The Death Relic

10

Despite her doctorate in history, Maria was unfamiliar with the ninth-century disappearance of the Maya. As far as she knew, the Spanish had conquered them in the 1500s.

Hamilton noticed the confusion in her eyes. ‘Perhaps I was a bit melodramatic when I said the Maya disappeared. They didn’t vanish into thin air. At least, I don’t think they did.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘The truth is no one knows. But sometime around 850 AD, the Maya abandoned most of their major cities. No rhyme, no reason, no explanation of any kind. The Maya simply left and didn’t come back. Within months, their cities were swallowed by vegetation. That’s why so many canals and temples are still being found in the jungle. Sites from Mexico to Guatemala were deserted seven hundred years before the Spanish arrived, so explorers don’t know where to look. Who knows what could still be out there hiding in the trees?’

‘Where did the Maya go when they left the cities?’

Hamilton shrugged. ‘Somewhere. Nowhere. Everywhere in between. Our best guess is that they moved from place to place for a hundred years or so before they grew in numbers and re-emerged as a force in the mid-tenth century.’

‘They abandoned their cities but re-emerged as a force? How is that possible?’

‘What do you know about Mayan politics?’

‘Absolutely nothing.’

He figured as much. ‘Unlike the Roman Empire, the Maya were never a unified nation. Instead, they were a series of tiny kingdoms that sometimes fought one another. A typical kingdom was usually nothing more than a city-state, headed by a hereditary ruler known as an ajaw. These kingdoms were generally small in size, consisting of a capital city and the nearby villages. Despite the geography involved, a kingdom was identified by the name of the ruling dynasty, not by its territory. Therefore, when the royal family was captured or killed, the kingdom ceased to exist.’

‘Did that happen often?’

He nodded. ‘Eventually the kingdoms became bigger and bigger until they grew into powerful city-states that spread to all corners of Mesoamerica. This proved to be problematic for the Spanish. Without one true government to overthrow, they had to endure a brutal campaign against the Maya that lasted the better part of two centuries.’

‘Two centuries? I didn’t know it lasted that long.’

‘One hundred and seventy years to be precise.’

Francisco de Montejo, a Spanish conquistador who had petitioned the King of Spain for the right to conquer the Yucatán, arrived on the east coast in 1527. Remarkably, the last Mayan stronghold — the Itzá capital of Tayasal in Guatemala — didn’t fall until 1697. By comparison, Cortés and the Spanish conquered the Aztec Empire in a mere two years.

Hamilton continued. ‘During that time, the Spanish did everything they could to sever the Maya’s connection with their past, including the burning of all Mayan texts. Not surprisingly, they did this in the name of God.’

Maria shook her head in frustration. As a historian, one of the things that pissed her off more than anything else was the purposeful destruction of ancient documents. If it hadn’t been for the burning of the Library of Alexandria, the House of Wisdom in Baghdad and countless other libraries around the world, many of the mysteries of the past could be solved. She also realized most of the burnings had been done to promote a new ideology to a conquered civilization. In the case of the Maya, it was the introduction of Christianity.

‘Are you familiar with Diego de Landa?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘He was a Franciscan monk who came here in the mid-1500s to teach the natives about Christ. At least I think that’s when he arrived. According to your timeline, the Spanish Conquest was just warming up, so I might be wrong.’

‘No,’ he assured her, ‘you are correct about the date. Landa arrived here in 1549 to encourage the Maya’s conversion to Catholicism, while the conquistadores continued their campaign in other parts of the Yucatán. By order of the Spanish Crown, the Franciscans were granted a spiritual monopoly over the entire region, and Landa was one of the leaders.’

As a practising Catholic, Maria frequently found herself embarrassed by the violent history of the Church, and this was one of those times. Although the term ‘spiritual monopoly’ was new to her, she knew exactly what it meant. When it came to religion, the Maya had no choice in the matter. If they didn’t convert to Catholicism, they were punished or killed.

Over the years, she had come across dozens of historical events when the Vatican or its representatives had encouraged similar acts of conversion. Some of the incidents were so abhorrent that they forced her to seriously question her devotion to a Church that had empowered such behaviour. In the end, though, she always came to the same conclusion: the religion was pure, but humans were fallible.

Hamilton continued. ‘In the history of the Maya, there has never been a more controversial figure than Diego de Landa. To many, he is hated for his cruelty and his destruction of invaluable ancient documents. To others, he is praised for his personal preservation of the Mayan culture. In all of my years as an historian, he is the most complex man I’ve ever encountered.’

Maria frowned. ‘How could he be known for such contradictory things? It doesn’t seem possible.’

‘As I mentioned, Landa was complicated. When he first arrived in the Yucatán, he was stationed as a monk in the mission at Izamal, a small city to the west. While there, Landa noticed the Maya’s use of glyphs and decided to translate them into Spanish. Working with Mayan royalty, he established a base for their glyphs — which were a mixture of syllables and words — which is still used by scholars today. Two decades later, on his return voyage to Spain, Landa started to write a book called Relación de las cosas de Yucatán in which he chronicles the Mayan culture in remarkable depth. In it, he discusses their language, their religion, their writing and their ethnology. Over the years, I have used it many times as a guide.’

‘I have to admit, none of that sounds bad to me. Why is he so reviled?’

‘Why?’ Hamilton asked rhetorically. ‘The main reason that modern scholars like myself are reliant on Landa’s book is because he personally burned the Mayan glyphs. If he hadn’t done that, our knowledge of the Maya would be much more advanced. We would be able to read Mayan history in the hand of the Maya, not his distilled version of ancient events.’

‘Landa translated the documents, then burned them?’

He nodded gravely. ‘Are you familiar with the term “auto-da-fé”? It was a ritual used during the Spanish Inquisition.’

She grimaced in disgust. The ceremony was one of the skeletons in the Church’s closet that they would rather forget. ‘The term meant “act of faith” in medieval Spanish. The ritual involved a Catholic Mass, followed by a public procession of the condemned and a reading of their sentences. Torture was quite common, so was burning at the stake.’

Hamilton lowered his voice to a whisper. ‘In July of 1562, Landa ordered an auto-da-fé in the city of Maní. At the end of the ceremony, he burned more than twenty thousand Mayan images and a reported five thousand Mayan idols, claiming they were the “works of the devil”. This marked the beginning of a new campaign, where Mayan nobles were jailed, interrogated and tortured to speed up the mass adoption of Catholicism. Scared for their lives, thousands of Maya fled from the cities and into the jungles to avoid abuse.’

‘He burned twenty-five thousand items? The fire must have been huge.’

‘It could be seen for miles and signalled the start of Landa’s brutal regime. Over the next several decades, the Spanish burned every Mayan document they could get their hands on — much to the dismay of the Maya, who were forced to watch their entire history go up in flames.’

She took a deep breath. ‘The thought of it sickens me.’

Hamilton nodded in agreement. ‘Do you know how many Maya are still living in Mesoamerica today?’

She shrugged. ‘I have no idea.’

‘Approximately ten million. That’s a significant amount when you consider there are less than three million Native Americans still living in the United States.’

‘Ten million is way more than I figured.’

‘Amazingly, do you know how many Mayan codices managed to survive?’

She shook her head, unwilling to guess.

Hamilton held up his hand with his fingers spread. Then he tucked his little finger under his thumb. ‘Only three.’