What was life like for most of the Ancient Maya?

11th Jun 2021

Mexicolore contributor Payson Sheets

We are sincerely grateful to Dr. Payson D. Sheets, College Professor of Distinction, University of Colorado, Boulder, for writing specially for us this illuminating article on ancient Maya daily life. Dr. Sheets, a distinguished archaeologist and Mayanist, is particularly well known for his 1978 discovery of and research at the site of Cerén, El Salvador, commonly known as the Pompeii of North America as it provides a ‘snapshot in time’ of the everyday village life of the ancient Maya. ‘My research focuses on the ancient societies of Mesoamerica and lower Central America. I am particularly interested in how societies, from egalitarian to complex, react to the sudden massive stresses of explosive volcanic eruptions. And I am exploring commoner agency, as Maya at Ceren led their rich lives largely beyond elite control.’

Research during the past two centuries has clearly documented the ancient Maya as one of the world’s great civilizations. The Maya built soaring high pyramids, elaborate palaces, richly stalked tombs, and long paved roadways for religious processions and economic purposes, in a tropical rainforest environment of Mexico and Central America. Their artistic accomplishments are notable, with sculptures of tall free-standing stones to small sculptures of jade, a stone harder than steel. A wide range of fired clay figurines show daily life activities. They developed the most sophisticated writing system of anywhere in the Americas, using hieroglyphics that could record their own, and any other language, because it recorded syllables as sounds.

They used it to record their history of elites, royals and their genealogies, battles, and other phenomena. They even recorded solar and lunar eclipses, so they could predict them. The Maya developed a complex religion, with many deities, and the deities were occasionally fallible. The Maya royals, the king, queen and their children, had a retinue of specialists to support their elite activities, including scribes, artists, architects, priests, and war leaders. The successes of Maya civilization are widely available in videos, websites, books, museums, and other sources.

What is important here is that the elites, for many centuries, were responsible for these achievements, and they were only some 5% of the total Maya population. There is a class issue here, as they were obviously the uppermost class. And in the first and most of the second century of Maya research (c. 1840 to 1960), only upper class scholars from the UK and US had the resources to engage in Maya research. The good news is that much was learned about the above aspects of Maya civilization. The not-so-good news is that the majority of ancient Maya were ignored, even though they made up the vast majority of the population, perhaps 90% or more.

So, until recently, the general view of Maya commoners is that they were the hard workers who tilled the fields, produced the food for themselves and the elites, provided labor for construction of pyramids and palaces, but had little of interest for us in what their lives were really like. Commoners were assumed to be pretty redundant farmer-workers, perhaps a bit dull and boring. As one colleague of mine wrote, “the Maya elites controlled everything” and if that is true, commoners just followed elite commands, and had no volition or individuality. Of course, commoners built residences for themselves that were more modest than the elegant palaces, and so they were not as obvious in the archaeological record.

Fortunately, in recent decades a few archaeologists have made discoveries that are starting to revolutionize our assumptions about commoners. The example I present for you here is an extraordinary archaeological site that I discovered in El Salvador, Central America. I named it Ceren, after a small present day town nearby. The site is extraordinary because of its magnificent preservation by a volcanic eruption; it is the first clear window into Maya commoner village life in the Classic period (AD 300-900). It was not extraordinary then, which also is good news, as it is representative of hundreds or thousands of other villages at that time.

Each household constructed at least three separate buildings: a domicile for everyday activities and for sleeping, a storehouse, and a kitchen. They used “wattle and daub” architecture, made of vertical poles closely spaced and horizontal vines linking them, with a special mud coating the inside and outside. The poles continued upward and connected with the roofing supports. The roof was made of thatch, a kind of roof that was common around the world until recently. Ceren is in earthquake country, and this kind of wall is very resistant to earthquake damage because of its flexibility. With the three buildings, and the open-air patio between them, each household had abundant spaces for their various activities. The thatch roofs extended well beyond the walls, providing more roofed space outside the walls than inside. That meant plenty of outside shaded space on sunny days, and dry area when it was raining. For the families with our estimated 3-5 members, everyone had plenty of space for their things and their activities.

