The Ancients - Maya Warfare and Sacrifice

Episode Date: September 16, 2021

With a history stretching back thousands of years, it’s about time that the Ancients started looking at the extraordinary Maya civilisation in Central America. Even with a range of sources that survive, many aspects of these ancient peoples remains debated and shrouded in mystery. This is especially true when studying warfare and the whole idea of ‘sacrifice’. What were the rules of engagement for the ancient Maya? What was the purpose of warfare? How did they define winning? And what would happen to those captured in war? Could they have been sacrificed? Joining Tristan today is Professor Elizabeth Graham, a titan of Mesoamerican archaeology who has been researching the Pre-Columbian Maya for several decades. Liz puts forward a very strong case for why she believes there was not human sacrifice among the Classic Maya and why we should not associate the occasional killing of captives with that term.For behind the scenes and extra Ancients, follow Tristan on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/ancientstristan/

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period some 2000 years ago. And we're going to be focusing in on warfare and the questions surrounding Mayan human sacrifice. Now joining me is an esteemed professor from University College London who believes that this whole idea of sacrifice among the ancient Maya is flawed and this is Professor Elizabeth Graham. Liz is a wonderful speaker. I went over to UCL about a week ago to interview her all about this. It was a fantastic chat and she explains why she personally believes that this idea of sacrifice is flawed. So without further ado, here's Liz to talk all about ancient Mayan warfare and the very credible questions surrounding this whole idea of ancient Mayan warfare, and the very credible questions surrounding this whole idea of ancient Mayan sacrifice. Liz, it is wonderful for you to come on the podcast. Thank you so much for

taking the time to come on the podcast. Well, you're very welcome. Now, this is a really interesting subject, warfare, the ancient Maya, and the possibility of sacrifice. But if we focus on warfare first, because Liz, to start this all off, warfare, it seems to have been right at the heart of ancient Maya society. Well, people say that, but I don't think it was any more at the heart of Maya society than it was at the heart of medieval Europe. I mean, if you read any medieval history, the elites, you know, the kings and the nobles were constantly thinking about how they could obtain more income, more tribute, more taxes. And they

did that in two major ways. They married well, or they started a conflict. And that's the same as it was for the people that we call the Maya. We will definitely delve into that as the podcast progresses. Interesting, straight away to see those global comparisons, as it were. But just to set the scene, first of all, to set the background, when we're talking about the Maya, whereabouts in South America are we talking? Well, we're not talking about South America. Okay, there we go. I find in England, people don't differentiate between Central and South America.

And I always say to my students, people don't combine Europe and Africa because Africa is the next continent to the south. But for some reason, Central America and Mexico are not differentiated. But the Maya are, well, the Maya live today in Central America and in Mexico, and estimates, I think, are around seven or eight million. So there's continuity from ancient times. The ancient Maya area, pretty much the same as today. Belize, the country of Belize, Guatemala, and Mexico, but not all of Mexico, really around the Gulf Coast and Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Campeche. Whereas as you move up into central Mexico, you have other language groups. You have different language groups in the Maya area. We say Maya, but there are something like 28 languages spoken in that area.

And they're called Maya because linguists have determined from the evidence that at something like between 2000 and 3000 BC, they're all descended from a common language. And they're not mutually intelligible. In Yucatan they are, but not in the highlands. Now, as you mentioned, 2000, 3000 BC there. So it sounds like Mayan history stretches back thousands of years. But in particular for this podcast, I noticed there seems to be a key period for our discussion today, which is the Classic Period. First of all, what is the Classic Period? Well, the Classic Period, the name comes from the fact that early explorers saw these huge

monuments and equated them with classical Greece. So that's where that name comes from. But the classic period, we date it from about AD 250 to, I'll say 900, but 800 and 900 was quite a period of decline. It used to be thought that the beginning was the time when, let's say, cities developed. But in fact, what the classic period represents is when we have dated monuments. It doesn't mean that there were no great cities before that time. And now, in fact, we know there were huge cities in Guatemala way before 250 AD. I mean, they date maybe to 600 BC or 800 BC. And there are settlements before that time, exactly when they became urbanized, we're

not sure. So the classic period is the period when we have dated monuments that tell us something about the history and the interaction of the various, I'm going to call them city-states or kingdoms. And then in the 9th century, we see the beginnings of a decline. And by the 10th century, by the 900s, the whole dynastic system has collapsed. So we no longer get the monuments that are dated and that have this historic information about the kings and the queens. Different things happen in what we call the post-classic, very inventive. It seems to be much more commercially oriented. It's a different era,

smaller cities, but not large numbers of them. But the dynasties that make the Maya famous, we know most about them from what we call the classic period. And you've kind of hinted at it already, but looking at the Maya in the classic period, you say Maya seems to be this, when looking at the Maya in the classic period, you say Maya seems to be this, when looking at the political landscape, as it were, Maya seems to be this overarching term. But within that, you have these various differing cultural groups. Yeah, the name Maya, as I say, we use it in Maya scholarly research, partly because of the language that I told you.

