Past Exhibitions
Maya: Secrets of their Ancient World
Closed
November 19, 2011 to April 9, 2012
About the Exhibition
Journey through the mysterious land of the ancient Maya at the Royal Ontario Museum in the world premiere of the landmark exhibition, Maya: Secrets of their Ancient World. This original exhibition vibrantly brings to life the Classic Period (250 - 900 CE) of this ancient Mesoamerican culture and features many never-before-seen artifacts.
This exhibition is the result of an exciting international collaboration between the ROM, the Canadian Museum of Civilization (CMC) and the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH). Nearly 250 artifacts have been assembled, including large sculptures, ceramics, masks, and jewellery, to tell the story of their sacred rulers, inspired architectural feats, elaborate writing system, bloodletting rituals and cosmology of death and resurrection. As well, the exhibition explores the truth behind the 2012 end-of-days legend and the puzzling collapse of their civilization. We also learn of the modern Maya, a vigorous culture, inspired by their ancestors’ great achievements that can be found in present-day Mexico, Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
Most of the exhibition’s remarkable objects have been selected from numerous Mexican museums in the Yucatan Peninsula region where the Maya mainly lived, while others are of the ROM’s own renowned holdings. Prominent institutions, including the British Museum, Princeton University Art Museum, and Toronto’s own Gardiner Museum have also loaned artifacts. Most of the showcased objects have never before been seen in Canada. Many, only recently excavated, are recognized as among the most significant archaeological finds ever discovered. These include a stunning panel depicting Palenque's greatest king K'inich Janaahb' Pakal.
Original ROM footage of historically significant sites in Mexico, touchable models of artifacts, and a series of thought-provoking lectures will immerse visitors in an educational and entertaining journey back in time.
Videos
Lectures
Sacrifice and Bloodletting
The ancient Maya. Their past is shrouded in mystery. Tales of sacrifice and bloodletting emerged in their written history as once indecipherable glyphs are translated and revealed.
Bloodletting or the act of piercing skin to allow blood to flow from the body has been used for two reasons throughout human history: to cure or prevent disease and religious sacrifice.
Bloodletting was of particular importance to the ancient Maya. For them, the act was a sacrifice to the gods, to appease, and perhaps to curry favour with higher powers. Animals were most commonly sacrificed, but for important events and divinations, humans were sacrificed. Noble blood, whose life-essence was seen as more potent and desireable, was thought to be most valuable for communicating with gods and ancestors.
The Ritual
Not all acts of sacrifice involved death. Ancient Mayan rulers used bloodletting to declare their privileged connections to the sacred world. First, the skin was pierced and the spilled blood was collected into a bowl containing strips of cotton cloth. The blood soaked cotton strips were then set on fire and from the smoke and flames arose the vision serpent, a mythical being that connected the living to the sacred world. From the jaws of the serpent, the ancestor or god appeared to communicate directly with the person who offered the sacrifice.
Bloodletting sacrifices often took place in a secluded temple room on top of the pyramids. Some of these ceremonies were public spectacles with crowds gathering in the plaza below.
Maya Calendar
2012 – The truth behind the end-of-days legend
The ancient Maya carefully calculated the passage of time and their system of timekeeping has fueled our modern day preoccupation with a Maya end-of-days prophecy.
The ancient Maya predicted the end of the world on December 23, 2012. Or, did they? What did the Classic Maya (250-900 AD) really believe? To understand what the ancient Maya thought would happen in 2012, one needs to first understand their sophisticated time keeping system.
How the Maya Calendar Works
There are two parts to the ancient Maya calendar: the Calendar Round and the Long Count. The Calendar Round is in turn comprised of two smaller cycles: the Tzolk’in and the Haab’. The Tzolk’in is a 260 day calendar that keeps track of ritually significant days, while the Haab’ is a civic calendar of 365 days. Combining the cycles gives a unique combination of day names in each calendar that would occur once every 52 years.
To provide dates beyond the 52 year cycle of the Calendar Round, the ancient Maya used the Long Count system to record how much time had passed since August 13, 3114 BCE, the day that the current universe was thought to be created. It is the time cycles of this Long Count calendar from which the 2012 end-of-days legend originated.
