Utok' upakal

In the past, the Ancient Maya were thought to be a unique peaceful society, ruled by star-gazing priests. This was mainly due to the fact that early on people were only able to read numbers, calendrical and astronomical texts such as the Venus Tables in the Dresden Codex. The researchers were convinced that all Maya texts were of astronomical and ritual nature and that the Maya did not write about affairs such as lives of rulers or warfare.

The view of the peaceful Maya has changed dramatically over the last few decades, once the non-calendrical part of ancient texts were deciphered, but studies of scenes such as those from Bonampak have also helped. These scenes on the murals inside an ancient Maya structure are clearly war-related.

The same war-related scenes can be seen inside the Lower Temple of the Jaguars (or what Maudslay called Sculpted Chamber E) at the northern lowland site of Chichen Itza, Mexico. The scenes in this structure show lines of warriors with weapons and armour marching.

Maya hieroglyphic texts contain several war-related expressions, such as capturing (chuhkaj), bringing down (jubuy), burning (puluy), axing (ch’ahkaj), or ‘star-war’ events (which we still cannot read in Mayan and can only describe).

Maya rulers liked to present themselves as mighty warriors, and warfare expressions appear in their names and titles. One of the most famous and longest-reigning of ancient Maya rulers, K’inich Janaab Pakal from Palenque, has a shield (pakal) as part of his name.

Although sometimes it has been argued that ancient Maya warfare was different from modern warfare in that its purpose was not to appropriate land or territory or to move borders, the warfare motivations among the ancient Maya varied as well and included political, ideological and economic motivations.