The following is taken from The Code of Kings by Linda Schele and Peter Mathews (pages 14-20.)

The Maya lived in a large cultural area that archaeologists call Mesoamerica. Encompassing the region from the deserts of northern Mexico to the eastern third of Honduras and El Salvador, Mesoamerica refers less to geography than to the societies and cultural traditions that occupied this land until the arrival of Europeans. Like the people of Europe, Mesoamericans shared definitions about how to grow and distribute food, what constituted government, and how the world worked, both on the mundane and the cosmological level.

The land of the Maya occupies the eastern third of Mesoamerica, in what is now southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and western Honduras. This area is covered by ruined cities from a cultural tradition that was 2,500 years old when the Spanish conquered the inhabitants and forever changed their world. The descendants of the Maya who built those ruined cities today number in the millions and speak over two dozen related Maya languages. They communicate with the world over the Internet, yet also live in direct contact with the beliefs and understanding of the world that lay at the heart of the cities built by their ancestors millennia before.

The topography of the Maya landscape varies enormously, from the volcanic mountains that form a spine along the Pactfic coast to the tropical-forest lowlands that comprise the northern two-thirds of the Yukatan peninsula. Rivers cut through the mountains, draining into the Gulf of Mexico via the Grijalva and Usumacinta Rivers and to the Caribbean by the Motagua and numerous smaller rivers. The swampy southern lowlands receive up to 120 inches of rain a year, while the northern lowlands are drier and have no rivers. There in the north, people get their water from cenotes (tz'onot in Maya), sinkholes that dot the limestone terrain of Yukatan. The high-canopy forest that covers the southern lowlands transforms into pine forest in the highlands and into low, scrub forest in the north.

Archaeologists divide the later history of Mesoamerica into three great periods÷the Predassic (1500 B.C.-A.D. 200), the Classic (A.D. 200-910), and the PostHassic (A.D. 910-1524). The first of these periods, the Preclassic, saw the rise of the Olmec, the first great civilization that modern scholars recognize in Mesoamerica. Occupying the swampy lowlands surrounding the Tuxtla volcanos in southern Veracruz, the Olmec built the first cities in a landscape that can be described as mountains surrounded by swamps. This extraordinary people created the first kingdoms and developed the templates of worldview and political symbolism that formed the basis of all subsequent societies in Mesoamerica. In a real sense, they invented civilized life in this region of the world.

By 1000 B.C., the Maya had begun to build villages in the mountainous highlands and lowland forests of eastern Mesoamerica. These early villagers built houses that were much like those still used by their descendants today. They used pole frames and thatched roofs to construct houses with a single room. In some regions, villagers favored houses with oval floor plans, while in others they preferred rectangular forms. The center of the house was always a hearth made of three stones set in a triangle to allow wood to be fed into the fire while cooking. The hearth was the center of family life, where women prepared food and did the work of the household. Men worked in agricultural fields called kol, where they planted maize, beans, squash, and chile. They planted fruit trees of many kinds around their houses and near their cornfields.

Households consisted of several related adults, and could indude couples with young children, adolescents, young adults, and grandparents. Large families provided the people required for farming, a labor-intensive activity that involved yearly cycles of preparing the fields, planting, cultivating, and harvesting. Moreover, large families could help in other activities, such as the building and refurbishing of houses, kitchens, and storerooms, the collection of firewood, the preparation of food, and the repair and maintenance of tools. More specialized crafts included weaving and decorating cloth, the manufacture of tools and household objects of all sorts, and the making of pottery. The Maya could use these products in their own households or exchange them for other goods and services within their communities. As their families grew, villagers built additional houses around courtyards to form compounds. Four houses around a courtyard became one of the characteristic forms of Maya architecture.

Like other Mesoamerican peoples, the Maya adopted Olmec innovations in symbolic imagery and social institutions. By 500 B.C., the Maya began to build cities in the lowland forests and in the highland mountains. They amplified the traditional layout of the family compound into a square plaza surfaced with plaster and surrounded on three or four sides by pyramids with temples on top. They used tamped earth to build their pyramids in the highlands, and earth and rubble in the lowlands. Some of these very early structures are the largest ever built by the Maya. People flying over them today often think they are natural hills ristug above the forest canopy. In fact, the ancients did conceive of their pyramids as mountains rising out of the surrounding swamps and forest. They began to surface them with imagery modeled in plaster to give them meaning and to create sacred environments in which history, politics, and urban life unfolded.

Early kings, called ahaw, also began to portray themselves on stone monuments erected in the plazas at the feet of their pyramid-mountains. During the last third of the Preclassic period, the idea of writing developed as a way of describing who was shown on these monuments, as well as when and where the actions occurred. This was the beginning of history for the Maya.

During the Classic period (A.D. 200-910), the number of kingdoms grew rapidly, to as many as sixty at the height of lowland Maya civilization in the eighth century. Beginning in the fifth century, these kingdoms organized themselves into great alliances headed by the kingdoms known today as Tikal and Kalak'mul.2 Some of the great cities of the Preclassic period, such as El Mirador, had collapsed, while others, like Tikal, grew into political and economic dominance. The Maya of Tikal and other cities came into powerful contact with the central Mexican city of Teotihuacan during the early part of the Classic period. The mechanism of this exchange is still a matter of debate, but its effect is not. The Maya adopted imagery and an artistic style from the Teotihuacanos that became intimately associated with warfare and the symbolism of the "Place of Reeds," one of the central elements in myths of origin that dominated Mesoamerican history.