But in classic times, people did not self-identify that way. They didn't even identify that way when the Spanish first came to the New World. So no one really knows where the term Maya as a broad term, you know, where it originates. Some people say it was a language in Yucatan. No, at the time, people must have self-identified, we don't know, their town. At the time of the conquest, they apparently identified by the town they came from,

or the Ka, as Matthew Restall, who's a historian, has brought that to light. You know, they identified by the area they came from. But it may also be related to family, so we don't know as much as we would like. I appreciate that. And we will definitely get onto the sources that we do have available for the classic period in due course. But in regards to networks, trade, travel between these various communities, these various cultural groups, something like 1,000, 2,000 years ago, what do we know about that?

Well, we know quite a bit. I've excavated quite a number of coastal sites. So I know that what I call circumpeninsular traffic was really intensive. I mean, it's often emphasized in my field in the post-classic period, but we have evidence of intensive trade and commercial activity where I've worked at least from about 600, 400 BC. So lots of circumpeninsular trade, marine trade, and that served to bring goods rather quickly around the peninsula down to Honduras, Nicaragua, and then other systems would bring those goods inland, right? Now, there was a huge amount of intercity communication and trade. And one of the other things I'm interested in is every time you read about the Maya,

it's almost always prefaced by, oh, they didn't have beasts of burden. You know, they didn't have the wheel. Number one, if you've ever lived in the hematopoies, the wheel is not always an advantage. And if you've ever lived in the hematopics, the wheel is not always an advantage. I have many photos of me fixing flat tires and getting caught in rivers. But the other thing is interesting. I had sort of a revelation one night when I was out quite late before the pandemic in London, in North London. We were north of Camden.

I don't know. I left about 1 in the morning and I live in Bayswater. So I decided to walk home. I often walk. And London was alive. There were people selling drinks and food. And I thought, you know, if everyone walks and there is no alternative, it is going to stimulate commerce. Because you're a trader people who are carrying your goods are going to get tired they're going to get thirsty their feet are going to hurt and if you imagine it that way you can't imagine there being any space without people because if you're traveling you know your leather on your sandals is going to wear out oh you're

going to get tired oh you're going to want to drink do you know you your leather on your sandals is going to wear out. Oh, you're going to get tired. Oh, you're going to want a drink. Do you know? You're traveling with your family. So instead of a landscape with these vast jungle spaces, which we see today, I expect it was just the opposite. You know, there were probably people everywhere selling things to everyone else. So once you take that point of view, you imagine this busy landscape. And it is true that at the time of the conquest, some of the Spanish reports say that there are

just people everywhere, you know, moving about. And that was another thing about that. I thought, if people are everywhere moving about, you know, where does this thing about human sacrifice fit in? Because that's often depicted as sort of pulling people randomly, you know, and killing them. So there was a lot of interaction, a lot of interaction, a lot of trade, a lot of commerce. So we get this idea there for perhaps an ancient, bustling, global Mesoamerica as it was. But it begs the big question then, how do we think that this political landscape influences warfare? Well, as I said before, if you assume that Maya city-states and kingdoms were like others in history, then war or conflict fits into the same rules. And

lately, warfare seems to have become prominent. And it's probably because records of winning are what we find on many of the steli. Not all of them, of course. The steli are the monuments that are carved, that stand in plazas. And then, of course, there are also inscriptions in buildings. And they record rituals and other things as well. They don't record commerce, which is bad for us. But of course, the Maya had books, thousands of books, but it's the tropics, so they're just not preserved. But I don't know if the landscape itself may have contributed to rules of engagement in warfare, but other than that, my own impression is that the rules of engagement were very similar to medieval warfare in Japan, what I know of, or about that period, and in Europe as well. You know, things changed in Europe, but it was all about the upper class, you know, the elites, the kings, and really it was about their income, their power. Wars weren't started by regular people. You know, they were

started by those who were in power and sometimes wanted more income or more influence over the area. And that is so like what I read about medieval Europe. I used to think as a child that people want peace. And I think most of us commoners would like peace. But when you read about the people who are in power, not just the kings, but the dukes, and this is true in the Maya area, and even if they're not interested in conflict, they can't not be interested because they want to sit back and enjoy their position. Somebody else is already eyeing them. And that is what I think what we have in the Maya area. You know, it's the same thing. And it's an elite concern, you know, war.

