How Did The Mayan Code Contribute To Its Downfall

The Mayan Code, also known as the Mayan Script and the Mayan Hieroglyphs, was the writing system of Ancient Maya. The oldest account of it being used was found inside a Mayan pyramid in 2006 and found to be from around 300 BC (“Mayan Writing”). Attempts to break the Mayan Code began in 1832 and continued until the early 1950s, when breakthroughs in the Code were made, allowing more glyphs to be figured out. The first thing to be decoded were the Mayan numbers in 1832, allowing Mayan years to be matched with writings and carvings. Later, in 1880, Ernst Förstemann decoded the Mayan Calendar and discovered the Mayan way of measuring time (“Time Line”). In the 1930’s, Eric Thompson, a popular Mayanist, convinced most other researchers that each
Mayan glyph stood for an idea, a word or a sentence, and that the glyphs were basically hieroglyphs, or picture writing (Stuart 27). As it turned out, Thompson was completely wrong, and incorrectly deciphered many Ancient Mayan Glyphs (“Breaking” 46). In 1952, Yuri Knorozov, a Russian Mayanist, published a paper in Russia suggesting that each Glyph represented one syllable instead of an idea, as there weren’t enough glyphs to all represent all the different words in the Mayan language, but there were too many Glyphs for each to be a letter (“Time Line”). The paper was published in the United States by archeologists Michael and Sophie Coe, and they later supported and proved it (Coe 60). Yuri Knorozov’s breaking of the Mayan Code provided researchers with accurate accounts of the Mayan culture and civilization, allowing researchers to create theories about the demise of its urban centers and establishing the Mayans as a developed people. Breaking the Mayan Code helped researchers to disprove previous theories of the Mayan Downfall, and to theorize about the downfall by use of writings and scripts that the Mayans wrote.
After the Mayan Code was broken, researchers were able to use information from scripts and writings from Ancient Maya to prove previous theories wrong and to write plausible theories that had a possibility to be true. “Thompson had a -- sort of a two pronged attack on -- well, let’s say three pronged attack on Knorosov, one on the basis of his politics, that is he would have been brainwashed by the Soviets into a totally Marxist, Leninist, anti-American, anti-imperialism, anti-Western, so that was Thompson’s take on it right from the beginning” (“Breaking” 61). Eric Thompson believed that the glyphs were symbolic for words and constantly believed that Knorozov had made an incorrect translation, attacking him in two or three different ways (Stuart 4). “For instance, Knorosov made one iconographic mistake in one of his articles that identified a deer -- what is quite clearly a deer -- as a jaguar, and Thompson said “well, maybe that’s a Marxist-Leninist jaguar but it’s not one of ours, it’s a deer”” (“Breaking” 61). He refused to believe any of the information revealed by the Code because he was convinced that the translations were wrong, and convinced other researchers to believe the same (“Breaking”
62). After the Mayan Code was broken, different theories of the downfall of Ancient Maya Civilization were based on information gained from reading Mayan carvings and scripts. Researchers took the information into account as they theorized. They took information about the daily life of the Mayan people, their culture and their religion into account, and theorized the possible effects that could come from Mayans actions.
In 1954, Betty Meggers, an American Archeologist, came up with the theory that Ancient Mayan civilization had declined and collapsed due to the limited agricultural space they had (Culbert 27).
The Mayans used carvings and scripts to portray themselves as an Agricultural society that relied heavily on farming. The Mayans would have had to clear more and more land to make space (Stromberg). With a such high population, if something had happened to the food supply, the Mayan population would have fallen, and later, the culture, which is another theory (Perl 14). It was argued that the Code didn’t actually portray anything about the downfall of Mayan Civilization and didn’t accurately portray Maya. As most of Mayan Agriculture did not need terracing, something that is usually used in a purely agricultural society, and that since only a small amount were found in Mayan ruins, Mayan societies could not have structured intensive agriculture and the scripts that portrayed that were untrue, and merely emphasizing a particular aspect of Mayan culture (Culbert
25).
One of the leading theories is drought, as researchers can tell how wet an area was at particular points of time by studying stalagmites, as rain is absorbed in the ground and dripped onto stalagmites. Later, researchers take information from oxygen isotopes and analyze lake sediments, reading the level of chemicals which can reveal information on rainfall at different times - how much, how little, etc. - and therefore climate (Kluger). Since the Mayans were mainly portrayed as farmers, which some researchers argue to be untrue, the drought and lack of rain from 800 CE to 1050 CE angered citizens, as it caused their plants and crops to die, and caused social unrest in the civilization (Cartwright). Studies show that after an extremely wet period of time, after the rain had stopped, there was a period of death, causing less agricultural productivity, which led to social and political decline and collapse (Kluger). Leaders of civilizations were considered to be close to the Gods, and when it didn’t rain or a natural disaster occurred, the people blamed the leader for their relationship with the Gods.
“The better the year-to-year weather - with plenty of rainfall and reasonably steady and predictable temperatures - the better the crops do, and the more the culture and economy can expand,” Jeffrey Kluger explained in his article (Kluger). In the early 1960s, Euan Mackie gave evidence that Maya may have been abandoned due to earthquakes and other natural disasters, by showing how a Mayan palace-like structure was damaged and left unfixed; he argues that the damage was caused by earthquakes, and it happened while the Mayans’ inhabited their cities (Culbert 26). Stories passed down from Native Mayans mention terrifying hurricanes and storms in the Mayan area, and records from the fifteen hundreds show how hurricanes have continued to hit the same area for hundreds of years (Culbert 27).
Some Archeological evidence can be found to support the theory of Invasion into Mayan cities; some men are portrayed later in Mayan history don’t look anything like the Mayans but are wearing the clothing of the Mayans; the Wind God of Central Mexico has been portrayed and the orange pottery, traditionally made on the Coast of the Gulf, has been found in Ancient Mayan ruins. At some Ancient Mayan ruins, large numbers of stone arrowhead, usually used for fighting, were found, evidence that excess warfare had occurred there (Cartwright). Herbert Joseph Spinden, a Mayan researcher, theorized that the collapse of the Maya came about from disease, specifically yellow-fever, as after Mayan dates were decoded and researchers could better understand the years of the Maya, he assumed that the diseases present in Maya were similar to those in the Colombian past and it is well understood that yellow-fever was a prime disease in the “New World” (Culbert 28). “An interesting feature of this skeleton is the occurrence of a large spongy node on the upper and inner surface of the left tibia, on which it extends about two inches in length, one inch in breadth, and a half inch in thickness,” said Samuel George Morton, remarking on one of the Mayan skeletons found (Culbert 311).
The Ancient Mayans might have run out of resources, as it is shown that they changed wood types, when before, they had only used Sapodilla wood, later, smaller ordinary logging trees were used, showing the the Mayans might have run out of Sapodilla.