While the Maya kingdoms enjoyed a high degree of sovereignty, their political fortunes often depended on the alliances to which they belonged. From the sixth century onward, this system of alliances and the rivalry between them dominated Maya politics and economics. The old adage "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" is highly applicable to this period of Maya history.

Ancient Maya kings rarely alluded explicitly to economic affairs in their public inscriptions. However, we can surmise much about ancient Maya economy through the archaeological record, the images, and the inscriptions left to Us. Tribute was one of the primary means to collect goods and labor for redistribution within communities of all sizes. It was a fact of life, rather like our own taxation system. Lesser nobles and lineage heads paid tribute to their overlords in the form of raw materials, manufactured goods, and labor. Farmers might also pay tribute through goods they produced, but even more likely, they paid by providing labor on butld~ng projects in the urban centers, service on the farms of their kings and lords, or in military service. The economy of every kingdom was administered strategically by the king and his court, but even they paid tribute to their overlords within the large system of alliances. At this higher level, tribute could also be paid in the form of raw materials, such as minerals, wood, and sacred stone; manufactured goods, such as cloth and jewelry; labor for regional projects, such as the construction of causeways between sites; and military service.

Victory in battle often resulted in the loser's obligation to pay tribute to the winner. This could include goods and service, but in addition, artists and artisans, as well as laborers and captured soldiers from losing sites, could become commodities that benefited the winners. In some situations, the local elites retained their positions after defeat, but they became tribute vassals of the winners.3

The Maya calendar provided dates that were used to time markets and fairs in which the Maya carried out their business transactions. Some of these dates had well-known, widely shared sign)ficance from Maya mythology and religion, so that everyone knew about them. Others had importance on a regional or local level, and could involve not only religion, but important dynastic celebrations as well. These festivals were a major part of Maya life throughout history. Nobles from allied kingdoms used them as opportunities to visit one another and to negotiate broader economic arrangements.

Merchants operating beyond the borders of their kingdoms became economic and political extensions of their kings. Their patron was God L, a powerful god who destroyed the previous Creation by flood, sat on the first throne to be set up in the present Creation, and operated as a god of warriors and merchants. Such royal business was so economically vital that the merchants involved in it were high nobles and even members of the royal household. Using the metaphor of pilgrimage and alliance, merchants traveled to the great festivals of neighbors and distant states that controlled strategic goods. Such merchants could function as state ambassadors bearing "gifts" tO royal neighbors and allies, or they could spy out the land in preparation for conquest.

The Maya used commodities both in their raw state and as worked objects for money.4 These currencies included jade and other green stones; flint and obsidian, in both worked and unworked forms; other precious stones and minerals; spondylus (spiny oyster) shells; cacao beans; lengths of cotton cloth, both in plain weave and made into clothes; spices; measures of sea salt; birds and their feathers; animal pelts; forest products such as dyes, resins, incense, and rubber; wood in both worked and unworked form; and ceramics, especially beautifully painted elite wares. People at all levels of society used these currencies within their communities as well as in the markets and fairs. Farmers and villagers could use their crops and handicrafts to barter for or buy other goods for use in their daily lives or in special rituals, such as marriages, funerals, and house dedications.

People throughout Mesoamerica wore these currencies as jewelry and dothing to display the wealth and enterprise of their families. These currencies were in wide demand throughout the Mesoamerican world, so that Maya kingdoms traded the specialties of their area÷such as cotton, cacao, tropical birds and their feathers, rubber, special woods, shells, etc.÷over long distances to obtain commodities that were not available locally. This access to materials and goods from far-distant places may have been negotiated by local lords, but the alliance structures very probably facilitated these international relations with kingdoms in, for example, the southern highlands of Guatemala. We suspect that Tikal had trade agreements and perhaps a political alliance with Teotihuacan in central Mexico. These long-distance relationships were of crucial importance to the economic well-being of every state. Maya kings gathered prestige through the successful activity of obtaining goods from distant places and distributing them among their vassal lords and allies.5 These lesser lords in turn distributed the goods to their constituents in the form of gifts or exchanges. A portion of these commodities could filter down into the general everyday transactions of the villagers and farmers.

One result of the competition for territory, resources, and tribute was a cataclysmic series of wars between the competing alliances led by Tikal and Kalak'mul that began in the sixth century. In the archaeology, kingdoms that won wars during these conflicts show enormous growth in population, in wealth at all social levels, in access to foreign goods, and in extensive building programs. Losers usually show the reverse, but being a winner or loser was rarely permanent. Reversals of fortunes and the resulting change in economic status were commonplace.

By A.D. 700, these wars had resulted in the multiple sackings of major cities like Palenque and Tikal. One of the major effects of these wars was a series of migrations, probably consisting in large part of male nobles and soldiers displaced by the wars or seeking their fortunes elsewhere. A series of migrations from the south to the northern lowlands eventually led to the founding of Chich'en Itza. In A.D. 800, these outsiders, who were called the Itza, and the older kingdoms in the north established a confederation. These migrations may also have affected central Mexico and the establishment of kingdoms like Xochicalco and Cacaxtla in the wake of Teotihuacan's destruction in the mid-seventh century.

The Classic period ended with a general political collapse in much of the Maya region, although in some areas, such as northern Belize and Yukatan, many communities survived without a break until modern times. The final phase of precolumbian history÷the Postdassic÷lasted from A.D. 910 until the Spanish conquests of Guatemala in 1524 and Yukatan in 1542. Events during the last decades of the Classic period became the legends of origin for Postclassic kingdoms. In the north after the collapse of Chich'en Itza, the area was dominated by an alliance centered on the city of Mayapan. Although the population of the southern