JAMES BRADY reckoned the trek through hilly country and heavy jungle along the Talgua River in north-central Honduras would be worth the effort. 快猫短视频s at the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History had tipped him off about a cavern, near the town of Catacamas, containing undisturbed marble bowls鈥攔are treasures that are normally seen only in galleries after looters have prised them from tombs.
鈥淚鈥檇 been told that there were some human remains there, too, but I was completely unprepared for what I found,鈥� recalls Brady, an archaeologist at George Washington University in Washington DC and a seasoned cave explorer. In addition to pots and trinkets, the interior of the cave was stacked with hundreds of human bones鈥攕ome dating back to 1400 BC. Over the centuries, the bones had been covered with a coating of calcite, leaving them glittering like diamonds under the explorers鈥� lamps.
The Cave of the Glowing Skulls, as it is now known, has turned out to be a gem of a discovery in more ways than one. Since that day in 1994, Brady and his team have unearthed two more burial caves in the Talgua River valley, the Cave of the Spiders, inhabited by giant arachnids 25 centimetres long, and the Cave of the White Rock. 鈥淧reviously, only two other burial caves had been discovered in all of Honduras,鈥� he explains. 鈥淭he fact that we鈥檝e found three in a small area tells us that there are many, many more.鈥�
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Dishing out history
But Brady鈥檚 excavations are also important in a larger context: the bowls and other items confirm the early rise of a nameless civilisation, unknown to archaeology until recently, which had sustained dense settlements throughout central Honduras and some parts farther east.
These people lacked the grandeur and stratified political structures of the Maya with whom they traded and lived as neighbours. They supported no aristocracy, had little taste for Mayan-style mass human sacrifice, and built no grandiose stone pyramids. But these simpler, less hierarchical people also seem to have outlived their more flamboyant cousins 鈥攑ossibly enduring almost 3000 years until the days of the Spanish conquest.
Brady鈥檚 caves 鈥渇it very nicely into a pattern鈥�, says Rosemary Joyce, an anthropologist at the University of California at Berkeley and a veteran of twenty years鈥� work in Honduras. They add to the growing stack of evidence that some long-held assumptions about the prehistoric peoples of northern Central America are wide of the mark.
Until field researchers ventured into the area in the mid-1970s, Honduras was thought to be an archaeological backwater. Mesoamerica鈥攁n area stretching from central Mexico south through Guatemala and touching both Pacific and Atlantic oceans鈥攚as where the action was. It was there, antiquarians assumed, that pre-Columbian culture reached its peak: the Aztec, Olmec, and Mayan peoples living in the area invented writing, perfected calendars, and evolved complex, highly stratified societies.
鈥淥rthodoxy in the past, and still to some degree, says that if the Honduran people weren鈥檛 doing proper hieroglyphic inscriptions and other standard classic Mayan stuff, then they were howling barbarians who were trying to be Mayas and failing,鈥� says John Henderson, an anthropologist at Cornell University, New York, and one of the first to look beyond the conventional assumptions about the region. 鈥淣ow we鈥檙e beginning to treat them in their own terms,鈥� he says, and casting off the preconceived notion that an advanced society would have to be modelled on the Maya, and seeing them instead as cultures that made different choices and took a different path.
Indeed, Henderson, Joyce, and their colleagues are learning that the settlements beyond the Mayan frontier were far from backward. 鈥淭heir artistry and sophistication in ceramics and stone are equivalent of anything contemporary in Mesoamerica,鈥� says Joyce. 鈥淲e鈥檙e even finding ballcourts鈥攖he big Mesoamerican trademark that鈥檚 supposed to reflect participation in a more advanced culture鈥攎uch farther east than expected.鈥�
Archaeologists first moved southeast beyond Mayan lands into Honduras in the mid-1970s after Mexico began to demand fees for excavations and civil wars in neighbouring Guatemala and El Salvador ruled out research there. Henderson and Joyce began work just south of the Guatemalan border, in the valley of the Ulua River鈥攁 river which centuries before had marked the Mayan frontier.
