Ancient acts of destruction reveal lost secrets of Maya

A remarkable archaeological discovery is shedding light on one of history's biggest enigmas - the collapse of central America's ancient Maya civilisation.

- DAVID KEYS

This new discovery – the ritual destruction of the symbolic icons of a deposed royal dynasty – is helping to reveal the complexity of that decline. Together with historical data from transcribed hieroglyphic texts from other sites, the discovery, at Ucanal in northern Guatemala, provides a unique glimpse of the political instability that seems to have fundamentally changed Maya history.

Archaeologists believe that the new discovery – the burning of a long-dead king’s skeleton and sacred funerary regalia – represents a new political system’s deliberate desecration of a Maya kingdom’s former royal rulers. It’s one of the most graphic examples of ancient geopolitical strife ever found in the Maya world – and is among the most significant Central American archaeological discoveries of recent years.

The Maya civilisation consisted of dozens of often competing kingdoms. Although the new political system (and the desecration event) at Ucanal seems to have given that particular kingdom a temporary new lease of life, it was almost certainly part of more widespread geopolitical instability which ultimately contributed to fundamental changes in much of the Maya civilisation as a whole.