The Political Structure of the Maya in the Late Classic...

Many advances in archeological and epigraphic research has shed new light on Maya civilization, however, there is still much discussion on the political structure and how it was formed. The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization noted for its advanced form of civilization. It reached its highest state of development during the Classic period which ranges from approximately 200-900 AD. Early in the Classic period (292-434 AD), there were several city-states found throughout the Maya lowland region with no defined hierarchy of settlement or regional capitals. However, this seemed to shift around 514 AD with four major capitals forming in dispersed regions throughout the Maya lowlands (Scarre Fagan, 2008). It is in these regions that emblem†¦show more content†¦In this fashion, each capital was able to control the inferior city-states nearby and yet obtain its own independent polity apart from the other ruling capitals located in separate regions of the Maya lowlands. Schele Fr eidel (1990) believe that this political structure may have mirrored that of the ancient Maya cosmological structure in which each major capital is associated with a cardinal direction. Of course, it is crucial to know how these four dominant city-states were able to form and take control of the surrounding city-states to begin with. Joyce Marcus (1976), who studied Maya political territoriality through epigraphy and iconography, has come up with a model of how these four capitals came into power. A new city-state first expands its territory through mechanisms such as diplomacy, political marriage, and military conquest. Eventually, this state will reach a maximum territory threshold. This is because the lord of this city-state must collect and redistribute resources among its peoples and cannot do this beyond the extent of a certain marching distance (Chase Chase, 1998). 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