So it's an elite concern, and it's among different overarching Maya groups, as it were. Do we know, therefore, what were their real motivations, as it were, among these elites for conflict between each other? What do we know about that? Well, if you read the literature, they'll talk about conquest and winning. But we don't really have detailed information about why a king might decide to wage war. But I'm convinced that it's economic. We say tribute, but tribute is really a tax in which the elites receive tribute and the commoners pay tribute. That's the story of life, right?

Even today, sort of. And so war is about increasing your tribute or your taxes. And the best way to do that really is to marry well. your tribute or your taxes. And the best way to do that really is to marry well. But women amongst the Maya, it wasn't like England where women really, I don't think, if women married, I think their wealth was transferred to the male, not in Mesoamerica. Women were tribute receivers, they were tax receivers. And so if they married, tribute receivers, they were tax receivers. And so if they married, they brought, as far as we know, they brought their taxes and tribute. And then the people who owed them taxes and tribute, they brought that with them. Now, I don't know if women came from longer distances,

how that was negotiated. But what it meant was not necessarily that the person that she married had the rights to that tribute, but their children, their offspring, would have the rights to taxes and tribute from both sides of the family. No idea how they organized that, but I'm sure that's true all over the world with wealth, right? So conflict was the other action you could take to achieve greater wealth and power. Now, Maya could marry more than one wife, and they could also have partners who they were not married to. As I understand it, even in those circumstances, women came with rights to wealth, but it was the offspring then who would benefit from this union.

So as I say, like medieval Europe, I'm sure it was like this elsewhere, what stimulated conflict was at the elite level. People didn't say, oh, we'd like another war, you know. It was all about resources, I would say. You know, some of my colleagues might disagree with me. I would expect that, because I've been reading a lot about conflict in South India as well, sometimes there, just something like a grievance against someone could start a war. And I bet that was also true among the Maya, but we're not going to see that on the stele or on a monument. We're not going to say, I hated this guy, so I started a war. You don't see that. You only see usually if a war is

what we would call won. Well, just before we go on to that, how can we define what do they consider winning a war back then? You mentioned Steely there, and we've kind of touched on the sources that we have available, but what sorts of sources do academics like yourself have available nowadays to try and find out more about warfare in Central America some 2,000 years ago? Well, with Amaya, we're lucky because we have text. That is how most of the information is gleaned from text. And I'm not an epigrapher. That is, I can't decipher, but I have colleagues who do. And so I try to keep up with the literature on conflict, but that's where we get a lot of information. Now, archaeologically, I have excavated areas where it looks as if there might have been some kind of conflict because we get points from,

in my case, arrows, but that's very late. It's almost the colonial period. But I myself have written a bit about weapons because I think that the rules of engagement are really important in conflict. And we have to assume that they probably changed over time. And with a colleague of mine, I've written a bit about when we begin to get different sorts of evidence for different kinds of weapons. In the classic period for most of the sites, it's more complicated than this, but hand-to-hand combat seems to have been the most important with what we would call a lance. And that's kind of symbolic, really, because it's

pretty hard to kill a person who's right next to you with a spear. And then that's where I think capture comes in. I think the aim is capture. But as time moves on, you begin to see more use of what's called a spear thrower or an atlatl. And in the sites I've excavated, we see that in the 800s. And that was one of the things that got me interested in war, because there was a time when changes in stone points would be seen as having to do with subsistence or hunting, but no. Not only do we see more of these spear throwers, or we call them atlatls, but in the areas I've excavated, the hafting techniques change. And that seems to me, we should really consider,

you know, culture where that's concerned, you know, men and their guns, a culture of weapons. And so there's this cultural change, which I think is very important because it may reflect changes in the rules of killing, you know, how you're allowed to kill people in wars, because that has changed considerably over time. We think that in the past, conflicts were more brutal. But when you begin to look at it in a different way, in many early societies, what we call war had so many rules. In some places, it was more like what we see in the animal kingdom, you know, with the, I don't know, deer batting each other in the head, but they don't necessarily kill each other. So, the rules of warfare are very, very interesting. And in my view, really, over time, we've permitted and made acceptable more and more killing. And so, if the archaeology, if our sources seem to suggest that

warfare some 2,000 years ago wasn't primarily just about killing, so among these elites in warfare, what was winning? How could they win? Well, that's the question that I ask my colleagues. My impression is that we don't think about that enough because you might look at a stela and it will tell you that a site triumphed over another site. That's an English word. And the Maya didn't have a word, or the Mayan language that we have in the monuments didn't have a word for war. They had other verbs. So it's a little hard to figure out. And maybe those verbs describe different sorts of winning. But in the literature and the reports that I read, people will just say Tikal won, but there's no indication of, you know, how did Tikal win, right? There's a man

