Original subtitles

- The Maya, an ancient civilization

that ruled huge areas of Central America

for more than 2,500 years.

- The classic Maya had been one of the most successful

societies in the Americas, if not the world.

During their Golden Age, or Classic Period, 250-900 AD, there

were more than 40 city-states

and over 2 million people, never united as one empire.

The Classic Period was a time of intensive interaction

between various kingdoms.

Alliance networks, conflicts, intermarriages.

Powerful city-states rose, fought, and forged fragile alliances.

In their rivalries lies the story of how their entire civilization fell.

Narratives that we've uncovered carved in their long-forgotten ruins.

We read an amazing story.

I'm just thinking about what that heat and flame and seeing the

pyramids burn would have

looked like.

The classic period was dominated by a brutal 200-year-long

battle for control of the Pet'en region.

Two ancient superpowers going head-to-head.

"We have everything the Game of Thrones has except the dragons."

Much of the Mayan Golden Age was defined by a great

rivalry between two kingdoms,

the Jaguars of Tikal and the Snakes of Calakmul.

but after centuries of war, there was one winner.

Tikal came out victorious.

- After 741, we really don't see a mention

of snake kings here at Colentmoor again.

- But their win came at a price.

The kingdom of Tikal had shattered.

- There was a drought, there was not enough food to eat,

and they would have had cyanobacteria in their water supply.

After all, nothing can last forever.

- The classic Maya world is kind of closed off

and literally in ruins, in the forests.

- Ruins that allow us to tell the story

of this great civilization's downfall.

In 734 AD, there were two great Mayan powers, the Serpent Kings

of the city of Calakmul,

the Canuls, and the Jaguars of Tikal.

They had been vying for control of the Mayan lowlands for centuries.

Tikal's latest ruler was Yik'in Chan Ka'wiil,

a new king keen to continue the legacy of his forefathers.

he wanted to defeat the Kanuls.

His opponent, Yuknoom Took' K'awiil, the king of Calakmul,

didn't shy away from the challenge.

- Between 734 and 736,

during the reign of Yuknoom Took' K'awiil,

there was a battle between Tikal and Calakmul.

That battle seems to have been quite decisive.

We do not know where the battle took place.

We do not know exactly when the battle took place.

But we do know that during that battle,

Yuknoom Took' K'awiil wheel was captured.

Before this battle, the Kaanu'l from Calakmul had had the upper hand.

Tikal was the weaker city, yet, against all the odds,

Tikal came out on top.

It may have been that Yik'in Chan K'awiil was a

better military strategist.

Calakmul was beaten, and the jaguars were rising yet again.

- The end of Yuknoom Took' K'awiil is really somewhat uncertain.

He is mentioned as a sacrificial captive at Tikal.

So he's displayed on an altar

and he was probably going to be sacrificed

on this very same altar.

- Yik'in Chan K'awiil completed what his father,

Jasaw Chan K'awiil had started years before,

restoring Tikal as the most powerful kingdom.

Defeated, the Kaanu'l dynasty was hanging by a thread.

- That was a very great catastrophe.

It meant the end of power at Calakmul

for all intents and purposes.

- The successor of Yuknoom Took' K'awiil

is mentioned only in a couple of texts outside Calakmul.

We don't have any evidence from him here at the site.

- There are small kinks after that,

but nothing consequential, it's done.

- We know this thanks to the spectacular ruins

the Mayans left behind,

complete with inscriptions and images

that recount these events.

For a long time, Calakmul was the heart of the Kaanu'l Kingdom,

its monuments filled with its stories.

But after this battle, that changed.

After 741, we really don't see a mention of snake kings

here at Calakmul again.

So we don't know whether that means that this line of the

dynasty died out altogether

or whether they moved elsewhere.

After so many centuries of unchallenged rule

and unrivaled prestige,

the time of the Serpent Kings came to an end.

But their departure left a great void in the Mayan world

and no clear power structure in the region.

- Once the Kaanu'l hegemony starts to fade away,

There's a lot of competition, a lot of military action,

little states all going against everyone else.

- This is the resurgence of regional warfare

for control of smaller territorial areas.

- Amidst the turmoil of battling cities,

Tikal also seeked out further expansion.

If it wanted to rule the Mayan lowlands,

it needed to defeat all its foes.

This started a series of expansionist wars that would rage for a decade

and bring prosperity to the city.