Now, speaking of things, we were stunned to find that every household had about 70 complete pottery vessels. Some were for water storage, others for storage of foods, or for cooking, and many were for serving food and drink. Those two latter kinds were decorated with wonderful colored designs of monkeys, people, floral designs, and abstract patterns. Each household also had a few gourd containers, from trees growing nearby. I think a lot of households in the UK and the US today don’t have that many vessels. Both the buildings and the vessels in these Maya commoner households educated us to the high quality of life that they lived.

And what foods were stored in those vessels? That was another education for us, as they cultivated, processed, and consumed a much wider variety of foods than we expected. Their agriculture and diet consisted of many seed, root, and tree crops. Those included corn (maize), beans, and squash seeds, and two root crops. Manioc is a root crop rich in carbohydrates that grows easily, is drought resistant, and can be harvested at any time. Malanga is a root crop that favors very wet soils, and also can be harvested at any time. They grew cacao (chocolate) on small trees, and processed it in their kitchens. It also served as a monetary standard, as the seeds could be used to purchase things in the market. So, literally, money grew on trees for them. And they grew other plants as seasonings, such as chilies.

Ceren was a small village of about 200 people, which would mean perhaps 40 different households. Archaeologists have occasionally wondered what commoners were like, and without much information about them, have assumed that one household was much like every other, and basically the commoners just did the labor in the agricultural fields and did labor building the fancy buildings for the elites. Much to our surprise, and pleasure, we discovered that each Ceren household developed a part-time specialization, where they overproduced some thing or things beyond what they needed for their own consumption. The excess they used to exchange with other households for the things that those other households produced in excess. This has great significance economically as well as socially.

Economically, each household did not need to be self-sufficient in all items they needed, greatly saving in labor and maintaining the tool kits to produce everything. Rather, a couple minute’s walk away were the large range of items and goods. And at least of the same level of importance, the interactions among families supporting each other, generation after generation, creates a social network, and of course resulted in some personal relationships that occasionally resulted in marriage and formation of a new household. For example, Household 1 made the grinding stones that every family needed to grind their maize and other foods. Household 2 made and elaborately painted gourds. Household 3 apparently supplied organic pigments. And Household 4 grew specialty crops including cacao (chocolate), chilies, agave (used for string and ropes), and the poles used to reinforce walls. The exchanges helped integrate the community economically and socially.

Household 1 kept the tools they used to make the grinding stones in their storehouse, one of their three buildings. They also kept a wide range of pottery vessels. And they had a duck living in the storehouse, with its leg tied by a two-foot long string to one of the vertical poles of the wall. Was it kept as a pet, or to be eaten? What did the duck see? It could see out the doorway, looking east, so it could see the morning sun come up over the distant volcanoes, and over the green forests. It could see the two religious buildings (described below). And it could see anyone walking around there. Inside it could see all the vessels and other things stores for family use. It, of course, became one dead duck when the volcanic ash buried the village. The family was not killed in their buildings; they probably ran away from the noisy eruption that started only 600 metres to the north. How far they got is unknown, because to survive they had to outrun a cloud of volcanic ash and toxic gases that was blasted across the landscape. They had very little warning: a mild earthquake, but then the deafening shrieking of the beginnings of the explosive eruption. That kind of eruption was not uncommon in the area, happening every few hundred years on average, so there may well have been an oral history that informed them to run for their lives.

The duck could see the two buildings to the east. The closer one was dedicated to special community ceremonies. A ceremony focusing on the harvest during the main crop growing season was being celebrated when the eruption occurred. Large amounts of food and drink were prepared and dispensed to townspeople. A deer skull headdress was kept on a high shelf in an inner room, and worn by a religious practitioner during the ceremonies. Deer were symbolic of fertility, especially the fertility of nature producing their crops. The first maize harvest was ongoing that August, in about the year AD 660, and over ten tons of the root crop manioc had also been harvested. The dozens or more likely hundred to two hundred people ran for safety, and nobody was killed by the eruption at that building.

