Heavy Jungle Overgrowth, Little Funding : Restoring Mayan Temples a Big Task for Belize

The incredible effort it took to keep the grass cut and the weeds trimmed may have caused the great Maya India civilization to abandon its temples, which included some of the world’s most magnificent stone pyramids.

The relentless pressure of the jungle to overgrow any cleared areas required the Mayas to expend considerable labor in keeping their temples free of weeds. In the end they were probably unable to keep up, says Harriot Topsey, a leading archeologist and historian of the Mayas.

The Mayas inhabited an area covering Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula, Belize, parts of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras from 2500 BC until AD 1500, with their architectural peak from about AD 300 to 900.

But at the end of their classic period, about AD 900, their great civilization appeared to collapse, they scattered and their great temples and pyramids were abandoned.

‘Life Style Changed’

Topsey, archeological commissioner of the Belize government, believes that the Mayans “simply changed their life style, their emphasis, probably by necessity.”

“Evidence we have collected around our Mayan sites strongly suggests that they had internal disturbances, probably warfare among themselves, and began abandoning their traditional urban centers,” Topsey said standing in the shadow of the Castillo temple at this jungle-overgrown Mayan ruin site in western Belize.

“As the relentless jungle grew in areas such as this, it must have been more and more difficult for them to maintain these giant constructions,” he said, pointing to various grassy mounds that he said covered other pyramids.

Topsey is involved in the Belize effort to reclaim the temples, which have proven to be major tourist attractions.

Frustrating Task

Topsey, who often travels hundreds of miles a day in his truck between the many Mayan sites, does not disguise his frustration over the magnitude of his task.

He is responsible for uncovering, preserving and, ideally, turning into tourist attractions the 600 known Mayan sites in Belize.

“And we expect to uncover at least 600 more,” he said, standing atop the 120-foot Castillo temple that looks directly down into Guatemala, 2,000 yards to the west.

“Look at this site,” he said, pointing down to the dense jungle creeping below. “The site runs about 500 yards by 300. To look after it, we have one warden and one gardener. What can they do?”

Plazas Cleared

Only the so-called plazas, or squares, between the pyramids and Mayan dwellings have been cleared and planted with lush, well-kept grass.

There is a severe lack of government funds available to preserve Belize’s Mayan wonders, which rival those of neighboring Mexico but still lie mostly unexcavated.

In a recent interview in the capital of Belmopan, Prime Minister Manuel Esquivel conceded that there is no money to maintain the Mayan heritage. Belize is financially strapped, relying heavily on foreign aid, mostly from Britain and the United States.

Atop the temple steps here, Topsey pointed to a pile of stones that had fallen from the facade. “We don’t even know exactly what the temple looked like,” he said, “so we’ve left them there for now. We don’t want to put them back in the wrong place.”

Evidence Uncovered

He said that his work has served to support his theory and has produced evidence that it was contact with Europe that helped bring about the end of the Mayas.

“There were probably 2 million Mayans in the Belize region at the height of the classic period,” Topsey said, “with maybe 10,000 or 20,000 at this site of Xunantunich, which means Maiden of the Rock.

“Artifacts and documents found here and elsewhere suggest to me that the decimation of the Mayans came after the contact with the Europeans. When the Spaniards arrived in the 16th Century, they may have found the great Mayan sites abandoned, but the Mayans were still around.

“They already had lived away from the great sites for centuries. And as word of the Spaniards spread, they fled farther and farther south to escape. Eventually, the Spaniards caught up with them, and genocide and European disease wiped out the vast majority.

“As they began to fight among themselves, they moved closer to the rivers and set up settlements there, where they had a water source and better transport. From there, they could jump into canoes and seek help if attacked.

“Artifacts we have found by rivers and outlying areas lend credence to this theory, that they simply moved away from the traditional sites, possibly returning occasionally for religious ceremonies.”