"America's Ancient Mariners"
 
by Anthony P. Andrews
 
in Natural History (October 1991, pp. 72-75)
 
The Maya displayed a flair for seagoing trade
 
     The first Maya the Spaniards encountered, during Columbus's
fourth voyage in 1502, were a group of merchants near the Bay
Islands, off the coast of Honduras:
 
     There arrived a canoe full of Indians, as long as a
     galley and eight feet wide.  It was loaded with
     merchandise from the west, almost certainly from the land
     of Yucat n.
     ... There was in the middle of the canoe a shelter of
     palm matting....  Inside and under this were their women
     and children, possessions and merchandise, so that
     neither rain nor sea water could wet anything.
     ... There were in the canoe up to twenty-five men.... 
     They had in it much clothing of the kind they weave of
     cotton in this land, such as cloth woven with many
     designs and colors...; knives of flint, swords of very
     strong wood ... and foodstuffs of the country [Bartolom
     de las Casas, Historia de las Indias].
 
     At the time the Europeans arrived, coastal seafaring with
paddled canoes was widespread throughout the Americas, from the
Northwest Coast, with its sea-mammal hunts and war expeditions, to
the Caribbean islands, where the ancestors of the Ta!no and Carib
Indians had easily traversed the 1,700-mile-long archipelago in
large oceangoing canoes and their descendants had continued a
vigorous interisland trade into the contact period.  The Inca had
large rafts of balsa wood, probably equipped with sails, that
reached as far as the Gal pagos.  But the civilization most
involved in extensive seagoing trade was that of the Maya.
     Historical accounts report that the Maya carved large dugout
canoes, from mahogany and other hardwoods, capable of carrying
forty or fifty people.  Most Maya seafarers hugged the coast, using
landmarks, shrines, and lookout towers as navigational aids.  These
were particularly important in the Caribbean, with its treacherous
shoreline reefs.  Still, some navigators ventured out into the open
sea to reach such offshore islands as Contoy, Mujeres, Cozumel, the
Belize cays, and the Bay Islands.  archeological research shows
that the Maya settled Cozumel and several of the Belize cays at
least 2,000 years ago; by the late Classic period (A.D. 600-900),
they were traveling out to Turneffe Island, some eighteen miles off
the Belize mainland.
     As Maya civilization developed, many seaside villages evolved
into bustling towns and trading ports.  Some served as outposts of
large inland communities, which sought access to marine resources
and to the trading vessels that plied the coasts.  Others
flourished owing to their location along major trade routes and
became major commercial enclaves in their own right.  One of the
earliest and most prominent of these was the large town of Cerros,
on Chetumal Bay in northern Belize, which dates from the late
Preclassic (300 B.C. - A.D. 300).
     Sitting at the mouth of the New and Hondo rivers, Cerros
connected the coastal trade networks of the Caribbean with inland
communities of the southern Maya lowlands.  From these two rivers,
overland trade could reach large centers in northern Guatemala,
such as El Mirador, Rio Azul, and Tikal.  Other prominent early
coastal communities appeared around the shores of the Laguna de
Trminos, on the southern Campeche coast, along the salt beds of
the northern coast of Yucat n, and on the shores and islands of the
Caribbean coast of Quintana Roo and Belize.  The Pacific coast of
Chiapas and Guatemala also saw the emergence of several town-size
communities, all actively involved in the exploitation of coastal
resources and trade.
     Many Maya ports consisted of natural harbors on islands, such
as Mujeres and Cozumel, and in the reef-protected bays, rocky
inlets, and large lagoons of the Caribbean coast.  The Maya also
constructed port facilities at several locations.  The island of
Cerritos, off the northern coast of the Yucat n Peninsula, is
ringed by the ruins of docks and piers, while on its south shore a
sea wall more than 1,000 feet long encloses an artificial harbor
that once offered refuge to large numbers of canoes.  The remains
of a small administrative outpost and the residences of what were
probably elite coastal traders have also been discovered.  An
artificial canal connects the large inland lakeside port of Muyil,
or Chunyaxch, in Quintana Roo, to another lagoon that was linked
to the sea through estuarine canals and lagoons.
     The resources of the sea were a critical component in the
emergence of Maya civilization, offering a broad array of marine
and estuarine fish and shellfish, turtles, crocodiles, birds,
manatees, and seals.  Shells provided raw material for tools and
jewelry, and shark teeth and stingray spines played an important
role in Maya rituals.  The great salt flats of the northern Yucat n
Peninsula and the saline estuaries of the Pacific provided salt,
which the Maya began to collect more than 2,300 years ago.
     From early on, the coastal folk traded their food resources
with communities in the nearby interior in exchange for
agricultural produce and other products.  Salt, shells, shark
teeth, and stingray spines traveled farther, to inland communities
hundreds of miles from the coast.  For example, shells from both
the Pacific and Caribbean have been recovered in ritual caches at
Tikal.  Salt was in demand to meet the daily nutritional
requirements of a predominantly agricultural population subsisting
on a low-sodium diet (a modern Maya farmer consumes about three-
tenths of an ounce of salt per day).  Salt was also used as a
preservative for curing fish and meat, as a form of currency, and