Yik'in Chan K'awiil, the king of Tikal, saw another opportunity.

A highly sacred neighboring city, El Peru Waka.

Yik'in Chan K'awiil attacks El Peru in 743.

Conquers there.

That god, over a period of a year, was transformed into a Tikal god,

so that the Oracle of Waka would be permanently moved from Waka to Tikal,

so it could never attack Tikal again.

After 200 years of war,

Regaining El Peru Waka cemented Tikal's place as the most

powerful city once more.

Moving the oracle, a genius power move.

Yet, Yik'in Chan K'awiil didn't stop there.

Then he switches from the west to the east and he attacks

Naranjo. He defeats that in 744.

This victory over Naranjo came just a year after his previous triumph.

- For the first time in centuries, Tikal was free.

It had no great rivals to fear.

Yik'in Chan K'awiil had brought Tikal to its peak and his victories are

visible throughout the city, even today.

He is responsible for building some of Tikal's most iconic remains.

- Inscriptions tell us that after 20 years on the throne,

the death of Yik'in Chan K'awiil

unbalanced the Mayan world once more.

Yik'in Chan K'awiil was succeeded by his eldest son,

who reigned for just two years,

followed by his second son,

Yax Nuun Ahun II, who ascended the throne in 768 A.D.

We believe he was named after the former ruler, Yax Nuun Ahun I,

who was installed by Teotihuacan,

another once great ancient American civilization that conquered

Tikal some 400 years earlier.

Yet Yax Nuun Ahun II did not have the same supreme power and

control as his forefathers.

Things were changing in Tikal.

It seems as if the whole system is beginning to unwind.

And this idea that one king will hold dominion over many other

kingdoms is an idea that seems

to be in decline.

Yax Nuun Ahun II reigned for nearly 25 years, but during this

time, we know his power waned.

There are only a few hieroglyphic inscriptions that

mention him and later rulers.

After his death in around 794 AD, the power of Tikal's

royalty continued to decline.

Subsequent rulers not able to command the same levels of respect.

- Because of this, we know very little of these rulers,

yet it didn't mean the people of Tikal weren't thriving.

Studies looking at architectural densities and environmental

analysis tell a very different story.

We see communities that are burgeoning, that are growing,

very dense, densely populated communities.

The resources that are being exploited simply to feed these new

populations, coupled with

political instability, must have created an impossible situation.

The growth of the city was changing the surrounding environment.

At Tikal, for example, they had cleared about 60% to 70% of

the forest, so it was too much.

Here, water comes down, it gets recycled back into the air.

And that cycle keeps going,

but when you take away the forest, it disrupts that cycle.

- Chuck was the Mayan god of rain, thunder, and fertility,

and one of the most important deities of the Mayan era.

Many rituals were dedicated to him,

during which kings would embody him

in order to bring rain and ensure good harvests.

- You constantly need, especially in this area,

to save water and to bring it in

in order to sustain agriculture throughout the year.

- But towards the end of the eighth century,

the climate began to shift.

No matter how the divine kings called upon Chuck,

Therefore, the loss of either of those, water for a sustained

period of time, or the inability

to enrich the landscape with nutrients from low-lying swampy

areas and decaying vegetation

in those areas, would have had a cascade effect.

Tikal was in trouble.

It wouldn't have been an abrupt collapse of the system,

but it would have been a reduction in yield every year,

such that eventually it would not have been able to sustain

a large population.

These extreme climate shifts, and the subsequent hardships,

also had another large impact on this ancient society.

It called their king's ability to connect with the gods into question.

This was a core belief of the Mayan people.

Their rulers were divine in nature,

a link between Earth and the Almighty.

- Imagine being a Maya king at this point in history

because Maya kings were describing themselves all the time

as actors on the cosmic stage.

Time was their crop, right?

They were harvesting the cosmos as part of their role

as ritual actors.

Once you have an unstable, natural world,

I think that that undermines the assumptions

of power for Maya kings.

But droughts weren't the only problem for Tikal's ruler.

Scientific testing at a key archeological site

tells us that in the early 800s,

the city was about to face another setback,

one that affected their water supplies.

- It's the largest reservoir at the site.

The Aguada would have provided water during the dry season

when there were no rains coming

on a daily or every other day basis.

And we have hundreds of these Aguadas throughout the region.