The Long Count system is very easy to understand:
| Days | Long Count Period | Solar Years |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | = 1 K'in | 1/365 |
| 20 | = 20 K'ins or 1 Winal | 0.0548 |
| 360 | = 18 Winasl or 1 Tun | 0.985 |
| 7,200 | = 20 Tuns or 1 K'atun | 19.7 |
| 144,000 | = 20 K'atuns or 1 B'ak'tun | 394.3 |
A date recorded in the Long Count calendar system would look like this:
1 b’ak’tuns, 3 k’atuns, 5 tuns, 11 winals, 4 k’ins.
December 23, 2012 marks the end of 13 b’ak’tuns — and, at least in some interpretations by Mayanists scholars who spend their lives studying the ancient Maya, the end of a great cycle of time.
The numbers 20 and 13 were very significant to the ancient Maya and whether or not they thought that this cycle of 13 b’ak’tuns would be completed in 2012 is one of the Classic Maya’s greatest secrets. After 13 b’ak’tuns, the cycle may have restarted back to Day 1, or December 24, 2012 could be the beginning of the 14th b’ak’tun. In either case, the Maya calendar continues and the world does not come to an end.
What did the Maya believe would happen on December 23, 2012?
Classic Maya glyphs only provide a single clue to what they thought would happen that day. A Maya stela from the site of Tortuguero mentions an event that will happen at the end of the 13th b’ak’tun, and here is a breakdown of the glyphs as translated by independent scholars Sven Gronemeyer and Barbara MacLeod.
The translation reads as:
It will be closed the 13th b'ak'tun
on 4 Ajaw 3 K'ank'in
It will happen a sighting
of the B'olon Yookte' display
in the great investiture
Like in most readings of ancient Maya glyphs, the exact meaning of the prophecy remains obscure. This is particularly the case here where the two most critical glyphs in the statement have been worn away. Nonetheless, it sounds impressive when one realizes that 2012 will be associated with the appearance of Balun-Yokte’, one of the gods of the Underworld. But gods were routinely associated with the passage of time cycles in the Long Count. Though it makes a more compelling story, nothing suggests that the Classic Maya believed that in 2012 time would end and that a great Mayan deity would appear to destroy the earth.
References:
Gronemeyer, Sven and Barbara MacLeod. “What Could Happen in 2012: A Re-Analysis of the 13- Bak’tun Prophecy on Tortuguero Monument 6” WAYEB Notes 1379-8286 (2010):34.
Edmonson, Munro. “The Mayan Calendar Reform of 11.16.0.0.0.” Current Anthropology 17 (4): 1976
Writing/Glyphs
Fantastic monsters, animals and plants. Maya writing, or glyphs as they are more simply called, confounded explorers and researchers for almost five centuries since they were re-discovered. The first Europeans who visited Classic Period Maya ruins were amazed by the beautiful writing that covered the walls of cities abandoned in the jungles, but they could only guess at their meaning.
Deciphering Numbers
How do we read them? The Maya probably ceased to use the glyphs sometime in the 17th century. During the Spanish conquest, most Maya books were burned by priests and the knowledge of how to read and write the glyphs faded away. After almost two centuries of dedicated research, we can finally read about 80% of the mysterious writing to reveal the stories of these enigmatic people.
Some of the first glyphs to be translated were numbers. Dots and dashes represented ones and fives, while a shell was used for zero. By understanding the numbering system, scholars were also able to understand aspects of the Maya calendars. Yet at the beginning of the twentieth century, most glyphs remained un-deciphered.
Cracking the Code
Ideas. Words. Sounds. We now know that the Maya glyphs were a combination of logograms, where symbols represented a whole word, and phonetic glyphs that represented syllables. Yet Mayanists working during the first half of the twentieth century struggled to find those key breakthroughs that would unravel the code.
The first critical insights came in the 1950s when Yuri Knorozov realized that many of the glyphs were syllables closely related to those used today in Maya languages. Then, Heinrich Berlin and Tatiana Proskouriakoff demonstrated that many of the glyphs formed parts of stories that were about royal dynasties: their birth, accession to the throne, wars, conquest and length of rule.
A further leap in understanding the glyphs occurred in the 1970s when Mayanist David Stuart made the connection that several glyphs could stand for the same phonetic sound. One sound could have many visual representations and words could often be written in several ways.