on a battlefield somewhere, and usually they don't fight in the community because communities just go on. We don't really see the effects of conflict. You know, we don't see buildings being burned usually. There's some recently that claim that's true. But no, communities continue. So that's a question I ask myself. Well, what's winning? It's even difficult to find that out when you look at the warfare literature worldwide. And as far as I can tell, it must be the capture of the most of the enemy. But again, I say this here, and some of my colleagues might not agree, or the capture of maybe key elites on the other side, maybe the king. I expect the king or the queen was well protected. So I'm not saying that people wouldn't have died. I imagine that maybe

commoners, let's say, if they were in warfare and were protecting a lord or a king, maybe they were susceptible to being killed. But among the elites, among nobles and the kings, it looks as if they had to be captured. And I say this from some of the research I've done on the colonial period where war, not just among the Maya, but among some of the Gulf Coast peoples, is described in the Spanish accounts brag about killing 600 people, but none of our men, well, I'm quoting Cortes here, but none of our men were killed. The same is in the Battle of Francisco Montejo in Yucatan. They describe that the Maya were trying to take him off his horse. They weren't trying to kill anybody, were trying to take him off his horse. They weren't trying to kill anybody. But of course, the Spanish killed as many people as they could. And I find this interesting because what do we think? The Maya weren't stupid, right? But it doesn't seem to have been part of their rules

of engagement. And even, this isn't the Maya, but even up to the conquest of Tenochtitlan, if you read the descriptions of that period by Cortes and by Díaz del Castillo, who wrote a book about it, if you read it from my point of view, you almost cry because you can see that most, they're not just Aztecs, of course, that's another one of those strange words, but all the people who lived around Central Mexico, they couldn't cope with this kind of battle. I mean, their rules, not only did they not kill on the battlefield, but there were signals. If you turned and you left the field of battle, that was it. Well, Spanish would go after them and kill them.

I think that they didn't really know how to deal with this enemy. And it is true that at that time, the Tlaxcalans who went over to support the Spanish had to learn Spanish way of fighting. But I know when I was younger and I'd read the literature and they'd say, well, you just have to adopt Spanish fighting techniques. Well, no, because fighting in a war isn't separate from the rest of society. It's part of the social fabric. It's part of the cultural fabric. It's part of the cultural fabric.

So you have to feel, you know, that when you're fighting, that there are certain rules and that when you're killing, if it is sanctioned to kill in war, that way of killing has to be acceptable to society. So for the Maya, let's say, to go over to European-style warfare, it must have boggled their minds. Does it almost seem as if killing, ancient Mayan elite on the battlefield was not, should we say, a sanctioned part of warfare? I don't think so. I've argued that in the literature. I'm not saying this is true, but I've hypothesized, you know, because then it seems to me it makes

sense because we know that at the time of the Spanish invasion, the records showed that they didn't sanction killing on the battlefield. They tried. What were they trying to do with Montejo? They were trying to capture him and take him back because that is how they fought. They captured key people and they brought them back to the community. And then sometimes they were killed. Sometimes. Sometimes, yeah. Because in the Maya records, many of them were actually made vassals of the king whose men may have

captured more people in battle. With the Aztecs, we somehow have the impression that thousands were killed, but that is not true. I don't know the records as well as others, but I have colleagues at Leiden who have studied the documents extremely well, and those are just wild claims by the Spaniards. And also, if you excavate areas around what they are called skull racks, which is sort of similar to Henry VIII, only in that circumstance, I think that was capital punishment execution, but they put heads on stakes. Well, these little platforms in post-classic

times were used to put skulls of some of the enemy that were killed. But even if you excavate, I think maybe the most human skeletal material that was excavated was 100 or maybe less. I don't know. But this is the thing. For some reason, it's all right for the Spanish to kill 600 people on the battlefield. But if the Maya in classic times killed, I don't know, a person in a temple, that was considered human sacrifice. So what I've tried to do is to switch the emphasis to rules of engagement in warfare. How societies sanction, and when I say sanction killing, the person who does the killing has not violated any laws or any rules. And that if indeed, in the Spanish report, men were killed in temples, I see that as an extension of war.

