SCIENCE / ARCHEOLOGY : Mayas Had Prosperous Middle Class, Researchers Find

Contrary to previous beliefs, Mayan society had a large and prosperous middle class built upon the spoils of internecine warfare, two Florida archeologists reported Monday.

Although scientists once believed that the Mayan civilization collapsed as a result of the stratification between the royal elite and the very poor, new tombs discovered in Belize strongly support the emerging consensus that it fell instead as the result of increasingly fierce warfare.

Excavating at the Mayan city of Caracol in eastern Belize, Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase of the University of Central Florida concluded that toward the end of the Mayan era, “the middle class grows and the elite become more like the middle class,” Arlen Chase said.

Particularly important, he said, is the discovery that “during the time of collapse, many other people besides the ruler are erecting monuments: overseers, administrators” and many other middle-level functionaries.

“These findings indicate a lot more social complexity in Maya society than we had previously believed existed,” commented archeologist Jeremy Sabloff of the University of Pittsburgh. “They are very exciting and have important implications for our understanding of classic Maya civilization. . . . It makes the Maya much more comparable to other pre-industrial civilizations in Central America, such as the Aztecs and Toltecs.”

The husband-and-wife team has spent the last eight years excavating at Caracol, which lies about 60 miles west of the Caribbean coast of Belize. It was one of the largest and most powerful Mayan cities, with a population of about 180,000 spread over 55 square miles at its height in the 6th and 7th centuries.

The Chases trace much of Caracol’s growth to two periods following major victories over other Mayan cities--the defeat of the great city of Tikal in what is now Guatemala in AD 562 and the overwhelming of the nearby city of Naranjo in AD 636. After these victories, Caracol controlled an area of more than 7,000 square miles, about the size of modern-day Belize.

With new wealth--and perhaps slaves--from the conquered cities, Caracol was able to build new roads and expand its agricultural development. Perhaps most significant, the victories gave the emerging middle class access to a variety of material goods that had previously not been available--polychrome pots, jade, seashell ornaments and other valuable goods.

The Chases found such objects in the many middle-class tombs they have excavated at Caracol, along with other symbols previously reserved for the nobility, including sting-ray spines (used for bloodletting), red cinnabar and spiny oyster shells. At the same time, the tombs of rulers were becoming simpler and less ornate, they said, indicating the narrowing of the gap between nobility and the middle class.

“It’s almost as if the middle classes are taking away the elite’s power . . . everybody became equalized,” Arlen Chase said. “It’s clear that at Caracol everybody is focusing on their own ancestor” rather than on the ruler.

The team excavated two particularly significant tombs from the family that ruled Caracol. These two were valuable because, unlike most tombs previously explored, they contained intact bodies.

The older tomb, about 1,600 years old, is “clearly that of a ruler,” Diane Chase said, but the king’s name was not on the tomb. The newer tomb, identified by painted text as built in AD 686, contains four members of the ruling family. Other texts indicate that a ruler named Smoke Skull died about that time, but it is not clear if his remains are in the tomb.

Intriguingly, the Chases found that the right leg of each primary individual in the tombs had been separated from the body at the pelvis, although it was placed by the body in the correct anatomical position. Researchers speculated that the bones may have been removed from the tomb and used in special ceremonies in much the same way that early Western churches used relics from saints.

Just as Caracol lived by the sword, it died by the sword. The researchers found that most of the buildings remaining in the city were burned in 1050, the time of last occupation. The presence of numerous weapons and the body of a child left on the palace floor suggest the ending was violent.

“We know when they left, they left fast,” Diane Chase said.