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Water, Cacao, and the Early Maya of Chocolá (Maya Studies)

Amazon.com Price:  $118.75 (as of 02/05/2019 00:46 PST- Details)

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Description

This exciting book brings the steadily-lost sight of southern Maya region of Guatemala into the spotlight by closely examining the “lost city” of Chocola. Jonathan Kaplan and Federico Paredes Umana prove that Chocola was once a major Maya polity and reveal exactly why it was once so influential.

In their fieldwork at the site, Kaplan and Paredes Umana came upon an extraordinarily sophisticated underground water-keep watch over system. They also came upon cacao residues in ceramic vessels. In line with these and other findings, the authors imagine that cacao was once consumed and grown intensively at Chocola and that the city was once the center of a giant cacao trade. They contend that the city’s wealth and power were built on its abundant supply of water and its command of cacao, which was once significant not just to cuisine and trade but also to Maya ideology and cosmology. Moreover, Kaplan and Paredes Umana detail the ancient city’s ceramics and add over thirty stone sculptures to the site’s inventory.

Because the southern Maya region was once likely the origin of Maya hieroglyphic writing and the Long Count calendar, scholars have long suspected the area to be important. This pioneering field research at Chocola helps provide an explanation for how and why the region played a leading role in the upward push of the Maya civilization.

A volume in the series Maya Studies, edited by Diane Z. Chase and Arlen F. Chase

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