And I say, among the Maya, we know people were killed, but we also know it was a little bit more complicated because sometimes they became subordinates, you know. What caused the anarchy? How did medieval migrants shape the language I'm speaking right now? Who won the Hundred Years' War? Could England's lost patron saint be buried under a tennis court in Suffolk? How did England's last medieval king end up under a car park? And were the Dark Ages really all that dark? I'm Dr Kat Jarman. And I'm Matt Lewis. On Gone Medieval, we'll uncover the most exciting and unexpected stories about the

Middle Ages, hearing from the best and brightest minds. We will disentangle fact from fiction, bring you the latest discoveries and reveal how the so-called Dark Ages laid the foundations for much of the world we're living in today. Subscribe to Gone Medieval from History Hit wherever you get your podcasts. So before we really go into the captives and then taking the captives back, what could happen to these captives and how they're depicted, just quickly a bit longer on, let's say, winning against another community, another group. So you've taken these elite captives, but at the same time, what else would they expect from it? Would it be, if it's economic motives primarily for warfare, this defeated community, this defeated cultural

group, was it then expected that they would have to, let's say, pay tribute? Well, see, you just used that phrase, defeated cultural group. They could have been the same groups fighting. So what was defeat? And I would have to say, and I apologize to my colleagues, I don't think we really know. I've tried to reason back, you know, from modern warfare. And I think in World War I, you got out of a trench, and then you tried to kill as many people as possible, and then you gained a bit of territory, right? Yeah, see, that's not what happened. They agreed on these fighting. And how did the battle end? Like, that's one of the questions They agreed on these fighting, and how did the battle end? That's one of the questions I've asked.

How did one side decide, you know, Calakmul fighting Tikal? How did the men on the battlefield suddenly say, oh, we lost? We don't know. I think it must have had to do in part with who's captured. And if the king was captured, oh, I'm sure that was, you know, how often a king was captured, I don't know. But, you know, there must have been other levels of capture and other levels of rules that we don't know about. We do know that, let's say, if Tikal lost, the community didn't seem to suffer as far

as we know. People went on trading, People went on living. Whoever, quote unquote, suffered seemed to have been the ruler of Tikal. And in my interpretation, I reckon he probably was not getting the taxes and the tribute that he got before. You see, that's what I think was going on. But again, you mentioned the fighting. I don't know how the fighting would have stopped, what the detailed

rules were, but there must have been a set of rules that everyone agreed upon. Even later in the Aztec Empire where you have hundreds of ethnic groups, they seem to have agreed on the rules of warfare in some way. Which is quite astonishing in its own right when you consider the geographic area that we're talking about, that they have these perhaps set in stone rules of engagement. Or at least shared. I mean, I think they did change. I'm exaggerating a little, but there do seem to have been certain cultural rules that were shared more broadly than others. I think this capture thing was probably one of them.

And so how are these elite captives, how are they depicted on archaeology that survives? Well, the ones we know on the monuments, well, often they're depicted being stepped on by the ruler who captures them. And almost always the ruler has his names and titles either carved on some part of his body or it's in the inscription about who he is. So that's another reason why I think we're looking at transfer of wealth here and that the winning ruler is displaying the person that he captured and therefore has the rights to tribute from that community. That's what I think he's stating. In other depictions you see, like in Bonhomme Pac, you see men who, after the battle, they don't have their elaborate clothing on.

Sometimes they're just in loincloths. And in this one site in Bonhomme Pac, it's often interpreted again as human sacrifice, which drives me crazy. But there is a head, you know, a person has been decapitated already, and the head is on the steps. Now, why that isn't war, I don't know. In the Bonaparte murals, we actually see a scene of battle. And so you're seeing people being captured. The consequence, I think, is maybe death,

and that those men on the steps in the Bonaparte murals were probably destined to be killed. You see, I would not label that human sacrifice. I would say that was their rules of war. And it is interesting that relative to what we know about killing in conflict, very few people get killed, and they're the upper class. Imagine, I often thought during the Iraq war, if we followed the Maya rules, it would be Tony Blair would have to go to Iraq and fight Saddam Hussein, right? And then maybe the cabinet as well. But the rest of us would be able to sit back and say, all right, money is going to win. So it was decided at that. And the elites put themselves in those positions of being killed. But as I know, it was decided at that. And the elites put themselves in those

positions of being killed. But as I say, when I mentioned to you before why I began to think about this, they probably put themselves in that position just the way men and women today put themselves in conflicts, because they think they have a good chance of not dying, you know, or you wouldn't do it. And some people have argued to me, well, in fact, there's a whole book in which they argue about warfare today and that men fight for honor and blah, blah, blah. And I say, yeah, do they get paid? You get paid in the army. You get paid in the Navy. Do you think people would go and fight in Afghanistan to volunteer because an individual is not going to risk his or her life for nothing. Now, of course, that is different in some situations. For example, you live in a community

and it's attacked. And as a woman, you might kill for your, you know, protect your children. I mean, there are circumstances, but in society's forms of war, you with armies there are uh things to be gained i've read a lot about oh gosh what's his name patrick o'brien is it who wrote about all of the uh master and commander you know the 18th century and shift and of course some were paid but they got a share of the loot and that's what you know motivated a lot of them didn't even want to do it then. But if they did, they shared in whatever profits were made in battle on the sea. And so I think that's how we have to look at it with the elites. As the elites in medieval Europe, of course, they could die.