- During the rainy season,

you capture the water into the reservoirs

and then you have lots of water to drink

during the dry season.

The palace reservoir, that was the largest reservoirs at Tikal.

And also, it was a reservoir that

was right adjacent to the palace where the ruler lived.

It's here that excavation teams found evidence of a problem.

Then the water turns green.

and having the water turn green right in front of the palace

would have been a real political problem for the ruler.

The people must have seen this

as a failing of their leadership.

- Chemical testing has shown

that it wasn't just an issue politically.

It was a death trap.

- This shows that there were serious infestations

of cyanobacteria in at least two of the reservoirs.

And these are a group of blue-green algae

that produce incredibly toxic microcystins

and extremely dangerous

because one drop on your tongue would kill you.

One thing the Maya would use as a pigment was cinnabar,

which is mercury sulfate.

And so there would be a constant build-up

in mercury in the sediments

and in the waters of the reservoirs

that is many times above the toxic effect threshold.

And so the rulers were consuming mercury every day in their food,

and this would have created a real problem for them

because it would have perhaps affected their mental acuity

and their ability to make good decisions.

You couple that with the fact that there was a drought,

there was not enough food to eat,

and they would have had cyanobacteria in their water supply.

And this would have all indicated to the Maya

that perhaps it was time to leave Tikal.

Tikal, the city that acted as the central hub of

the Peten region for centuries, began and to lose its people.

The ideology is weakened once reality sets in.

- Towards the end of the eighth century,

the Mayan civilization started to collapse.

It set in motion a domino effect

of battles between smaller cities.

These skirmishes were a different type of warfare,

less prepared, less organized.

The fall of other small cities followed,

there was panic, and as people fled, they were abandoning their rituals.

Not everything is recorded,

we only have a fraction of what was really going on.

So there are still a lot of gaps in our knowledge.

800, 820, 840. This was the era of the collapse.

One by one, the Mayan kingdoms gradually emptied,

leaving behind only the ruins that we see today.

It's the state of these remains

that tell us of these cities' violent ends.

But discord wasn't limited to the smaller settlements.

The same was true as people left Tikal.

- I believe that there were riots in downtown Tikal.

People were starving, people were frightened.

People came in and they sacked the center of the city,

their own city.

They cut into the tombs, they took out bones, they burnt the

bones, they put sacrifices

of people inside those, and they scattered pottery and

other precious materials.

They are closing the portals of Tikal in 830.

Yet, whilst the city lay almost abandoned,

there was one last attempt to bring it back to life

late in the ninth century.

And in 869, a member of the royal line came back

and raised a stelae in front of the North Acropolis.

This is the first monument at Tikal for 60 years and it's

situated here in the middle

of the great plaza and surrounded by the

ancient kings of Tikal.

This is a late, late revival.

This is a king called Jasaw Chan K'awiil II.

He was a successor in the line of the dynastic founder,

Yasheb Shok, 33 lines of kings to come to him.

Jasaw Chan K'awiil II,

Taking the throne of Tikal in 869 A.D. marked the return of a

divine king to the city.

The inscriptions tell us he embodied a renewed sense of hope.

It's interesting that one of the very last kings of Tikal, at a moment

of clear weakness and downturn,

would want to use the name of this figure,

this earlier king, who had brought Tikal

out of its own dark ages.

A hero who had defeated the Kaanu'l.

The new king took the name of a heroic ancestor

who won a great war against Calakmul

nearly 200 years before.

Was Tikal rising again?

The ritual of dispersion

was the new king appealing to the gods

by symbolically planting a seed,

so that the next twenty years would be fertile

and plentiful for the city and its people.

On Stela XI, the king is shown casting.

Casting is also the gesture of divination, of prophecy, of divining.

That Tikal will not be forgotten.

It's clearly using these old tropes and these old visuals

and these old symbols and old names, I think, to be nostalgic, right,

to try to evoke a past where Tikal was powerful and stable.

The past is the doorway to the future.

So when a king of the royal line came back to Tikal and the

city was abandoned and he

wanted to remember it, he was defying destiny.

By invoking imagery of Tikal's golden age,

Jasaw Chan K'awiil II was willing this success to also be its future.

He was attempting to roll back the decline of recent decades

and manifest success.

- When we talk about Maya kings as political actors,

as warriors, we should never give up the idea

that they were also cosmic forces, in a sense.

This is how they defined their own political role.

