The Mayan glory and ruin

The rise and consequential fall of the Mayan empire is one of the biggest obscure mysteries of the ancient world. Was it a natural catastrophe or just malfunctioning of the reign?  The people of Mayan’s society during the Preclassic, Classic, and Post classic period, built several cities, temples, and pyramids, and those today are the testimony of their magnificence.

However, even if the stone monuments today are the only possible way to reconstruct the Mayan history, most of them seem to recall unique subjects such as: celebration of battle victories, human sacrifices, commemorations of important events. The arriving of a Western warlord to the southern cities of Waka symbolizes the beginning of a new Era for the Mayans, an age of absolute splendor, founding new rulers that lasted for several centuries. I am afraid to be wrong, but I believe that one of the primary factors of the Mayan fall is the instability of its society, the internal conflicts, where cities were acting as independent micro-states, fighting each other, and eliminating their own people, just because considered “rivals”.

It is not a unique case in world’s history, if we recall the example of Sparta and Athens, as being rivals in the Ancient Greece, and the consequences could be drastic for the entire civilization.  The arrive of the Spanish conquistadores in the Post Classic period, in fact, sets the end of the Mayan hegemony  in Yucatan,  but what happened in the southern regions of Mexico? The interstate conflict increased so much to lead the civilization to the collapse. People had abandoned the major places, and the splendor of Palenque, Tikal, Yaxchilan, and more other cities remained hidden in their mysteries.  

Each image, each symbol of the sites is a representation of an impressing culture that had its period of glory. However, the unstable situation, caused first and foremost for competition, made the population loosing the control of their empire, and come to a close failure.