Many of them did, but somehow they thought it was worth it at that level. So I think that's what was happening. The difference is the rules of engagement in the fighting, the rules of killing. Well, if we therefore say that these elite captives were perceived as, I'm sure I'm saying wealth, what could happen to these captives when they were taken back to the settlement or wherever it is they're going? Yeah, in most cases we don't know, but among the Maya, the records do show that captives were made vassals.

I think that's the best word. There probably was a word in Maya as well, but it meant that they now may be the head of their community, but they had to pay, transfer some wealth to the person who captured them, unless they were killed. Some of them were killed. And that's another thing. I'm not sure. We don't know why some rulers were killed and some rulers were allowed either to govern their own communities. There are occasions when a city, let's say one war with another city, captured the king. The king may have been sent back to his community, but his son was sent to live in the winner's community. Something must be going

on there. But I think, again, that is true in other courts in the world. It's kind of an insurance against perhaps rebellion. Yes, absolutely. You think of ancient Rome, you think of Britain in the first century where you saw the sons of powerful British rulers going to Rome and being taught Latin and stuff like that at the heart of this imperial power on the continent. I mean, it's a gruesome question, but I feel it's important as we continue this discussion. For those figures who were killed, those captives who were killed, how could they be killed? How do we think they were usually killed? Oh, that's a good question.

You'd probably be better off talking to an epigrapher, but there is a verb which we translate as to axe, but whether that means beheading, we're not sure. Later on, it is said that the Spaniards said that the Aztecs would take out hearts to kill people. The heart figures in Maya myth, but I don't think we're really clear exactly how people are killed. And in that Bonampak mural, we see the head, but whether they were killed by beheading, usually people are killed in some other way, like stabbed, and then the head is cut off. So they could have been killed by beheading, could have been killed by stabbing, and then the head is considered a kind of symbol. But other than that, for the Maya, I don't think we're really sure, although there are records that people die or

are killed. But as I say, an epigrapher would probably know the different verbs that are used for killing. One of the things, just for myself as an average showblogger, when looking up this subject, look at the ancient Mayan, one of the things which immediately comes up is the ballgame. What's the potential link between ancient Mayan warfare and the ball game in Mayan society? Well, you're going to get a different answer probably from different people, so this is my answer. The ball game seems to have functioned at a number of levels. It was probably played as a game, mostly, because we know today there are people throughout Mexico who play the ballgame. They have all kinds of rules. So there was that. But I think that there

may have been a form of ballgame that was an extension of war, I think, in which kings or leading nobles would play the game. And it may have resulted in the death of one over the other, because ball games are discussed much more in the post-classic, and some people consider them an extension of war. And at that level, I wouldn't be surprised, you know, at the level of the elites and the rulers, that it may have been a way between kings of symbolizing the winner over the loser. But we really don't know. We do know that even at the time of the conquest, the ball game was played. People bet like they do now, and they lost stuff.

They lost land and clothes and other things. So it existed on a number of levels. Probably at Chichen Itza, which people often see the ball court there, and that is post-classic. That was at the really elite level. So I see that as almost certainly an extension of warfare. But as soon as you accept that men were not killed on the battlefield, at least the elites were not killed on the battlefield, then you have to think of, well, if they were killed, how are they killed? And that may have been one way.

It's quite interesting if we do a global comparison now, if you think of something like the Colosseum, where you have people you know spectating, and sometimes the gladiators were killed. In those cases, those gladiators weren't usually at all elite figures, were they? No, I know. But in Mesoamerica, in Central America, if it was, you know, this was a deadly game and you had captives on one side playing another team and they were expected to lose, the fact that these captives, they were elite figures and they could potentially die in front of this crowd in the ballgame.

If that's what happened, right? We think it might have because in the pictorial references such as chi chen one of the ball game players doesn't have a head uh so it looks as if they may have lost you know life might have been lost i suppose you know we don't know for certain you know was that a metaphor but battles can you know can be men fighting can be quite brutal so So, you know, I wouldn't rule it out. Just before we finish wrapping up, and you kind of hinted at it as we've gone along in the podcast, but if we go to the word sacrifice and this idea surrounding captives in ancient Mayan society, what is this traditional link between the captives and sacrifice?

And why do you think we should challenge it? Well, there's so many reasons for that that it's hard to say. But for one thing, I don't permit any of my students to use the word sacrifice. Because there's no word for sacrifice in any of the Mayan languages or in Nahuatl. There's no word for it. In fact, in one of my publications, I had some Nahuatl translated that was translated as sacrifice years ago, and it's been retranslated.

