"Echoes of a Lost Colony" by Nicholas M. Hellmuth in "Natural History" (March 1992, pp. 18-25) The construction of Guatemala City has nearly swallowed up the ruins of a regional highland Maya capital called Kaminaljuyu, which flourished from about 2,300 to 1,400 years ago. Based on archeological excavations of its building mounds and tombs, scholars have for years seen Kaminaljuyu as a major entry point in Maya territory for cultural influence from the roughly contemporaneous Mexican city of Teotihuacan, more than 2,000 miles away by trail. They have debated whether Kaminaljuyu represented a subject city or a place of contact for long- distance delegations of merchants and emissaries. Teotihuacan's massive pyramidal temple platforms still testify to their builders' imperial might. But why would Kaminaljuyu, more than other Maya cities, have been the object of these foreigners' attention? Many have emphasized Kaminaljuyu's proximity to major deposits of obsidian (volcanic glass), the primary domestic tool in a pre-iron era. This traditional answer, I believe, needs to be amended: Kaminaljuyu was also the major Maya city closest to some important Teotihuacan outposts in non-Maya territory. While the imperial city itself lay far to the northwest, the outposts were spread just to the south of Kaminaljuyu, along the steaming coastal plain bordering the Pacific Ocean. Here, during the 1970s, in the region around the town of Tiquisate, bulldozers leveling ancient mounds to create flat fields for farming uncovered many graves and caches. In so doing they unearthed more whole, decorated Teotihuacan-style pottery than has been found in an entire century of excavations at Teotihuacan itself. The finds included several hundred censers with elaborate lids, used to burn a sweet-smelling native incense, the sap from copal trees; more than 500 slab-legged, cylindrical tripod vessels decorated with incised or impressed designs; and mold- made figures of gods and warriors. Fired clay molds suggest that these objects were mass-produced based on Teotihuacan prototypes, but the designs have a distinct local style. I was in Guatemala during those years researching Teotihuacan influence on the Maya and was alerted to these discoveries by personnel at the Museo Nacional de Arqueologia y Etnologia. Nevertheless, this spectacular collection remains little known even twenty years later. Trade was apparently the main reason for Teotihuacan's interaction with distant Guatemala. Teotihuacan vied for control of cacao and obsidian (cacao beans may even have served as currency, as they did for the later Aztecs). The area around Tiquisate was prime cacao-growing land and was adjacent to the volcanoes that produced obsidian. Less than 100 miles into the volcanic chain, Maya territory, starting with Kaminaljuyu, began. Teotihuacan influence on the Maya, whether by direct contact with the capital city or through the filter of the regional outposts near Tiquisate, was selective. Out of a dozen deities, Tlaloc (a rain-fertility and war god) and the feathered serpent are the most consistent exports; out of hundreds of motifs, the butterfly, seashell symbolism, and various markers of conquest warfare are by far the most likely to turn up at Maya sites; and Teotihuacan's architecture is represented by a tiered pyramidal building style and a few decorative elements. While the Teotihuacanos may have consciously chosen particular images and styles for export--or the provinces only adopted those they preferred--most likely these recurring motifs were the trappings of the specific segments of Teotihuacan society that interacted with the Maya: merchants, missionaries, warriors, and diplomats. Tlaloc was the name used by the later Aztecs for an important deity depicted with ringed eyes, who sometimes carried a lightning bolt. Specialists in Teotihuacan art, especially Clara Millon and Esther Pasztory, have found a variety of personalities in the Teotihuacan pantheon with ringed eyes, perhaps representing several distinct deities. These images appear in the ceramic art of the Tiquisate outposts, especially on the pottery used in rituals (to date no stelae or buildings have been unearthed in the area). Prominent are the butterfly with a Tlaloc face and the warrior with ringed eyes, both of which confirm the god's war- like aspect. (Based on later Aztec practices, art historian Janet Berlo convincingly argues that for the Teotihuacanos, butterflies symbolized the souls of warriors who died on the battlefield, where they had been seeking victims for human sacrifice.) Other images of Tlaloc at Tiquisate are more religious than military, showing that Tlaloc was multifaceted, a spiritual leader and war leader combined in one terrifying personality. Teotihuacan influence on the Maya is confirmed by the discovery of similar ceramic objects and images at Kaminaljuyu and other Maya sites. To get the full picture we also need to include the design of monumental architecture. Between A.D. 350 and 500, the Maya area was inundated by the talud-tablero style, favored at the imperial capital for building pyramidal temple platforms. This is a tiered pattern, each tier consisting of a sloping layer topped by a vertical one. More specifically, the face of each tier consists of a plain, sloping wall (talud), surmounted by a somewhat overhanging vertical panel (tablero), usually a rectangular frame with a decorative inset. The talud- tablero construction may be seen at Kaminaljuyu, as well as at the later site of Tikal. The Maya also adopted step and stepped-fret decorative motifs, two designs popular at Teotihuacan. The tablero with repeated step motifs typifies Teotihuacan architecture, while the stepped-fret motif especially characterizes El Tajin, a city near the gulf coast in the Mexican state of Veracruz. Some scholars believe that Oaxaca, the region inhabited by the Zapotec, was the ultimate source of both motifs, but whether or not this is true, they appear