in a variety of medicinal and ritual practices.  Thousands of tons
were shipped each year from the salt beds of the northern Yucat n
Peninsula to communities throughout the lowlands, and from the
Pacific estuaries to localities in the highlands.
     The maritime trade network girded the coastline from Mexico to
Panama and reached inland through every navigable river.  Two major
river systems flowed down from the Guatemalan highlands: the
Usumacinta, which entered the Gulf of Mexico, and the Motagua,
which was a major conduit to the Caribbean.  None of the rivers
pouring out of the highlands into the Pacific were navigable,
restricting boat travel inland.  Nonetheless, most of the Pacific
coast from Oaxaca to Guatemala could be negotiated by inner
waterways that weaved through linked estuary systems, avoiding the
pounding surf of the open ocean.
     Much of the Maya trade involved exchange of lowland and
highland resources.  Salt, cotton, cacao (chocolate), spices,
feathers, and jaguar pelts were traded from tropical lowland
regions to the highlands of Guatemala and Mexico in exchange for
obsidian, basalt, jade, and other highland products.  Mineral trace
analyses of artifacts have enabled archeologists to pinpoint the
source of several goods and reconstruct the volume and direction of
their trade through time.  For example, individual blades, knives,
arrowheads, and ritual artifacts manufactured from obsidian, or
volcanic glass, can be matched with specific volcanic outcrops in
the highlands.
     Communities in the Maya lowlands imported vast quantities of
obsidian from the highlands, which reached them overland and down
rivers and flowed into the coastal trade networks of the Gulf and
Caribbean.  At intervals along the coast, the obsidian passed
through key trading junctures, where it was diverted inland or
transshipped farther.  Two such junctures were Wild Cane Cay and
Moho Cay on the Belize coast, where archeologists have found large
quantities of obsidian blades and prepared cores from which blades
could be struck.  Much of this obsidian traveled to the northern
Yucat n Peninsula, some 500 miles from its origin.  Some came from
even more distant sources in the highlands of central Mexico, more
than 900 miles away.
     After A.D. 800, as many of the great Maya cities of the
southern lowlands went into decline, newly emerging cities in the
northern lowlands forged new trading ties to central Mexico and
Central America.  At the capital of Chichn Itz , in the northern
Yucat n Peninsula, archeologists have recovered large quantities of
jade and ceramics from the Guatemalan highlands, turquoise from
northern Mexico, and gold from Costa Rica and Panama.  Many of
these goods arrived by sea from the Gulf of Mexico and the
Caribbean through the major trading port at Cerritos, sixty miles
away.  Recent excavations at this small island, which I undertook
with several Mexican colleagues, have yielded all these types of
trade goods, as well as central Mexican and Guatemalan obsidian. 
The excavations showed that Cerritos was controlled by the capital,
which also controlled the nearby salt beds, the largest in Middle
America.
     A trading expedition departing from northern Yucat n might
have included several canoes loaded with salt, cotton, honey,
spices, and slaves (some of the slaves were themselves traded,
while others were kept as bearers and paddlers).  It would proceed
south along the Caribbean coast to trading enclaves in Chetumal
Bay, farther along the Belize coast, or beyond.  At each stop,
goods and slaves would be exchanged for a variety of articles, such
as cacao (which also served as a form of currency), obsidian cores
for making blades, basalt metates (grinding stones), jade
artifacts, and occasionally gold or copper objects from farther
south in Central America.  Traders moving south along the gulf
coast would carry similar goods and return with obsidian and basalt
from the highlands of Mexico and Guatemala and fine paste ceramics
and cacao from Guatemala and Tabasco.
     As trading flourished during the Post-classic period
(900-1520), cities throughout Mesoamerica were drawn into an
increasingly "international" world, with goods and ideas flowing
freely over very large distances.  We know from historic records
that much of the long-distance trade of the Maya at the time of the
conquest was controlled by wealthy nobles.  Marriage ties were
forged between the elites of widely separated cities, and long-
distance merchants took on added responsibilities, acting as
couriers, diplomats, and spies.  Artisans and artists also traveled
extensively: Postclassic Mexican sculpture and mural paintings have
been found at Chichn Itz  and at the coastal cities of Tul#m-
Tancah and Santa Rita on the Caribbean coast.  Aztec traders
reached the Gulf of Mexico and down the Pacific coast to Guatemala,
and possibly as far as Panama.
     Shortly after the Spanish conquest, the Maya coastal trade
system collapse.  The Spaniards took over the northern Yucat n salt
and cotton cloth industries, as well as many of the cacao groves
and gold mines to the south.  The demand for many traditional trade
goods declined, as metal tools supplanted those of obsidian and
flint, Spanish ceramics gradually replaced native wares, and cacao
was slowly phased out as a form of currency.  Moreover, the
disappearance of the Maya rulers and priests undermined the demand
for elite goods such as jade, turquoise, and gold.  While small-
scale coastal trade, mostly of foodstuffs, cacao, and salt,
continued into colonial times, the large networks of the past faded
from memory.
 
[Permission granted by author.]
[With permission from Natural History, March 1991; Copyright the
American Museum of Natural History, 1991]