FREE ESSAY ON CHAPTER 3 SUMMARY FOREST OF KINGS

CHAPTER 3 SUMMARY FOREST OF KINGS

Brice Hayden
September 16, 1999
Professor Lorenz
The main focus of the 20th century, or ever before that, is that we have made most of the
singular inventions of mankind. However, another more fundamental form of invention
existed. If we look at the Maya as a culture without many significant advances, they had
few technological wonders. They were a Stone Age people lacking rudimentary developments
such as the use of metal and the domestication of beasts of burden. They in there own
right had invented ideas that harnessed social energy. The genius if the Maya was
expressed through the creation of this new power. The invented political symbols that
transformed and coordinated such age-old institutions as the extended family, the
village, the shaman and the patriarch in the stuffing of life. It is, however, no
coincidence that Maya kingship and Maya Writing emerged simultaneously in the century
before the Common Era, for the technology of the writing served as the main functions of
Maya daily life. It would be incorrect to say that they had invented this new institution
from their own experiences, because kings had been around in Mesoamerica for a least a
thousand years.
The Late Preclassic town of Cerros was one of Maya communities to experience the advent
of kingship during the period of its invention. This village was strategically situated
to command the mouth of the New River where it emptied into Chetumal Bay on the eastern
coast of the Yucatan Peninsula. Cerros was at a cultural edge, for the people of this
village were seafarers and traders familiar with distant peoples. These peoples were
visiting traders that were wise in the ways of the neighboring Maya cities and the
foreign people beyond. The people of Cerros did decide to embrace kingship, as they had
learned it, and the consequences of those actions. In the time of two generations, the
small fishing village had been transformed into a mighty acropolis. Every single person
in the city had accounted in the transformation, from the lowliest fisherman to the
highest shamans of the village. Around 50 BC the town began the revolutionary program of
"urban renewal" which buried their village under broad plastered plazas and massive
temples. The home life of the Cerros people changed to account for such an act.
Sacrifices were performed over the foundations of their old homes. After years and years
of living in one fashion these people threw it away for something better. And in this
life they had made themselves better.
After a period of this living, the Kings of Cerros had abandoned this way of life and
returned to their estates on the outskirts of the town. They destroyed a lot of the work
they had created because they had not succeeded. They took the pottery and the jewelry of
their time and of their people and smashed it. They had become almost angry and the kings
for making them change their way of life. The temples of Cerros had fallen to ruin. The
question of why Cerros failed haunts archaeologists today. A major problem may have been
the balance of power in the respected bloodlines of the peoples. Certain generations of
people took control and their control may not have been rightly asserted. Another cause
may have been that the people of Cerros couldn't cope with a large-scale society. No one
can ever be sure, but we sure like to guess.