There's no concept of killing an individual socially, you know, by the society and not being punished. There's no word for that. There's no concept for that, number one. So then I've explored the origins of the word sacrifice, and it is hugely problematic. It is originally from the Latin. It's been totally warped, as far as I'm concerned, by Christianity, but I won't go into that because I'm just reading that literature now. But it's originally from the Latin, and I have read the Latin dictionaries. I've consulted sources.

Originally, I think it's sacer. I'm not sure how to pronounce it. Meant to make something holy. So it referred to a particular ritual in which something in the ritual was made holy, meaning a priest had to say certain prayers in that ritual. Okay, that's what the word means. Now, it was used at feasts when animals were killed and prayers were said. At feasts.

In other words, the animals were eaten by the group at a fiesta or whatever. I know, it's celebration. And the animal had to be killed according to certain rules. But the word sakere, of course, could apply much more broadly. And somehow over time, although I know some Greek scholars have argued that there are instances in which animals are killed outside feasts, but I have to do some more research in that. All the cases I've read about, they're feasts. But for some reason, that word, sakir, sacrifice, has become conflated with the killing. Do you see what I mean?

Rather than the ritual of thanking a god for whatever, it's become conflated with killing, which it was not originally meant to be associated with. So you get that. And then through time, you begin to read people who talk about other societies who kill people for gods. Now, the word sacrifice, because it's Roman, you're not going to see it being used by the Greeks. And yet, I read translations of Greek stories in which the word is used. Now, you go figure that. Now, as far as I know, and again, this is talking to Greek scholars, and I'm hoping some people here can help me.

There are words for to kill, and there are words to offer. And somehow, that translation of sacrifice has got superimposed over Greek words that actually have a very specific meaning. So there's that problem in translation and what I think is really sloppy translation. But then when I began to do this research, I started out thinking there was such a thing as human sacrifice, that there was such a thing as societies killing people for gods. Well, as I read the anthropological literature, I read Girard, these people who have spent their entire careers, they never explain human sacrifice. They just say human sacrifice, and then they go on to try to explain why communities kill people for gods. They don't even ask whether

such a thing existed. They depend on stories, okay, on stories. So I call this the Mel Gibsonization of the past. Mel Gibson's movie about the Maya, it was a great movie as far as action, adventure, blood. I have a son who makes horror movies. Blood's fine with me. As a depiction of the Maya, it's totally ridiculous. Why should I believe Euripides? I don't think Euripides ever meant for me to believe him. I don't think, you know, the guy, what is it, Agamemnon, who killed his daughter, that is cited as an example. That's not an example of human sacrifice. That's an example of murder. That's another famous one of a Greek general who is forced by the community to kill some prisoners of war.

And that's cited as human sacrifice. I get so furious. So as soon as you begin to look at these examples, in no case is it a community sanctioning the killing of one of their members for a god. So now I have extended my argument to say it's fake news. There is no such thing as human sacrifice. It's dreamed up. Whether you're in your running era, Pilates era, or yoga era, dive into Peloton workouts that work with you.

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Oh, not that what we call religion isn't involved, of course. I mean, look at our own wars. Killing in a war that is sanctioned is seen as moral, right? We think it's morally right. We don't prosecute our soldiers when they come back from Iraq. We don't put them in jail because they've killed. We rationalize that, don't we? We justify the killing as the correct moral thing to do. So yes, of course, I'm not saying that the Aztecs or the Maya didn't have some religious justification. Of course, that's the best way to justify killing, isn't it? What I'm saying is that the primary reasons for killing, most cases not all i mean it gets more complicated what was warfare because apparently there's some cases amongst the aztecs when women were killed

but again this is reported by the spanish and they've never done much research they don't ask the right question because they want you know they want the society to look very brutal and very cruel i mean that's so interesting if we obviously we've gotten back to this this idea of warfare and the rules of engagement when we're talking about captives i mean is there any indication you might have hinted at this earlier as the say the classic period progresses does it seem like these rules of engagements might change or might have changed yes Yes, and this comes from archaeological evidence more than the epigraphy, because I have excavated sites where I've seen a change in the kinds of weapons. Lances are always used among the Maya, but in around 800

you begin to see the use of what's called the atlatl or the spear store. It actually does occur earlier at some sites. And this is very interesting because we think it has something to do with alliances or contacts with Central Mexico. But in most places where I've worked, we don't see atlatls until the 9th century, until the 800s. And when that first happened, that, and then I also noticed that the hafting changed the way the points, both atlatls and lances, were made. They sort of took a flake out, which suggested that hafting techniques had changed. I think that's really significant. But there's only one person I know who's even looking at that sort of thing.