Since 1974, they have identified as many as 600 prehistoric settlements in an area of 2500-square kilometres, 鈥渁nd we haven鈥檛 found them all鈥�, suggests Henderson. But while the Ulua region has yielded the most information about the Mayas鈥� Honduran compatriots, it is by no means unique. Christopher Begley, a doctoral student researcher in archaeology at the University of Chicago, has been exploring an area of Honduras north of Brady鈥檚 caves since 1991. 鈥淲e found that eastern and central Honduras were more densely settled and more developed than we鈥檇 expected,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e would walk three or four days between major settlements and pass literally hundreds of obvious archaeological sites along the way.鈥�
A separate reality
From their first surveys, researchers knew that they were onto something significant. The pottery, tools and jewellery they found occasionally echoed Mayan or Olmec symbols and motifs, but most often they had a unique design and decoration鈥攑roof of a separate and distinctive material culture. The few ceramics found at the large Mayan settlement of Copan in western Honduras show no similarities to the Uluan ones, says Brady. Nor do paintings in the caves reflect symbols or styles from the region鈥檚 better-known cultures. 鈥淭hese were separate societies,鈥� he stresses.
According to Joyce, the distinctive styles of pottery also show that early Hondurans 鈥渨ere not simply Olmecs migrating south鈥�. A few Olmec pots have been dug out of Honduran sites, but they appear at the same time as鈥攐r, in some cases, later than鈥攖he distinctive pieces made by Honduran societies. 鈥淭here was something akin to the European Economic Community here,鈥� suggests Joyce. 鈥淥ur task is to learn what bound these different areas together.鈥�
Trade was part of the connection. Elegant Honduran pottery has turned up in the burial vaults of Mayan rulers and Olmec jadework has been found in several Honduran settlements. In exchange, the Hondurans might well have offered cacao, the chocolate bean鈥攕o highly prized in prehistoric times that it was sometimes used as money. 鈥淭he area is also a source of copper and gold, and the later Maya used metal,鈥� Joyce says. 鈥淭hese materials would have been of interest to Mayan nobles.鈥�
But trade in luxuries between the Mayan nobles and affluent Hondurans cannot explain the depth and breadth of the links between the two nations. 鈥淭rade has to have both a push and a pull. There has to be a reason why the Honduran people would have traded with the Maya鈥攁nd we don鈥檛 know what that would have been.鈥� Honduras provided better agricultural land than the Mayan regions; it held the metals that Mayan lands lacked. 鈥淎ny item you can think of that Honduran people might have wanted enough to engage in trade, they already had locally and the Maya didn鈥檛.鈥�
The strength of the bond between societies might have been social, even religious, as much as economic. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 where the ballcourts become important,鈥� Joyce believes. The ball games, a sort of cross between soccer and volley ball, brought together players and fans from neighbouring societies. But the games were more than the great Mesoamerican pastime. 鈥淚t was a game, but it was much more than a display of prowess by the rulers or nobles who played it,鈥� Joyce explains. The competition was in part a ritual that re-enacted the way astronomical bodies such as the Sun and Moon were placed in their positions. The outcome of the games were also seen as a token of supernatural regard for the players and, perhaps, for the societies they represented.
鈥淭here are descriptions from the Spanish period of noble visitors from one society coming to another鈥檚 town for a ball game and spending several days before the event in feasting and purification,鈥� says Joyce. 鈥淭he games were highly charged in a ritual and religious sense.鈥� In that way, archaeologists speculate, the events might have formed a basic, enduring link among disparate societies in the region鈥攋ust as Baptists in Kentucky and Orthodox Church members in Moscow might share the meanings and traditions of Easter despite their dramatically differing political ideas.
Between the Maya and what some are now calling the Uluan peoples, those differences were stark. The Maya were ruled by kings; the Uluans built no palaces. The Maya supported a class of aristocrats; Uluan excavations reveal no elaborate tombs of elite individuals. The Maya revelled in human sacrifice, literally piling up skulls into vast heaps; the Uluans showed no such predilection.
These differences suggest a more egalitarian, less stratified society than the Maya鈥檚. 鈥淎t Mayan sites, we find extremely large residences made with cut stone,鈥� Joyce says. 鈥淭hose residences have a higher proportion of meat bones in their garbage and much higher incidence of jade and other imported materials in their tombs.鈥� In contrast, Honduran sites show far less difference between houses. 鈥淪ome people were wealthier,鈥� she acknowledges, 鈥渂ut the difference from humble homes to elaborate ones is more gradual鈥攁nd there鈥檚 a complete lack of the grand palaces we see at Mayan sites.鈥� The monumental architecture in the Mayan area, and the enormous investment in arts and crafts, reflect a vast gulf between the upper and lower levels of society. 鈥淭his is lacking in the Honduran sites,鈥� says Joyce.