Jungle Cities
Some of the most evocative images of ancient Maya sites are those that show temple-pyramids soaring over the jungle canopy. Many Classic Period Maya cities (250-900 CE) were built in the jungle, and early archaeologists spent months clearing away the vegetation that blanketed these sites. With populations in the low tens of thousands, these cities were quite small by today’s standards but would have been awe inspiring to visitors.
A city was a loose collection of elite and commoner homes surrounding temple-pyramids, a palace, and a ball court. The central area was devoted to the celebration of sacred rulers.
Palenque was one of the greatest Classic Maya cities. Though considerably smaller than some of the largest of Maya sites like Tikal and Calakmul, Palenque is famous for the quality of its art and architecture. The city was occupied by at least 100 BCE, but rose to prominence in the seventh century CE during the reign of K’inich Janaahb’ Pakal. Pakal and his sons and grandsons oversaw the construction of many of the buildings in Palenque’s central area, and the monuments of this era often contained glyphs and images that provide a window into city life during this period. Many of the objects in Maya: Secrets of their Ancient World come from Palenque.
Monuments to Sacred Rule
The Temple
Maya stepped pyramids were seen as gateways to both the heavens and the underworld – the door at the top of the temple-pyramid was an entrance to another world. When performing rituals inside the temple, the ruler communicated directly with gods and ancestors. Many of the temple-pyramids were dedicated to the various gods in the Maya pantheon, but some were great mausoleums within which a ruler was buried. People likely came into the city to participate in ritual festivals where musicians played trumpets, flutes, and drums as costumed actors mingled with the crowds standing below the temple-pyramids
The Palace
Nestled among a city’s temple-pyramid, visitors would have gazed up at the palace on top of a raised platform. The palace was the administrative center of the city and the home of the ruler. These sprawling complexes were larger, more opulent versions of the house compounds found throughout the Maya world, but they also contained a throne room, administrative offices, and storerooms. Depictions on pottery and stonework often show the ruler sitting on a bench, with a big cushion covered in jaguar skin, and surrounded by servants, dancers, nobles, and other members of the court. Most people likely never got to set foot inside the palace, but they would have watched ceremonies that were conducted on the palace platform.
The Ball Court
The last monument to sacred rule was the ball court. The ball game was played by two opposing teams whose members used their legs, hips, and elbows to pass a rubber ball from one end of the court to another. Likely the earliest team sport in the world, the game had deep ritual significance. A ball game was played just before the creation of the world, and the Classic Period Maya thought that by playing the game they aided in life’s daily triumph over the forces of darkness. Rulers used the ball court as a stage for dances and other performances, and also regularly played in ball games.
Cosmology
The Popol Vuh: Stories of the cosmos
At the end of the seventeenth century, a Dominican Friar named Francisco Ximénez was working among the K’iche’ Maya of highland Guatemala in a town named Chichicastenango. After gaining the community’s trust, he was given permission to transcribe and translate a mid-sixteenth century manuscript kept by the town’s elders. The book was called the Popol Vuh, or “Book of the People”.
Book of the People
The Popol Vuh is an incredibly rich story that traces the history of the K’iche’ from the creation of the world through the beginning of the first millennium CE. After a preamble that suggests that the book is based on the contents of a Pre-Columbian Codex (an accordion folded book of glyphs), the anonymous authors begin with one of the most evocative openings in all of literature:
“This is the account of when all is still and placid. All is silent and calm. Hushed is the womb of the sky”
The authors then go on to describe the creation of the earth, animals, and then humans across four cycles of creation and destruction. One of the most interesting of parts of this story is the adventures of the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, before the creation of the current world. The story begins with the twins’ future father, the Maize God, being killed on his way to play a ball game against the gods of the Underworld. His head is hung in a tree, and he impregnates the daughter of one of the Underworld gods by spitting into her hand. She later bears the Hero Twins, who decide to travel back to the Underworld to avenge their father. The twins use their cunning and ball game skills to survive multiple trials and eventually they kill the Underworld gods, resurrect their father, and rise into the heavens.
