The Four Heavens: A New History of the Ancient Maya

Archaeologist Stuart (The Order of Days) offers a thorough history of Mayan civilization drawing on recent leaps in research, including his own contributions to the deciphering of Mayan hieroglyphics. Emphasizing that many of the figures he’s writing about have only recently been uncovered via translation, he paints a vivid picture of the centuries preceding the Classical Mayan era’s “collapse” around 900 CE. During this period, aristocrats with a penchant for revenge and a balkanized view of their own power structure (including the notion of their being four kingdoms to match the “four heavens”) fostered systemic infighting that likely brought about the disintegration of the royal system. Stuart also interrogates the idea of “collapse,” however, noting what looks like an apocalypse in the archaeological record may be a dwindling of ruling class power, as regular people extricated themselves from a failing system and migrated elsewhere to found new societies. Most fascinating are Stuart’s descriptions of this kind of mobility, with wholesale relocations of entire populations being commonplace—“abandonment was something of a constant for the ancient Maya.” The result is a robust scholarly contribution to new understandings of ancient peoples as adaptable and open to social experimentation. (Mar.)