Despite Jasaw Chan K'awiil II's attempts to call on the gods,

the fortunes of Tikal did not improve.

No new monuments were constructed after 869 AD.

This also led to Jasaw Chan K'awiil II's own demise.

Archaeologists suspect that the sacred bond

that had been the strength of the divine kings

became their greatest weakness.

- The life of a Maya king

must have been extraordinarily difficult.

Not only was it clear that the natural world was changing,

that literally the climate was changing

and droughts were happening,

but there was this undermining of the ideology

behind what it meant to be an elite,

to be a king or a queen.

Environmental studies and LiDAR data

have shown us that the drought continued,

more people starved, and eventually everybody left.

Just like the Kaanu'ls 150 years earlier,

the Jaguar dynasty was now a shadow of its former self.

There's only one monument in Tikal that speaks of this

great downfall, and that of

the last great king, Jasaw Chan K'awiil II.

stelae 11 was the last Mayan creation in Tikal.

We definitely see a collapse of a political model.

The model of the supreme ruler who controls their state and,

in some cases, the several

vassal states as well.

This seems to have gone away pretty quickly.

The system of dynasties, it's interconnected to such an

extent that by 800 and 850 AD,

Once you start to see the fall of certain kingdoms, it may

well be that all of them

succumbed because of that tight, tight

interconnectedness that they had.

All of them were interrelated, and this is the thing that I

think we have to always come back to.

That's one of the factors that probably contributed to the

demise of the classic Mayan.

It's the end of a network of interrelated families

and interrelated dynasties.

During the 9th century, change swept across the lowlands.

A new form of inscriptions appeared, showing a

decline in royal power.

or councils taking their place.

- In 849 AD, Wat'ul Chatel was the ruler of Seibal.

Inscriptions on Stella 10 in the city

tell us that he had a radical idea

to end the political instability

and establish himself as an authority.

He performed a ritual known as the Khatun,

expressing hopes for a prosperous 20 years to come.

Usually cities would have each had their own event,

but Chatel changed this,

bringing cities together that were once enemies.

By sharing the ceremony,

Wat'ul Chatel changed the geopolitical landscape,

bringing cities together through diplomacy.

He remained in power for another 40 years

years until 889 A.D. This is the date of the last monument found in Siebel.

Despite the impact Chatel had on the region, upon his death,

decline continued. Siebel too was eventually abandoned.

The political changes may be towards more participative or

more collective systems of

of government first, and then eventually mass migration

and abandonment of cities much later.

The divine kings disappeared, their cities abandoned, and

the classical Maya splendor

was gone.

But the people themselves endured.

The Maya, of course, didn't disappear.

They left many of their cities to settle in new areas,

to create new power structures and new identities.

- By the time the Spanish come in the 16th century,

Maya history is not really talking about the classic period.

It doesn't talk about the wars between Tikal and Calakmul.

There's no memory of these great figures of history

because I think the Maya have moved on.

The classic Maya world is kind of closed off

and literally in ruins in the forests.

It's these ruins that give us an insight

into the life of the Maya.

For nearly 200 years, we've been examining the wreckage.

But even now, we are only just beginning

to truly unravel the epic nature of their time here,

of the battles and betrayals,

of who their rulers really were.

And yet, there is another way we can explore Mayan culture.

- The Maya believe that they are a part of creation.

They are not more important than the rest of it at all.

If anything, they are responsible for sustaining and nurturing creation.

So, that's what they would like to see of the world.

They'd like to see the rest of us feel that way about it.

The great Mayan rulers of the classic period were divine.

Their power came from their connection to the gods,

ensuring bountiful crops and prosperous lives.

But wars, droughts, and political upheavals

combined to undermine this power.

When the rains stopped and the crops failed,

godly promises were no longer enough.

In the end, it proved to be a fragile construct which faltered and

collapsed in the face of reality.

But their great reigns did leave a mark.

In their spectacular monuments and inscriptions, stelae and

stories, they live on.

The temples stand guard as time passes and the jungle

covers their traces.

The stelae preserve the names of the Mayan kings and queens.

The temples bear witness to their passage and prestige.

It may have taken us hundreds of years to find them, to decipher them,

but finally we're able to unravel the secrets these artifacts hold

and paint a picture of the epic lives of the Maya.

The story of the Maya is not what we thought.

The history books have been re-written.