Seeds of doom: Mystery of a deserted city

| Intro | Grand ruins: Copan's pyramids |
| Seeds of doom: Mystery of a deserted city | If you go . . . |

When explorers rediscovered the lost cities of the Maya in the 1850s, it was a mystery why an apparently successful city was suddenly abandoned. But recent studies of skeletons from the period indicate that Copan was its own worst enemy.

By the time Copan was at its height, around 760 A.D., when the last great king, Yax Pac (Sunrise, or First Dawn), was building Temple 16, the city had grown unwieldy, with a population of 24,000 living on about 48 square miles (124.8 sq km). As the demand for food intensified, farmers cleared new land on less productive land, exhausted the soil and moved on. Eventually, with crop failures and cycles of drought and floods compounding the problem, widespread malnutrition and disease led to social collapse.

Scholars have also solved a second mystery, the meaning of the cartoon-like hieroglyphs found on the temples, debunking the belief that the carved stone blocks were linked to secret priestly rituals and prophecies. Instead, the deciphered glyphs are a historic record of Copan's 16 rulers, with their names, the dates of their rule and their deeds. The 1,250 glyphs in two rows beside the Hieroglyphic Stairway, ascending Temple 26, are considered the finest in the Mayan world.

While Diaz waited in the West Court, we climbed to the top of Temple 16, 100 feet (30 meters) above the original river bed. Beyond was a panoramic view of the valley and distant hills. Below lay a complex of smaller temples, the restored ball court, the Great Plaza with its stelae and beyond, more structures still waiting to be excavated.

Perhaps, in another 1,000 years, when future archaeologists unearth our abandoned monuments, tested for polluted water and analyzed bones deformed by chemicals and malnutrition, travelers will be gazing on the evidence of our failures, and wondering why we let it happen. It was an uneasy thought.

Ongoing restoration is visible at the south end of the site, where covered sheds hold thousands of stacked and numbered blocks waiting to be reassembled. The hieroglyphic stairway and other important carvings have been covered with thatch or temporary roofs to prevent further weathering, but some smaller carvings have been moved to an elegant and airy new museum near the entrance and replaced with copies.

As we left the park, four vividly colored red, yellow and blue macaws, a sacred bird in Mayan iconography, waddled about on the ground looking for leftover lunch crusts. When the gatekeeper, a stolid man with a perpetual frown, held out a wood pole, they obligingly climbed aboard to pose for photographs.

Then they flapped back down to peck at the dust. For the macaws, at least, little had changed in 1,000 years.

Anne Z. Cooke is a freelance travel writer in Los Angeles. (c) 1998, Anne Z. Cooke. Distributed by Los Angeles Times Syndicate.
Photos by Steve Haggerty, courtesy LA Times.

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