Were the Mayans more inventive than we gave them credit for? (Image: zxvisual/getty)

The dramatic collapse of the Mayan civilisation 1000 years ago is one of the world’s enduring archaeological mysteries. But how the Maya got started in the first place is no less mysterious. Now newly discovered excavations have revealed that some Mayan ceremonial plazas and pyramids are centuries older than we thought – but leave obscure why they were built.

Stepped pyramids and open squares – or plazas – were a feature of many early Mayan sites from around 800 BC. At this time, the Olmec was the major civilisation and the dominant influence in Mesoamerica. Because pyramids dating to 800 BC are also found at the key Olmec site of La Venta in what is now Mexico, many archaeologists think the Maya got their pyramid-building know-how from the Olmec.

However, new finds from an early Mayan site called Ceibal in central Guatemala suggest otherwise. Takeshi Inomata at the University of Arizona in Tuscon and his colleagues have excavated the site, and discovered a small pyramid and several large platforms – including one that is 55 metres long and 1 metre tall – that are unmistakeably similar to those associated with plaza-pyramid architecture at La Venta.


Carbon dating of organic samples found on the structures revealed that the small pyramid dates to around 850 BC – just before pyramids became common at La Venta – whereas the long platform dates to 1000 BC. This makes it 200 years older than other Mayan monuments and 200 years older than the monumental constructions at La Venta.

At the time that the Ceibal monuments were constructed, “La Venta could not have been a large, influential centre”, says Inomata. So although the early Maya may have been influenced by the Olmec in some ways, it seems unlikely that they learned to build monumental architecture from them.

Who built the first pyramid…

Did the Maya independently develop their own tradition of monuments? Perhaps, but other finds in the region suggest they might still have borrowed the idea – just not from the Olmec. There are even earlier plaza-pyramid constructions in Mesoamerica, to the southwest of Ceibal near the Pacific coast. The site of Ojo de Agua, near the Mexico-Guatemala border, did not belong to a major civilisation like the Olmec, but there are impressive structures here that are about 50 to 100 years older than any found at Ceibal.

“[Ojo de Agua] appears to be the earliest known plaza-pyramid complex,” says Inomata. Other pyramids in this region might predate Ceibal too, but their ages are hazy. “We need more studies before we can determine if this was the point of origin of pyramids and associated ceremonial complexes.”

Together, the evidence hints that the first Maya were influenced by people throughout Mesoamerica, and not just by the Olmec.

… and why?

One question the Ceibal finds cannot answer is why the first pyramids were built – and why pyramids would become hallmarks of several Mesoamerican civilisations. We know, for instance, that the Olmec had lived in large prosperous settlements for hundreds of years before the era of the pyramids.

“I think an important factor was a change in the political setting,” says Inomata. A driving force might have been the fall of the Olmec settlement of San Lorenzo, 100 kilometres west of La Venta, less than 100 years before the pyramids were built at Ojo de Agua. San Lorenzo had been a major influence throughout Mesoamerica, says Inomata.

“The decline of San Lorenzo created a power vacuum in which various different groups could interact in different ways and could experiment with new ideas,” he says. One of those new ideas could have been pyramid construction and a new form of social order based around more standardised and communal religious practices that would have taken place in the plaza-pyramid complex.

Despite the early Mayan monuments at Ceibal, it would take several centuries for the numerous sites in the area to link up and develop into a true civilisation. “The first Maya state formed some time between 300 BC and AD 200,” says Joyce Marcus at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The exact process behind this rise to statehood is still unclear – although competition between several early Mayan sites close together may have been a factor, she says.

Journal reference: Science, DOI: 10.1126/science.1234493