(Clarissa Guggenheim /El Pilar Program)
Special to ABCNEWS.com
(Clarissa Guggenheim /El Pilar Program) Special to ABCNEWS.com |
The mysterious Maya civilization achieved profound levels of technological and social sophistication while Europe slumbered through the Dark Ages. |
A Maya house at El Pilar opened in June 1999 after excavation and consolidation.
While other Maya sites highlight grandiose temples, El Pilar has as its focus
the everyday lives of ordinary people.
When Anabel Ford settled into the jungle of Central America to work on her doctoral
dissertation in archaeology, she learned a few lessons that have haunted her
since.
She stayed for nine months, studying the mysterious
Maya civilization that achieved profound levels of technological and social
sophistication while Europe slumbered through the Dark Ages. It all collapsed
600 years before the first Europeans arrived, leaving behind tantalizing clues
about a culture that developed a precise calendar, a clever form of writing
and an understanding of mathematics.
Learning About the Maya
“I had to find out how to get water, how to make a shelter, how to do all
the basic things that the Maya had to do,” Ford says. “All my water
resources came from ancient Maya reservoirs.”
 University of California, Santa Barbara archaeologist Anabel Ford (Clarissa Guggenheim / El Pilar Program) |
The experience left her with a profound appreciation of the people we
know simply as the Maya.
|
(ABCNEWS.com/Magellan Geographix) |
El Pilar Archaeological Reserve for Maya Flora and Fauna, established
last year, straddles the border between the two countries. What makes
the international agreement remarkable is that the two uneasy neighbors
can’t even agree on exactly where the border is, but they have committed
to preserving the site |
No Place Like Home
Unlike other Maya sites, the cornerstone of El Pilar is not a lavish temple.
That still lies buried beneath soil and the dense vegetation of the jungle.
Instead, the main attraction is a home that Ford and scores of volunteers have
unearthed the past three years.
“I wanted to see the houses where the people lived,”
she says. El Pilar is the only monument site in the vast region occupied by
the Maya, covering much of Central America, that has a house as its central
feature.
Although the research is still in its early stages,
Ford has already been able to reach some conclusions. The intense social structure
that enabled the Maya to build great temples did not end at the edge of the
urban centers.
Even the settlements in the countryside, which supplied
food for the Maya metropolises, were carefully thought out. The houses at El
Pilar, for example, are grouped around a central plaza.
“You excavate the houses and you find out that
these guys have separate houses for each kind of activity. They have a dormitory,
storage area, kitchen and they are all separate houses,” Ford says.
Rich and Poor
The houses reflect a variation in the rank of the occupants. The one that has
now been opened for public viewing served as the dwelling for a family of elite
status and it even had its own “forest garden.” Ford plans to begin
excavating the house of a family with a more common ranking in the years ahead.
That social stratification played a key role in the
rise of the Maya.
“You wouldn’t get big temples if you didn’t
have organization,” she says.
But the temples came with a high price.
The gradual deciphering of the Maya writings, called
hieroglyphs, in recent years has dispelled a long-held image of the rulers of
the Maya civilization as kindly priests. The writings tell an unpleasant story
of leaders who were more concerned with self-aggrandizement than simple prayers,
according to T. Patrick Culbert, professor of anthropology at the University
of Arizona.
The leaders were “egomaniacs all,” Culbert
writes in the September 1998 issue of the journal Archaeology, who “warred
incessantly and sacrificed prisoners to build prestige.”
Ford doubts that all the leaders were so corrupt. Some
were probably bad, and some were probably good.
“They were just humans,” she says.
Population Boom and Bust
The peasants whose labor through the centuries built grand edifices and tombs
for their leaders also came up against a problem that is common in parts of
the world today, according to Culbert.
Culbert says he believes that toward the end of the
Maya era, around 600 A.D., the population density reached 600 per square mile
in northern Guatemala and parts of Mexico and Belize. That “staggering”
figure, he notes, is comparable to the most densely populated parts of rural
China today, and it contributed to a slash-and-burn philosophy that replaced
earlier farming techniques.
No one is sure exactly what triggered the collapse
of the Maya, and there were probably several causes, but many experts believe
overpopulation set the stage.
In the end, too many people may have destroyed the
environment that had supported them so well.
And history may be repeating itself. NASA satellite
photos show that the philosophy of slash-and-burn to make way for crops continues
to prevail in that region, even within some areas that are supposed to be protected.
And that brings us back to Anabel Ford.
Enlisting Local Support
Ford says she believes the people who are there now — among the 7 million
descendants of the ancient Maya — must play a greater role if the monuments
are going to be preserved.
She has organized support groups among the subsistence
farmers who live in the region, trying to help them understand the precious
legacy of the Maya. The ruins bring tourists into the area, and that means new
revenues. This year 2,500 persons have visited El Pilar, forming the basis for
an ecotourism industry.
““There’s going to be some sacrifices,
but if we can elevate knowledge locally they will be their own vigilantes,”
she says.
The hope is that the farmers there will understand
something some of the ancient rulers forgot. In the end, the people have to
be with you.