COPAN: IN THE VALLEY OF THE KINGS

By Vincent Murphy/ Photos by Ricardo Mata

In the ancient city of Copan, a fabulous dynasty of Maya lords ruled for many centuries. Recent discoveries are yielding valuable information about the rise and fall of their empire.

Over a century ago, explorers first came across the monoliths and steep mounds, all but hidden by western Honduras' dense forest. They cleared the vegetation to reveal enormous pyramidal structures—some deeply etched with mysterious designs—and raised the monoliths, which were covered with intricately-carved sculptures of a quality as yet unknown in the Americas. The discovery of these huge piles of stone, left undisturbed for a millennium in the silent shade of giant trees, has inspired an enduring fascination with the people who built them.

    Today, a remarkable research effort is casting light on the ancient Maya and their crowning artistic achievement. Since its emergence around 2000 B.C., the Maya civilization spread throughout a diverse land known today as Belize, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and southeastern Mexico. Over the course of the centuries, it grew into one of antiquity's most advanced cultures.

    The Maya was the only pre-Hispanic people who developed a sophisticated written language. Although today their hieroglyphs seem large and bulky, their language was anything but primitive. "They were fully literate," says Dr. Ricardo Agurcia, one of the Mundo Maya's most respected archaeologists who began his career at Copan in 1978. "Had they wanted to write a novel, they could easily have done so with their system of writing."

    As scientists began to unravel the secrets of the glyphs, it became clear that the ancient Maya had invented an astrological calendar capable of predicting solar and lunar eclipses—as well as the movements of Venus and Jupiter. Discovering that their calendar was more accurate than ours, scholarly emphasis was placed on the importance of ancient Maya astronomers. Historians believed great cities like Copan were ceremonial centers where the priests lived, while the rest of the population dwelt in distant villages, visiting the plazas only to watch important rites. Elaborate hieroglyphic texts were thought to be astronomical predictions and human figures depicting Maya gods. Over the last few decades, however, advances in decipherment have changed this view. It is now known that these writings refer to local historical events and principally the lives and achievements of kings, who are portrayed carved on stelae.

    This drastic change is nowhere better illustrated than on Copan's Altar Q in the West Court of the Acropolis. This large, square block of carved stone depicts 16 seated men—four on each side—and was originally interpreted by archaeologist Herbert Joseph Spinden to be a meeting of Maya astronomers. But recent discoveries show that these figures represent the members of a dynastic lineage of 16 kings, whose rule spanned nearly four centuries between A.D. 426 to approximately 820, during the Classic Period (AD 250-900).

    We know little about the early part of this dynastic sequence, as much information was probably lost due to the Maya custom of tearing down old buildings and constructing new ones on top of them. At Copan, eight such temples have been discovered, each built upon the ruins of the previous one. By about AD 426, however, Copán's revered first king Yax K'uk Mo' (Quetzal Macaw) was on the throne, according to references in monuments erected centuries later, followed by 15 of his descendants. The dynasty came to an end with the death of Yax Pac (First Dawn), who built Altar Q. Indeed, the city's stelae, as well as most of the other sculptures and buildings, were erected to commemorate the rule of these kings. Visitors enter the archaeological site at the Great Plaza, a grassy expanse with a pyramid in the center and several tall stelae. Most of the glyphs and carvings in these stelae and altars refer to 18-Rabbit; one of Copán's most important and longest-reigning rulers.

    Copan also proudly possesses the Americas' longest inscribed text: the famous Hieroglyphic Stairway. Many of the steps have fallen down and only a portion of the more than 1,250 inscribed blocks of stone were found in their original order, yet enough has been put together to know that it was commissioned by Smoke Shell to celebrate the lives of his ancestors.

    The focus of royal power, the Acropolis is a collection of massive pyramidal structures, beneath which lies a wealth of information about Copan It is the site of current archaeological research, and the most impressive substructure discovered here is the Rosalila temple. Below that, the Margarita temple is yielding information about the mystery-shrouded early years of the Copan dynasty.

    A healthy walk from the Great Plaza and the Acropolis is the Las Sepulturas residential zone. Excavations of these low buildings have provided details about the domestic life of Copan's residents and uncovered evidence of occupation spanning some 2,000 years.

    Just as the Maya once occupied a leading place among ancient civilizations because of their impressive cultural, architectural and artistic achievements, today Copan takes first place among Maya city-states in terms of the enormous scientific effort to uncover the long-buried secrets of this civilization. The Copan Project, a collaboration between the Honduran Institute of Archaeology and History (IHAH) and scholars of diverse institutions and nationalities, is now in its third phase since its beginning in 1978. It is a shining example of a new multidisciplinary approach to research, which Agurcia calls the conjunctive approach. It joins such diverse fields as linguistics, social anthropology, art, ethnohistory and ecology—together with archaeology—to produce a more accurate view of Copan's history than excavation and cataloguing could ever provide.

    Efforts to conserve the natural resources of the park have been rewarded. Surrounded by vast fields of corn and tobacco, the 300-acre archaeological park, which includes a small nature reserve, is a forested oasis. In the early morning or late afternoon, white-tailed deer venture out to graze on the well-kept lawn of the Great Plaza while a huge variety of birds—including parrots and toucans—reside in the ruins. Guanacaste (enterolobium cyclocarpum), ceiba (ceiba pentandra) and Spanish cedar (cedrela australis) trees provide welcome shade, many growing out of the sides and tops of the ancient structures. When asked why these enormous trees, whose roots slowly wrench the stone blocks from their positions, are not removed, Agurcia replies that they "have more of a right to be here than the buildings."

    The Copan Sculpture Museum is a new addition to the site and another example of this new approach. Under the direction of archaeologist Barbara Fash, it offers a dramatic way to learn about Copan One enters through a serpent's gaping mouth and along a long, dark, winding tunnel, representing both the tunnels dug into the Acropolis and the journey into Xibalba, the Maya Underworld. Rounding the last bend in the tunnel, one encounters the impressive four-story reproduction of the Rosalila temple.

    Investigators at Copan have collected a vast quantity of data and its interpretation has given us a fascinating look into the past. Extensive evidence has established a relationship between a burgeoning population and the consequent deforestation, soil erosion, climatic change and a general degradation of their environment.

    Skeletal remains from the final years of Copan show a population plagued by malnutrition and disease. The once-fertile valley, it seems, could no longer support its continued exploitation. Scholars have drawn a fascinating picture of Copan at its pinnacle, although research into the collapse of this great society may prove to be the most valuable of all, if we could only apply today the lessons of these fallen kings.