Honduras PRE-COLUMBIAN SOCIETY
The Mayan Heritage
Mayan ruins at Copán
Courtesy Museum of Modern Latin American Art
Pre-Columbian Honduras was populated by a complex
mixture of
indigenous peoples representing a wide variety of cultural
backgrounds and linguistic groups--the most advanced and
notable of
which were related to the Maya of the Yucatán and
Guatemala. Mayan
civilization had reached western Honduras in the fifth
century
A.D., probably spreading from lowland Mayan centers in
Guatemala's
Petén region. The Maya spread rapidly through the Río
Motagua
Valley, centering their control on the major ceremonial
center of
Copán, near the present-day town of Santa Rosa de Copán.
For three
and a half centuries, the Maya developed the city, making
it one of
the principal centers of their culture. At one point,
Copán was
probably the leading center for both astronomical
studies--in which
the Maya were quite advanced--and art. One of the longest
Mayan
hieroglyphic inscriptions ever discovered was found at
Copán. The
Maya also established extensive trade networks spanning as
far as
central Mexico.
Then, at the height of the Mayan civilization, Copán
was
apparently abandoned. The last dated hieroglyph in Copán
is 800
A.D. Much of the population evidently remained in the area
after
that, but the educated class--the priests and rulers who
built the
temples, inscribed the glyphs, and developed the astronomy
and
mathematics--suddenly vanished. Copán fell into ruin, and
the
descendants of the Maya who remained had no memory of the
meanings
of the inscriptions or of the reasons for the sudden fall.
Data as of December 1993
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