266 Maya: Classic Period current world, by this calendar, will end on December 21, 2012 Like all Mesoamerican civilizations, the Maya invested the movements of the Moon, Sun, planets, and stars with deep religious and cosmological significance, often designing and constructing their temples, shrines, and other edifices to align with astronomical observations These celestial bodies represented gods and deities, and there is no evidence that the Maya understood the circular or elliptical orbits of the Moon, Earth, and planets as discovered by Copernicus and Kepler centuries later Maya religion and cosmology were exceedingly complex, an all-encompassing system of belief in which the distinction between sacred and secular did not exist Rivers, rocks, caves, springs, and other natural features were seen to possess divine powers, while a multiplicity of spirits and deities, including ancestor spirits, infused every aspect of everyday life Creation myths emphasized the cyclical re-creation of the world by dualistic divine beings who entered Xibalbá, or the Otherworld, “a place beyond death inhabited by ancestors, spirits, and gods—the place between the worlds,” according to Friedel et al., outwitted the gods, and became divine kings The most elaborate Maya treatment of creation myths and cosmology is the Popul Vuh, a uniquely revealing book written by the highland K’iche (Quiché) Maya after the Spanish conquest ECONOMY, SOCIETY, AND POLITICS The economic foundations of Classic Maya city-states and kingdoms consisted of extensive and intensive agriculture supplemented by hunting, fishing, and gathering; craft specialization; and local, regional, and longdistance trade, all of dizzying complexity Society was divided into two broad groups: a tiny group of elites and the great majority of commoners, with fine gradations in status at all levels In some instances a more prosperous strata of commoners emerged, though on the whole wealth and power were highly centralized and concentrated in very few hands Political power was exercised by hereditary ruling dynasties At the pinnacle stood the king (“sacred lord,” or k’uhul ajaw), almost always male and considered a divine or semidivine being Beneath him was a small group of high-ranking elites—warriors, high priests, scribes, and administrators Interstate politics were byzantine, with alliances between polities generally consummated through dynastic marriages Kingdoms were formed by conquest and domination of lesser polities, whose ruling houses the conquering power generally left intact The decline of the massive city-state of El Mirador in the late 100s c.e created a power vacuum in the lowlands that was soon filled by other emergent polities, most notably Tikal and Calakmul From the 100s to the late 300s, when it allied with mighty Teotihuaca´n, Tikal became the preeminent Maya kingdom, its power stretching from the northern lowlands as far south as Copán in Honduras In the 400s Calakmul began to challenge Tikal through conquests and alliances intended to encircle and weaken its adversary In 562 Calakmul defeated and sacked Tikal There followed a period of intense conflict lasting more than a century “The giant war went back and forth,” in the words of Arthur Demarest, until 695, when Tikal “roared back and crushed Calakmul 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.” During the Late Classic, similar processes unfolded to the southwest among the kingdoms of the Usumacinta River, most notably in the centuries-long conflict between Piedras Negras and Yaxchilán The war between these two regional powers and their allies raged off and on from the 400s to the 800s, finally ending in the defeat of Piedras Negras in 808 Another major regional conflict between Copán and Quiriguá, far to the south along the contemporary Guatemala-Honduras border, had a similar denouement By the 800s, as the kingdoms of the southern and central lowlands declined, the northern lowlands saw numerous polities rise to prominence in the 900s and 1000s, particularly in the Puuc region of western Yucatán To the east the kingdom of Chichén Itzá, founded in the late 700s, soon became the most powerful and populous state in all of Maya history With a more decentralized political structure and diversified economic base than its weakening southern neighbors, Chichén Itzá prospered from the 800s through the 1000s, when it too experienced a period of decline and was all but abandoned by 1100 CAUSES FOR DECLINE A complex combination of factors most likely caused the decline of Classic Maya polities Despite much variability in time and place, the most plausible scenarios point to the interplay of overpopulation, long-term ecological crises, endemic warfare, and the erosion of the moral legitimacy of divine kings in the eyes of the populace By the 800s the Maya lowlands were inhabited by tens of millions of people, probably exceeding the carrying capacity of the land even under optimal conditions