Art and Architecture
Mayan Architecture
Limestone structures, faced with lime stucco, were the hallmark of ancient
Maya architecture.
The Maya developed several unique building innovations, including the corbel
arch which was a false arch achieved by stepping each successive block, from
opposite sides, closer to the center, and capped at the peak.
Tombs were often encased within or beneath Maya structures. Frequently new
temples were built over existing structures.
A honeycombed roofcomb towered above many structures, providing a base for
painted plaster that was the Maya equivalent of the billboard. In addition to
temples, most Maya sites had multi-roomed structures that probably served as
royal palaces as well as centers for government affairs.
Historically significant events, such as accessions, the capture or sacrifice
of royal victims and the completion of the twenty year katun cycle, were
recorded on stone stelae and tablets.
Without metal tools, beasts of burden, or even the wheel the Mayans were able
to construct vast cities across a huge jungle landscape with an amazing degree
of architectural perfection and variety.
They were noted as well for elaborate and highly decorated ceremonial
architecture, including temple-pyramids, palaces and observatories, all built
without metal tools.
- Pyramids of Mexico
Scientists uncover lost Mayan marketplace
September 8, 2000 - AP - Guatemala City
Scientists and looters ignored the ruin for nearly a century because it
appeared devoid of temples and burial sites that might yield valuable artifacts
and treasures.
They had no idea what they were missing.
Underneath the jungle curtain of mud and dense foliage was a sprawling lost
city called "Cancuen," (can-ku-win), one of the most important commercial
centers of the Mayan world for more than 1,200 years.
Cancuen has been rediscovered by Guatemalan and American scientists working
deep in the country's northern jungles. They believe it will take 10 years to
fully unearth the city, which dates to 400 B.C.
It is buttressed by a 270,000-square-foot Mayan palace. With three floors -
each 66 feet high - and 170 rooms, it is among the most grandiose Mayan
structures ever discovered, the National Geographic Society announced Friday.
The society is a chief sponsor of the Cancuen excavation project.
"We started off working with what we thought was a small palace, part of a
small Mayan settlement," said Arthur Demerest, a Vanderbilt University
archaeologist and head of the Cancuen project. "What we found was a palace 20
times as large as we were expecting and an important Mayan marketplace that had
been forgotten for almost 100 years."
Built in the shadow of the hulking palace, the 5-square-mile city featured a
crowded rectangular layout of heavy stone walls, 11 spacious stone-tiled patios
and buildings with cubbyhole-like rooms and thick, multileveled roofs.
While Demerest said scientists aren't sure how many Mayan merchants traded in
Cancuen, the city is thought to have attracted thousands from nearby highland
settlements, including the sprawling, majestic city of Tikal, 85 miles to the
northeast.
Cancuen, an ancient Maya word meaning "Place of the Serpent," became a key
trading post because of the sprawling River Passion in what is known today as
southern Peten, Guatemala's northernmost province, Demerest said.
First discovered in 1905 by Austrian explorer Tobert Maler, scientists and
looters ignored the site for years.
"A city that was built only for commercial purposes and not for religious
ones seemed uninteresting to a lot of academics and worthless to a lot of
looters," Demerest said, adding that the city is now overrun with such
jungle-dwelling animals as howler monkeys.
Cancuen lacked the breathtaking temples that dominate Tikal and other Mayan
sites because its inhabitants worshipped and buried their dead in surrounding
highland areas.
"All of the fantastic temples you see at other sites are an effort to copy
the altitude of the highlands that surrounded Cancuen," said Demerest, who said
that being close to the heavens was the cornerstone of Mayan religious
practices. "In Cancuen they had the real thing."
Though work at the site has been suspended until next spring because of the
rainy season, scientists have already recovered dozens of artifacts in nearby
mountain caves.
Cancuen remained shrouded by jungle until 1967, when a group of Harvard
graduate students returned to the city for less than a week and brought back
crude sketches of what they thought was waiting to be discovered there.
Demerest and scientists from Guatemala's City's Valley University were drawn
back to the area in April because hieroglyphics inscribed in artifacts recovered
in Tikal and Dos Pilas, the ancient Maya's largest commercial center, made
reference to a marketplace called Cancuen and its powerful fourth-century B.C.
ruler, Tah Chan Wi, or "Celestial Fire."
Frederico Fahsen, the foremost Guatemalan authority on deciphering Mayan
hieroglyphics and the Cancuen project's co-director, said the Cancuen ruler
married his daughter to the king of Dos Pilas, 55 miles to the northeast, to
establish relationships with surrounding settlements rather than go to war with
them.
"Mayan cities have been in constant war, with their constructions dedicated
to the gods and the heavens," Fahsen said. "Here we have exactly the opposite."
The art of the Maya, as with every civilization, is a reflection of their
lifestyle and culture. The art was composed of delineation and painting upon
paper and plaster, carvings in wood and stone, clay and stucco models, and terra
cotta figurines from molds. The technical process of metal working was also
highly developed but as the resources were scarce, they only created ornaments
in this media. Many of the great programs of Maya art, inscriptions, and
architecture were commissioned by Mayan kings to memorialize themselves and
ensure their place in history. The prevailing subject of their art is not
anonymous priests and unnamed gods but rather men and women of power that serve
to recreate the history of the people. The works are a reflection of the society
and its interaction with surrounding people.
One of the greatest shows of Mayan artistic ability and culture is the
hieroglyphic stairway located at Copan. The stairway is an iconographical
complex composed of statues, figures, and ramps in addition to the central
stairway which together port ray many elements of Mayan society. An alter is
present as well as many pictorial references of sacrifice and their gods.
