masonry construction,” she the norm, with the spread of says. But she likes the idea that suburbs full of houses built collaborative construction on permanent platforms. played an important role in social integration. At the height of the Maya Festival city civilisation, society was strongly An ancient collection of diverse hierarchical. It is thought that hunter-gatherers came together to there were brutal religious rituals build religious festival sites that may run by priest-kings, with human have been the origin of big Maya cities sacrifices, bloodletting and selfmutilation aimed at placating their gods. However, the extent of those is still debated. But the story now emerging is that Ceibal was very different in the MAYA early days, says Melissa Burham, EMPIRE a co-author of the new study. “Different peoples with diverse ways of life coexisted in apparent BELIZE harmony for generations before MEXICO Ceibal establishing a uniform society,” she says. Before the steps of the GUATEMALA HONDURAS pyramids dripped with the blood 200 km of human sacrifice, Burham adds, Ceibal began as “an ancient EL SALVADOR cultural melting pot”. n
Sébastian Homberger
“Before the pyramids dripped with the blood of human sacrifice, this was a cultural melting pot”
Festivals sparked first Maya cities Fred Pearce
THE great Central American jungle civilisation of the Maya is renowned for its stepped pyramids, temples and great urban plazas, where human sacrifice may have been routine. But a surprising story is emerging from detailed examination of archaeological remains. One of the Maya’s oldest known great cities, at Ceibal in Guatemala, began as a multicultural love-in. The first great pyramid builders of Central America, it turns out, were mostly travellers: hunters and gatherers of no fixed abode, who began meeting for ad hoc ceremonies and rituals in the jungle about 3000 years ago. The findings overturn conventional thinking that ancient cities all emerged from prosperous farming communities, and that big religious ceremonial complexes were only built in the most successful cities. In the case of the Maya, and some Middle Eastern cultures, it was the other way round. The first 12 | NewScientist | 28 March 2015
builders and worshippers were more new-age hippy festivalgoers than yeoman farmers or urban sophisticates. Only hundreds of years later did their successors settle, take up full-time farming and build a city. For the past decade, Takeshi Inomata of the University of Arizona in Tucson has been excavating the Ceibal site on the banks of the Pasión river, which once had some 10,000 inhabitants and sprawled over tens of square kilometres. His team’s latest investigations reveal that the city’s residential areas are much more recent than the first ceremonial pyramids and temples (PNAS, doi.org/25g).
Early builders “The ceremonial complex was the first architecture built at Ceibal,” Inomata says. “Durable residences were not built until two to six centuries later.” The first builders, in about 950 BC, were hunters, fishers, foragers and nomadic farmers,
Inomata and his wife Daniela Triadan have previously shown that Ceibal was not just the first citadel of the Maya, but probably the earliest of many ceremonial complexes built in the Central –Build it and they will come– American jungles over the past three millennia. who gathered periodically for Some researchers will take more the construction of ceremonial persuading that Ceibal was built buildings and community by nomads, though. Elizabeth rituals. While at work, they Graham of University College lived in temporary shelters London says that permanent before dispersing again. wood-built structures may have Even 250 years later, when the predated the masonry uncovered largest pyramids and temples by Inomata’s team but failed to were completed, only a small elite survive the ravages of nature. lived in permanent homes. The “We have to be careful not to fall rest came and went. Only in about into the trap of linking sedentism 300 BC did urban living become to masonry construction,” she the norm, with the spread of says. But she likes the idea that suburbs full of houses built collaborative construction on permanent platforms. played an important role in social integration. At the height of the Maya Festival city civilisation, society was strongly An ancient collection of diverse hierarchical. It is thought that hunter-gatherers came together to there were brutal religious rituals build religious festival sites that may run by priest-kings, with human have been the origin of big Maya cities sacrifices, bloodletting and selfmutilation aimed at placating their gods. However, the extent of those is still debated. But the story now emerging is that Ceibal was very different in the MAYA early days, says Melissa Burham, EMPIRE a co-author of the new study. “Different peoples with diverse ways of life coexisted in apparent BELIZE harmony for generations before MEXICO Ceibal establishing a uniform society,” she says. Before the steps of the GUATEMALA HONDURAS pyramids dripped with the blood 200 km of human sacrifice, Burham adds, Ceibal began as “an ancient EL SALVADOR cultural melting pot”. n