The indigenous people and civilization of the Maya area have attracted a
great deal of attention, both academic and popular, ever since Stephens
and Catherwood "discovered" abandoned pre-Columbian cities in Yuca-
tan, Guatemala, and Honduras a century and a half ago. Since that time,
our understanding of Maya society before Europeans reached the New
World has grown considerably, just as the living Maya have been so thor-
oughly studied that an anthropologist can now be found in or near most of
today's Maya communities.

The fate of the Mayas in between ancient splendor and modern obser-
vation has remained more obscure, partly because the lack of monumental
architecture and hieroglyphs and the absence of living witnesses made the
Mayas under colonial rule seem less accessible and less romantic, and
partly because students of the period relied on Spanish sources. Spaniards
believed themselves racially and culturally superior to subject peoples
such as the Mayas, who could be turned into collaborators of colonial
oppression if they could only be convinced of that fact; in the past, scholars
tended to believe either in Spanish superiority or in the indigenous peo-
ple's acceptance of their own inferiority. ¹ It is now clear that neither was
true -- certainly, as this study demonstrates, not of the Mayas, whose so-
ciety and culture remained far more complex and potent and had a greater
capacity for localizing introduced concepts, than has previously been
thought.

In these provinces there is not a single river, although there are lakes, and
the hills are of live rock, dry and waterless. The entire land is covered by
thick bush and is so stony that there is not a single square foot of soil. . . .

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