Humble and happy
But the absence of privilege is not the mark of a less sophisticated people, stresses Henderson. His excavations of Uluan villages show that the people ate well, lived in comfortably large homes, and traded with distant societies for luxuries such as jade and feathers. Their larger villages were built around public plazas, which indicates a fair degree of social organisation and cooperation. Like the Maya, the Uluans celebrated events in multi-year cycles, indicating astronomical knowledge and the use of calendars. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 missing is Mayan-style political art and the cult of kings,鈥� Henderson says. 鈥淚t seems to have been a much more egalitarian society.鈥�
Why these neighbouring鈥攁nd perhaps related鈥攕ocieties took different political paths still mystifies archaeologists, but Henderson offers a suggestion. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not as simple as thinking that a less structured society becomes more structured as the people become more sophisticated,鈥� he argues. 鈥淧eople sometimes understood that greater stratification isn鈥檛 necessarily good. If you鈥檙e the aristocrat king wannabe, you have a very different perspective from the guy who would have to grow an extra corn crop to pay for your palace.鈥�
Henderson thinks that aristocracies in Mayan culture might have arisen out of an economic need that the Maya couldn鈥檛 satisfy from their own resources. 鈥淚f you feel you have to import a particular kind of jade or seashells for your ceremonial ornaments, or a particular kind of stone for your corn-grinding tools, the part of society that organises and manages the long-distance connections you need to obtain those essential goods can use their expertise as a basis for centralising power,鈥� he argues.
In other words, the Uluans might have been so blessed with what they considered to be life鈥檚 necessities that there was no opportunity for a special class of powerful managers to arise. 鈥淚t might come down to local prosperity,鈥� says Henderson. If you have enough local resources, then the niceties you might be able to import become less important鈥� than an amicable communal life.
Indeed, the absence of an elite class wielding power over a class of oppressed subjects has led some researchers to believe that these societies were not only more egalitarian but also more stable鈥攁nd perhaps endured the forces which blew apart Mayan society between 800 and 1000 AD.
This idea was first proffered in the early 1990s by Payson Sheets, an anthropologist at the University of Colorado, who studies the effects of sudden stress on societies. After investigating the results of volcanic eruptions on prehistoric chiefdoms from Mexico to Costa Rica, he concluded that simpler societies were much more resilient in the face of sudden stress than more complex societies. 鈥淢ore highly structured societies rely on an elite which control trade, the economy, and so on,鈥� he says. If the things an elite controls are disrupted, they tend to lose their power, the social order collapses and anarchy follows.
In the years between 800 to 1000 AD, the Mayan and Uluan regions faced identical sudden stresses. New groups, the ancestors of the Putun, entered the region and disrupted closely balanced networks of trade. Populations grew beyond the environment鈥檚 carrying capacity just as rainfall began a prolonged decline. The stresses sparked wars between Mayan kingdoms, and in the end, the great Mayan cities were abandoned and the populations all-but vanished.
Not fade away
The Uluans were also disrupted, perhaps because of their close trade links and cultural ties to the Maya. Smaller settlements disappeared; a few towns arose as regional centres, perhaps in response to the abandonment of so many smaller communities. But, some researchers believe that unlike Mayan culture, the Uluans did not suffer a fundamental collapse of their social structure. Some believe Sheets鈥檚 concept provides an explanation.
鈥淚n the Uluan area, chronological evidence suggests that there were people all the way through to the Spanish conquest,鈥� says Joyce. 鈥淭he population here didn鈥檛 disappear like the Maya鈥攁nd that鈥檚 generally attributed to the lesser degree of centralisation. These more egalitarian societies were less brittle and so were better able to adapt to stress instead of being shattered by it.鈥�
This is one of many ideas about the Uluans that can now be put to the test. 鈥淎fter twenty years of field work, we now have enough data to propose and test these kinds of theories and models,鈥� Joyce says. 鈥淲hat does it mean that the Honduran people didn鈥檛 use writing? What level of regional political integration was there? We can begin to suggest models and judge them by the evidence.鈥�
As the work progresses, there鈥檚 one theory of which Henderson has little doubt. 鈥淔rom central Honduras to Nicaragua and parts of El Salvador,鈥� he says, 鈥渨e鈥檒l be able to define a world comparable to, and in some sense part of, the greater Mayan world. But it will be an Uluan world.鈥�
