A hieroglyphic stairway exposed last fall by a hurricane at the Mayan city of Dos Pilas in Guatemala tells the story of the brutal and bloody war between two superpowers who were trying to dominate their known world.
A new translation of the epic tale fills a vital 60-year gap in Mayan history during a period that set the stage for the ultimate collapse of the Mayan civilization.
The leaders of the Mayan cities of Tikal and Dos Pilas were brothers, and historians have long thought that rivalry between them was at the root of conflict between the two cities. But the newly discovered inscriptions indicate that it was a third party -- Calakmul, located in what is now Mexico -- that triggered the fighting in its attempts to conquer the Mayan empire.
"This carries back our history of the dynasty [at Dos Pilas] another 40 to 50 years and changes our entire interpretation of this region," said archaeologist Arthur A. Demarest of Vanderbilt University. "This was not part of a dynastic struggle between two brothers, but part of a world war."
Archaeologists "are fascinated by the possibility that the Maya were trying to create an empire, but were having difficulty making it work," added archaeologist David Friedel of Southern Methodist University. "We now know that the reason they were having difficulty was because there were two great contending rivals for overlord in this period" and neither was able achieve a definitive success.
Dos Pilas is deep in the Guatemalan jungle near the Pasion River, which was the superhighway of the Mayan world. Many facts about the city have intrigued archaeologists, posing puzzles that had no clear solutions. The city seemed to have sprung up nearly overnight, reaching a population near 5,000. Yet soils in the region are very poor and there was little evidence of farming to support the city.
The new discovery, published in the October edition of the National Geographic magazine, seems to clear up many of those questions.
The glyphs tell of the birth of a king, Balaj Chan K'awiil, on Oct. 15, A.D. 625, in the city of Tikal. Later, Balaj Chan K'awiil was sent with a military force to establish the city of Dos Pilas about 70 miles southwest of Tikal. A stronghold in Dos Pilas allowed Tikal to exert control over the Pasion River.
The steps tell about the ceremonies that the young man went through, always as a friend of his brother, Nuun Ujol Chaak, the ruler of Tikal -- not as an enemy as was previously thought.
The fly in the ointment was a ruler commonly known as Yuknom Cheen The Great, who was the leader of a group of people who called themselves the Kan, the "snake people." His capital was Calakmul, in what is now Campeche in southeastern Mexico.
When Balaj Chan K'awiil was in his early 20s, Calakmul attacked and defeated Dos Pilas. He was captured but subsequently restored to the throne as a "puppet king" who was allowed to keep his land in exchange for allegiance to the invader.
The record then describes how Balaj Chan K'awiil launched a decade-long war against Tikal that ended in his victory. His forces sacked Tikal and brought Nuun Ujol Chaak -- his own brother -- and other Tikal nobles to Dos Pilas to be sacrificed.
"After Tikal was sacked, it eventually roared back and crushed Calakmul," Demarest said. "And then the Maya world just broke up into regional powers, setting the stage for a period of intensive, petty warfare that finally led to the collapse of the Maya."
Thomas H. Maugh II is a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, a Tribune Publishing newspaper.Copyright © 2015, Orlando Sentinel