Pre-Columbian Belize

A Mayan temple at the Altun Ha site.

The Pre-Columbian Belize history is the period from initial indigenous presence, across millennia, to the first contacts with Europeans - the Pre-Columbian or before Columbus period - that occurred on the region of the Yucatán Peninsula that is present day Belize.

Belize's history begins with the Paleo-Indians. They were nomadic people that arrived in the Asia to the Americas migration across the frozen Bering Strait, perhaps as early as 35,000 years ago. In the course of many millennia, their descendants settled in and adapted to different environments in the Americas, creating many cultures in North America, Central America, and South America. The Mayan culture emerged in the lowland area of the Yucatán Peninsula and the highlands to the south, in what is now southeastern Mexico, Guatemala, western Honduras, and Belize.[1]

Many aspects of this culture persist in the area despite nearly half a millennium of European domination. All evidence, whether from archaeology, history, ethnography, or linguistic studies, points to a cultural continuity in this region. The descendants of the first settlers in the area have lived there for at least three millennia.[1]

Paleo-Indian and Archaic periods (c. 35,000—2,500 BC)

Prior to about 2500 BC, some hunting and foraging bands settled in small farming villages. While hunting and foraging continued to play a part in their subsistence, these farmers domesticated crops such as corn, beans, squash, and chili peppers, which are still the basic foods in Central America. A profusion of languages and subcultures developed within the Mayan core culture. Between about 2500 BC and AD 250, the basic institutions of Mayan civilization emerged. The peak of this civilization occurred during the Classic Period, which began about AD 250.[1]

Farmers engaged in various types of agriculture, including labor-intensive irrigated and ridged-field systems and shifting slash-and-burn agriculture. Their products fed the civilization's craft specialists, merchants, warriors, and priest-astronomers, who coordinated agricultural and other seasonal activities with a cycle of rituals in ceremonial centers. These priests, who observed the movements of the sun, moon, planets, and stars, developed a complex mathematical and calendrical system to coordinate various cycles of time and to record specific events on carved stelae.[1]

Maya civilization

The extent of the Maya civilization domain in Mesoamerica.
Further information: Maya civilization

Preclassic period (c. 2500 BC—250 AD)

The earliest pottery found in Belize is in the western part of the country.

"Emerging information from western Belize suggests that ceramic-using populations may have been in place as early as ca. 1200 B.C. at Cahal Pech and perhaps elsewhere (Awe 1992; Clark and Cheetham 2002; Garber et al. 2004; Healy and Awe 1995). While these complexes, termed "Cunil" at Cahal Pech and "Kanocha" at Blackman Eddy, remain to be broadly documented across the Belize River Valley, they are the earliest established ceramic technologies recorded in western Belize."[2]

At the northern sites, the pottery is now believed to have come somewhat later.[2]

At the Cuello site, from perhaps as early as 1000 BC., jars, bowls, and other dishes found there are among the oldest pottery unearthed in Mesoamerica. The site, five kilometers west of Orange Walk, includes platforms of buildings arranged around a small plaza, indicating a distinctly Mayan community. The presence of shell, hematite, and jade shows that the Maya were trading over long distances as early as 1500 BC. The Mayan economy, however, was still basically subsistence, combining foraging and cultivation, hunting, and fishing.[1]

Cerros, a site on Chetumal Bay, was a flourishing trade and ceremonial center between about 300 BC and AD 100. It displays some distinguishing features of early Mayan civilization. The architecture of Mayan civilization included temples and palatial residences organized in groups around plazas. These structures were built of cut stone, covered with stucco, and elaborately decorated and painted.[1]

Stylized carvings and paintings of people, animals, and gods, along with sculptured stelae and geometric patterns on buildings, constitute a highly developed style of art. Impressive two-meter-high masks decorate the temple platform at Cerros. These masks, situated on either side of the central stairway, represent a serpent god.[1]

Classic period (c. 250—900 AD)

The 'Temple of the Masonry Altars' at Mayan Altun Ha.