The Popol Vuh and the Principal Bird Deity
Though the creation stories told in the Popol Vuh changed over time, scholars have found the basic themes remarkably resilient. The saga of the Hero Twins and their father, for example, is one of the stories referenced repeatedly again on Classic Period Maya art. We can recognize the people and gods from the story, but sometimes the details differ significantly from those described in the Popol Vuh.
In the Popol Vuh, one of the Hero Twins’ first victories occurs at the expense of a vain god named Vucub Caquix who claims to be the sun. They first shoot down the bird-like deity with a blow gun and then plucked out his jeweled teeth and metal eyes.
This bowl on display in Maya: Secrets of their Ancient World depicts the Classic Period version of Vucub Caquix. Mayanists give this god a different name, the Principal Bird Deity, during the Classic Period, however. The bird-like deity was considered much more benevolent during this earlier era – it was a messenger of the god and the spiritual double of the Creator God Itzamnaaj. The shift from the Principal Bird Deity to Vucub Caquix over the course of 600 years reflects one of the changes that occurred in the Hero Twins myths as they were passed on from one generation to the next.
Reading the Popol Vuh will not get you completely inside the head of Classic Maya rulers, but these incredible tales provides us with a glimpse into Classic Maya cosmology and helps us to understand their views of their world.
Maya Collapse
The Maya Collapse: The ROM Interviews an Expert
When 19th century explorers first visited the Maya ruins, they wondered what had become of the people who built these cities and why they had left. We now know the Maya never left – today we know of ten million direct descendants of the people that once inhabited these cities.
The mystery of the abandonment of so many jungle cities during the 8th and 9th centuries CE continue to baffle scholars. To better understand the Classic Maya collapse, the ROM took a few moments to talk with James Aimers, an Assistant Professor at the State University of New York at Geneseo and an expert on the Maya collapse.
ROM: In a nutshell, what are the various theories of Maya collapse?
Dr. Aimers: A wide array of causes have been suggested for the changes of the Terminal Classic period in the Maya area, often called the collapse. These can be broadly grouped into social and environmental categories. Social problems may have included political revolution/peasant revolt, inter-site warfare/invasion, and changes to coastal and riverine trade routes in the Terminal Classic which left inland Maya sites cut-off from economic activity.
ROM: Can you describe how the environment may have influenced the collapse?
Dr. Aimers: Environmental issues raised have included soil erosion and loss of fertility, and the change of forest into un-tillable savanna through shifting agriculture. Earthquakes, hurricanes, human disease, insect infestation and plant blight have also been suggested for the abandonment of sites and/or regions. Currently, drought is of major interest to many scholars in archaeology and other fields but evidence for drought varies across the lowlands.
ROM: And what social changes may have affected the Maya?
Dr. Aimers: Some suggestions are partially environmental and partially social, such as overpopulation and a resultant stress on agricultural land. Drought can also be exacerbated by human practices such as deforestation for agriculture. Deforestation may have in some cases been caused by the need for firewood to burn lime for the plaster used on pyramids, palaces, plazas, and roads (this has been suggested for the site of El Mirador, Guatemala). Any of these stresses might have led to war, revolution, or the abandonment of sites as people sought opportunities elsewhere.
ROM: Is there one theory that you find most valid?
Dr. Aimers: There is general agreement that no single cause can explain the changes of the Terminal Classic. For example, we now have detailed data from many sites and even entire regions of the Maya area and these show that in some areas war was a prime cause of site abandonment, whereas in others environmental factors such as deforestation or drought played important roles.
The Petexbatun region of Guatemala war is well documented in hieroglyphic inscriptions and archaeological remains (e.g., fortifications) but archaeologists have been unable to find evidence of agricultural problems, drought, or overpopulation, though they have looked for such evidence. A contrasting case is presented by the site of Calakmul (in the state of Campeche, Mexico) where evidence suggests that drought played a key role in the abandonment of the site but this may have been exacerbated by the site’s well-documented and long-standing military rivalries.
The abandonment or decline of sites in the Terminal Classic often has to be explained on a case-by-case basis. At the level of specific sites or regions some explanations are better than others, but it is increasingly unlikely there will ever be a “one size fits all” explanation for the varied events of the Terminal Classic. As we have accumulated more data, explanations for the events of the Terminal Classic have tended to become more complex rather than simpler.