The other structure also had a religious function, but in a more individual way. It was used by a female diviner/shaman. She practiced there, but did not live there. People would approach the front, and communicate with her through a lattice window, without seeing her. If she agreed to help them, they would leave something for her in payment for services rendered, or perhaps they thought of it as more of a gift for her. She then retreated into the 5 room building, picked up her collection of little minerals, and went to the back room. She cast them on the floor, and ‘read’ the pattern to tell the person outside what her prediction and suggestions were. She needed to be right most of the time, so she of course drew on her knowledge about the person, their family, and general conditions.

We found evidence of religious activities within households. Every household made their own fired clay incense burners. They burned copal incense, a resin from a tropical tree. The Maya still today believe that the smoke from copal conveys their prayers and their thanks to their deities, and the spirits of their deceased ancestors. We were surprised to find a copal incense burner in every household building, indicating their importance to family members.

One amazing building that the duck could not see is behind Household 2. It was a sauna, a sweat bath. It was built on a solid platform, with thick walls, and a marvellous dome. It was spacious inside, with a bench running around all the walls, interrupted in one place for a narrow entryway. It could seat a dozen people comfortably, around the firebox in the centre. When people were inside, and probably shut a door to the outside, they poured water on top of the firebox to create steam. When the eruption occurred, two lava bombs were blasted out of the volcano and penetrated the dome, leaving quite large holes in it. When we first discovered the structure, we were dismayed by seeing the damage. Bur we soon realised that had those holes not been there, the immense weight of 5 meters of volcanic ash on top of the dome, with only air below it, would have totally collapsed and destroyed it. Fortunately, enough remnants of the original dome remained, that we could accurately reconstruct the entire dome.

So, the decision was made to construct a precise 1:1 scale replica of the sauna, in the public access part of the archeological park, so people could enter it. Every time I entered, I noticed that my voice was quite strongly altered, to a remarkably lower tone. I have been working with a physicist and an acoustician, and they have figured out that the reflective walls and especially the dome changes sounds generated inside. The dominant resonance is at 64 Hertz, a very low tone indeed. In fact, only young people, before they are in their 20s, can hear it. As I am much older than that, I sense the sound in my lungs, as they reverberate to the ultra low tone. It is a wonderful experience. It must have had special properties for the Cerenians, very likely having supernatural overtones to the spoken, chanted or sung words. Musical instruments would have sounded completely different as well.

Economically, the households at Ceren were doing surprisingly well. They were able to obtain many items that were imported into the valley, from far distant sources. To get them. Cerenians would walk to one of the approximately dozen of markets in the valley. So they had agency, the could choose which market, based on more favourable exchange rates. Or, a young Ceren male could decide to attend a market because the route took him by a young girl’s home, a girl in whom he had an interest. No, the elites were not ‘controlling everything.’

The most common long-distance imported item in each household was beautifully painted pottery vessels; they were made in workshops many dozens of miles away, and so would be expensive to obtain. The most expensive single item that each household had was a jade axe. Jade came from a source even farther away than the pottery, and being harder than steel, the axe required great skill and hard work to make. Each household also had some knives and scrapers made out of obsidian, the natural glass. The source was dozens of miles away, and specialists were needed to make the tools. Finally, each household obtained some mineral pigments in markets, and used them for painting many different things.

In overview, what we believe the important messages are, as Ceren has educated us about the lives of Maya commoners living there, is the richest of life there. The term richness here does not mean vast accumulation of wealth, in the monetary sense that we think of in our culture. Rather, it is clear that households lived very well indeed with their three earthquake-resistant buildings next to the free-flowing river. They ate well, producing abundant and varied seed and root crops, fruits and gourds from their trees, and other plants. The households interacted with others, exchanging the varied goods that each produced in excess, creating efficient interactive economic relationships. The economic contacts certainly created social relationships that kept the community functioning.