Altún Ha

Main article: Altun Ha

The Maya were skilled at making pottery, carving jade, knapping flint, and making elaborate costumes of feathers. One of the largest carved jade objects of Mayan civilization was found in a tomb at the classic period site of Altún Ha, thirty kilometers northwest of present-day Belize City. Usually stated to be the head of the sun god, Kinich Ahau, it is actually quite unlike this deity, save for the square and squinting eyes. Settled at least as early as 200 BC, the Altún Ha area at its peak had an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 inhabitants.[1]

At the beginning of the second century AD, the inhabitants built their first major structure, a temple. The visitor today sees a group of temples, priests' residences, and other buildings around two adjacent plazas. In the vicinity, there are hundreds of other structures, most of which are still unexcavated. The Maya continued to rebuild some of the temples until almost the end of the ninth century.[1]

Excavations at Altún Ha have produced evidence suggesting that a revolt, perhaps of peasants against the priestly class, contributed to the downfall of the civilization. People may have continued to live at or to visit the site in the postclassic period, even though the ceremonial centers were left to decay. Some rubbish found at Altún Ha shows that people were at the site in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, perhaps to reuse the old structures or undertake pilgrimages to the old religious center.[1]

The recorded history of the center and south is dominated by Caracol, where the inscriptions on their monuments was, as elsewhere, in the Lowland Maya aristocratic tongue Classic Ch'olti'an.[3] North of the Maya Mountains, the inscriptional language at Lamanai on Hill Bank Lagoon in Orange Walk District was Yucatecan as of 625 CE.[4] Other Mayan centers located in Belize include Xunantunich and Baking Pot in Cayo District, Lubaantún and Nimli Punit in Toledo District.

Xunantunich

A Mayan temple 'pyramid' at Xunantunich, in Cayo District, Belize.

Xunantunich, meaning "Lady of the Rock," was occupied perhaps as early as 300 BC, but most of the architecture there was constructed in the late classic period. As in all the lowland Mayan centers, the inhabitants continually constructed temples and residences over older buildings, enlarging and raising the platforms and structures in the process. The views are breathtaking from Xunantunich's "El Castillo," which, at thirty-nine meters, is the tallest man-made structure in Belize.

Lamanai, less accessible to tourists than Altún Ha or Xunantunich, is an important site because it provides archaeological evidence of the Mayan presence over many centuries, beginning around AD 150. Substantial populations were present throughout the classic and postclassic periods. Indeed, people living in the area were still refacing some of the massive ceremonial buildings after the great centers, such as Tikal in neighboring Guatemala, had been virtually abandoned in the tenth century.[1]

Late classic period

In the late classic period, probably at least 400,000 people inhabited the Belize area. People settled almost every part of the country worth cultivating, as well as the cay and coastal swamp regions.

Postclassic period (c. 10th—early 16th century)

Further information: Maya collapse

In the tenth century, Mayan society suffered a severe breakdown. Construction of public buildings ceased, the administrative centers lost power, and the population declined as social and economic systems lost their coherence. Some people continued to occupy, or perhaps reoccupied, sites such as Altún Ha, Xunantunich, and Lamanai. Still, these sites ceased being splendid ceremonial and civic centers.[1]

The decline of Mayan civilization is still not fully explained. Rather than identifying the collapse as the result of a single factor, many archaeologists now believe that the decline of the Maya was a result of many complex factors and that the decline occurred at different times in different regions.[1]

Increasing information about Mayan culture and society helps explain the development, achievements, and decline of their ancient civilization and suggests more continuities in Mayan history than once had been considered possible.[1]

See also

An overlook of the Altun Ha Maya site in the Belize District, Belize.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Bolland, Nigel. "Belize: Historical Setting". In A Country Study: Belize (Tim Merrill, editor). Library of Congress Federal Research Division (January 1992). This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.
  2. 1 2 Jon C. Lohse, Jaime Awe, Cameron Griffith, Robert M. Rosenswig, and Fred Valdez, Jr. (2006). "Preceramic Occupations in Belize: Updating The Paleoindian and Archaic Record". Latin American Antiquity. pp. 209–226. doi:10.2307/25063047. JSTOR 25063047.
  3. ↑ Houston, Stephen D.; John Robertson; David Stuart (2000). "The Language of Classic Maya Inscriptions". Current Anthropology. 41 (3): 321–356. doi:10.1086/300142. ISSN 0011-3204. PMID 10768879.
  4. ↑ Michael P. Closs, The Hieroglyphic Text of Stela 9, Lamanai, Belize, 13 from Closs, 1987

Readings

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