People who study lithics tend to study them very broadly. And I did try to get people to study just the weapons at the sites I've used, but it's been tough. And that's another thing. When we discuss the Maya or we discuss the post-classic Maya or the Tlaxcalans or the people who are called Aztecs, usually we discuss war very broadly, you know. and I think also because they use stone tools that we tend to think, oh, you know, it's not like swords and inventing new metal battle tools. But I think, yes, because as power increases, you will get people who want to change the rules of engagement to their advantage. I mean, didn't this happen with the

British using bows and arrows in France? And it was just horrified. Not crossbows, but the long bows. Yeah, maybe that's it. And it horrified the French. What? Killing people long distance, because I think even at that time, hand-to-hand combat was the honorable way to fight. But once that change is introduced, and once that results in winning, even if more people are killed, even if everyone thinks it's a terrible idea, it will be adopted. As, you know, the example I like to use to my students? Oh, I love this one. The American Revolution. Oh, okay. Where the British are following honorable rules of warfare.

The Americans say, hey, we think it's okay if we hide behind a tree and kill these guys at a distance. Now, when I was in school, I was taught it was because the British were stupid and the Americans were smart. Now, I look at that and think that's the most disgusting thing I ever heard of. And there are pictures, which I've used in some of my lectures, of the heroic Americans, right, in a little raccoon cap, hiding behind a tree with, I guess it's a rifle, anyway, and killing a British soldier who's in a bright red coat on the battlefield, not trying to hide himself at all because those are the rules of warfare. And suddenly it becomes okay to be a sniper. And it's okay now, isn't it? They train snipers for warfare. in Maya warfare, where some awful person decided that it was worth it to push the envelope on those rules of engagement to gain more power. But what we may be seeing in the 800s, I'm not sure whether that was it. I think we might be seeing methods that were developed in Central Mexico, around the

Gulf Coast, and I think those people were moving into the Maya area, bringing not only their weapons, but perhaps different rules of engagement, which were to the disadvantage of the classic Maya. And I say this because I think up until the historic period, there are records of the classic Maya refusing to use bows and arrows. See, bows and arrows were used in Central Mexico. They weren't killing machines, though. arrows were used in Central Mexico. They weren't killing machines, though. They were used to draw blood. And I got this information from some historic material, and actually of all places in Oaxaca, which is far away. But it does suggest that some of these societal rules, you know, cultural rules are deeply embedded, particularly in the rules of fighting. So there's so many interesting

things I think that the future generation of Mayanists can look at. I mean, absolutely. I mean, for someone like me looking at it from the outside and not know much about it, I think one of the things I found so interesting during our chat today, we're going to wrap up now, was just how you mentioned how the Spanish, they report on seeing a group of Maya or Aztecs or whoever trying to grab someone from their halls who they presumably see as an elite figure. And it's almost as if maybe it's hearkening back to the classic period where it's trying to take that elite figure alive to bring back an embodiment of wealth, as it were.

Well, yeah, exactly. And I think, of course, in the conquest period, it wouldn't have worked. And yet, those were the only rules they knew. That's why I say it must have been confusing. And Cortés, on his march to Tenochtitlan, is in tears himself because he keeps saying, why don't they surrender? Why don't people from Tenochtitlan surrender so he can stop killing. But if you take my hypothesis, there is no such thing as surrender because the rules of warfare are very different. They have to do with individual struggles. They have to do with how that fits into, let's say, a hierarchy of capture. You have to follow those rules in order to be able to benefit, let's say, my theory, my hypothesis,

the transfer of wealth. Do you see what I mean? So the kinds of battles that the Spanish were fighting, I expect the Maya and the Tenochcos and others, they probably didn't know what the heck to do. There was no concept of let's get together and surrender our city. It didn't exist. no concept of let's get together and surrender our city. It didn't exist. And there are terrible reports of grief. And there are historians who I've read, like Inga Clendinen, who have helped me a lot in my thinking. But I think sometimes we underestimate sometimes what went on in that tragedy. It's always seen as a more powerful force triumphing, although that's the other thing when you read about it. By the time Cortez got to the lake, he had thousands of local allies. So that goes right down the drain. But no one thinks about these rules of fighting.

I'm surprised that it takes a woman to think of this. Me meaning. And not, you know, a man hasn't thought more about this. Well, regardless, Liz, this has been a really, really interesting chat, shining a light on rules of warfare, captives, and also just talking about the classic Maya, the ancient Maya in general. As we said right at the start, you know, this is a culture that's gone back thousands of years and you've still got Maya people living today. And it all just goes for me to say, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the podcast today. Oh, you're very welcome. We'll see you next time. Thank you.