National Geographic: Lost Kingdoms of the Maya Page #5

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throughout the valley.

This eventually resulted

in less rainfall,

and people just weren't table

to live here any more.

It is now the middle

of the eighth century.

Throughout the southern Maya world

the power of the kings is waning.

Disease and hunger are

becoming commonplace.

People begin to drift away

from the cities.

In Europe the Dark Ages

are halfway over.

Here in the jungle,

they are just beginning.

Slowly, one by one,

the great southern cities

are abandoned

In 761

the king of Dos Pilas

is captured and killed.

From that point on there are no more

hieroglyphic inscriptions here.

The last written date

at Palenque is 799.

Twenty years later, Copan falls silent

Caracol stops recording in 859.

The last inscription date

at Tikal is written in 879.

Only a handful of Maya cities

in the south survive beyond

the first years of the tenth century.

The northern cities

of the Yucatan Peninsula

places like Uxmal and Chichen Itza

will prosper for

several hundred years longer.

But they are no longer ruled

by divine kings,

and gradually the old ways of building

and writing, and worshiping slip away.

The Classic Maya civilization

is at an end.

One of the thins, I think,

that strikes the public consciousness

about the Maya civilization is

to see this sophisticated culture with

its monuments and architecture

and science and writing system

in the jungle,

covered, destroyed

an area that's now abandoned today.

I think that there's an immediate

impact when you see that.

It reminds us that we can fail,

that civilization is a complex

phenomenon, and we can screw up.

And the consequences can be

totally catastrophic.

Yet, while the Classic Maya

civilization may have disappeared,

the Maya people have not.

For 3,000 years they have survived

the ambitions of their own kings

and those of foreign conquerors.

And once again they are under assault.

In Guatemala,

during the past three decades,

the Maya have been caught in

a civil war they barely comprehend.

In that time, 100,000 Maya

have been killed

and another 40,000 have "disappeared."

No one can count the number of widows

and orphans.

And through it all, they endure.

They weave their huipils.

They farm their corn.

I feel that the Maya of today

are very much

in the same traditions

as the Classic Maya.

What they've lost is that big covering

that overlay of nobility,

and they dropped it themselves.

They basically told the kings,

that's it.

You're not working anymore.

And they went and they continued

their own lives.

I don't like it when people talk about

the Maya collapse,

because they never collapsed.

They evolved.

They went through different hard times

good times, bad times,

but they're still with us.

They still maintain their customs;

they still maintain their ways

of organizing their societies.

And it's very exciting to see

how much of the ancient

Maya way of life is still alive

and well.

What we're digging up

or coming up with,

it's part of our history.

And the men that lived here

are some of the greatest men

we've ever had.

And it's a fact that we're getting

to know more and more and more

about the life of these people

more than I ever thought was possible.

I think if somebody had asked me

as a graduate student whether

we would know what we know today

about the Maya at Copan,

there's no way

I would have believed him

What is happening now

is the people who made these places

people like Yax Pak or Bird Jaguar

or Pacal

are getting back their voices

They are becoming real to us

and speaking to the people

of the 20th century

about who built this place and why,

and what they felt,

and what they thought about the world.

These are not anonymous people

any more.

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