Rescuing the Origins of Dos Pilas Dynasty:
A Salvage of Hieroglyphic Stairway #2, Structure L5-49

Conclusions

Although the end of Lowland Maya civilization has been the subject of much study and controversy, it becomes clear to the author that along with others who have studied the southwestern Petén and the Tikal-Calakmul conflict in depth, a major factor was the breakup of the trade routes between the highland states, particularly the central and northern areas which supplied the exotic goods necessary for elite interchange.

We may speculate that the 760 to 800 warfare and disintegration of Middle Pasión culture would have had a devastating interregional effect through disruption of trade and transport. This disruption probably explains the 800 to 810 declines and abandonment of most major centers on the Pasión/Usumacinta river system, between forty and one hundred years earlier than that of many major southern lowland cities further east. Previously, most scholars have interpreted the collapse began in the west where populations were smaller and surface water was far less of a problem. Furthermore, Petexbatún project results from six seasons of research have clearly negated all such ecological or demographic factors there (e.g. Demarest 1997; Dunning et al. 1997; Wright 1997; Dunning and Beach in press; Emery 1997).

The tendency to explain the eighth-century decline of kingdoms in local or regional terms also fails to account for the early, and chronologically coeval, decline and abandonment of the river centers. The reason for the correlated declines is obvious. The river trade route was broken at its middle by the endemic warfare that had engulfed the Petexbatún region and the Middle Pasión, including Ceibal. The millennium-old highland-lowland, Verapaz-to-Gulf-of-México trade and transport route was cut in half by the endemic wars of the Petexbatún and Ceibal. The result was the well documented western regionalization of ceramic production and exchange (Foias and Bishop 1997; Foias 1995). With trade and transport cut off to the east and south (Petén, Upper Pasión, and southern highlands), kingdoms turned inward or to the west (with its fine paste wares) for their exotic ceramics and economic affiliations.

Yet the south had been the source of the jade, pyrite, quetzal feathers, most obsidian, and many other exotics and commodities that sustained the patronage networks of the river kingdoms. With the collapse of these networks, the western kingdoms faced problems in obtaining commodities and exotics and suffered a consequent weakening of patronage networks–not to mention the direct destructive impact of sieges, settlement concentration, and population displacement caused by the warfare itself (Demarest, Rice, and Rice in press; Demarest 1997, in press a; Demarest and Escobedo 1998). The above discussed population displacements and dispersal in the Petexbatún were followed by similar declines and emigration of population between 800 and 815 from centers like Piedras Negras, Yaxchilán, Aguateca, Palenque, Cancuén, and the other great river kingdoms (Figure 6, Figure 7, and Figure 8).

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