to have spread to the Maya through Teotihuacan influence. Archeologists have not excavated any of the ancient architecture that lies buried beneath the numerous mounds in the Tiquisate area, most of which is probably poorly preserved adobe construction. Local bulldozer and tractor drivers, however, have plowed up several depictions of temples impressed in relief on mold-made pottery. These temple depictions, one on a clay pot and two on the fourteen-inch-high lids of censers, show the decorated top panels of building walls. Since such panels were high up, they were apt to be destroyed when buildings disintegrated. But the pottery depictions of the temples can be translated into realistic perspective drawings, allowing reconstruction of the architectural details. While most archeologists are not trained to render perspective, nowadays user-friendly computer software developed for architects (Auto- CAD) will do this automatically for anyone who can join two points together with a straight line. The new. powerful battery- operated computers can do such drawing right at Maya sites. For example, on one of the incense burner lids, the complete figure of a warrior sits within a Teotihuacan-style temple facade. The piece is so burdened with decoration that it takes some doing to distinguish what is the building and what is the warrior. Once this is done, however, archeologists and art historians can recreate the appearance of the temple. Did the imperial city of Teotihuacan actually impose its rule on, or coerce allegiance from, Kaminaljuyu and other Maya sites, or did Maya cities voluntarily emulate Teotihuacan ways, perhaps at the behest of chiefly families that profited from the relationship? No one has ever suggested that Mesoamerican religions won converts by friendly persuasion. And the constant brandishing of weapons demonstrates that Teotihuacan won friends and influenced people through power politics and sheer clout. But not a single battle scene shows Teotihuacanos strong-arming the Maya. No Teotihuacan character stands atop cowering Maya captives, no Teotihuacan warrior runs a Maya enemy through with a spear. What we find instead are depictions of Maya who have adapted Teotihuacan trappings for their own conquest warfare. As described by Linda Schele ("The Owl, Shield, and Flint Blade," "Natural History," November 1991), this symbolism appeared in connection with specific battles in about A.D. 400, as Maya rulers sought to consolidate their power in the Tikal, Uaxactun, and Yaxha regions. The effect of the fall of Teotihuacan, in about A.D. 750, provides another indication that Mexican culture was emulated by, rather than imposed upon, the Maya. For unknown reasons, central Teotihuacan authority was destroyed in a relatively sudden manner, although the city itself apparently lasted some additional generations. If Teotihuacan had forcibly controlled Maya sites, we might expect some evidence of a casting-off of alien symbols and ways. But instead we see that the Maya were content to maintain the customs they had incorporated. Indications are that by A.D. 600, the beginning of the late Classic period, the Maya had made the Mexican elements their own, and direct influence from Teotihuacan had already faded. The most evident features of continued Teotihuacan culture in Maya areas are the talud-tablero architecture and the depictions of Tlaloc-like deities, the latter often associated with a trapezoidal interlaced headdress called a year sign. The connection of these elements with militarism seems to account in large part for their perpetuation. The Maya kings continued to be portrayed in association with the symbols of Teotihuacan-style warfare, including a Tlaloc-like face or just the ringed eye. A typical example of Teotihuacan elements surviving among the late Classic Maya (A.D. 600 to 900) come from Itzan, an important site in northern Guatemala currently under excavation by Kevin Johnston of Yale University and his Guatemalan colleagues. Although Itzan is thoroughly Maya, one of its several dozen stone stelae pictures its Maya ruler parading in a full imperial Teotihuacan military outfit. His tail feathers are a residue of Teotihuacan-inspired uniforms introduced centuries earlier. This region was not likely to have been receiving influence from the distant capital city at the time this monument was carved, sometime between A.D. 650 and 800. Far more likely, such a late Classic display of Mexican militarism reflects the presence of an ingrown faction that brandished Teotihuacan symbolism as a badge of power. The Itzan stela that depicts the Teotihuacan-style ruler is set against a hieroglyphic stairway that was a focus of ritual connected with the sacred Mesoamerican ballgame. The ruler himself wears a complete set of ballgame paraphernalia, including a U-shaped yoke around his waist with an attached hacha, a thin stone head used to hit the ball. These too are Mexican elements, believed to have originated in the El Tajin area of Veracruz and spread to the Maya through Teotihuacan influence. At least as many ballgame hachas have been found in piedmont Guatemala, the region of which Tiquisate is a part, as in all Veracruz. An architectural example of Teotihuacan style among the Maya following the fall of the imperial city is Structure 6 at the site of Xkichmook, Yucatan, dated to approximately A.D. 750 to 850. Its colonnettes are typical local Maya features, unknown at Mexican sites. Yet we also find the step and stepped-fret motifs. How did a Maya architect of this time get these Mexican motifs in his sketchbook? As with all artists, his repertoire was inherited from previous generations. Such Teotihuacan influence had been introduced long before not only via Tiquisate into Kaminaljuyu but also probably by means of other land routes. Between about A.D. 900 and 1100, a new wave of Mexican symbolism swept Maya territory, centering in the northern lowland city of Chichen Itza. For a long time scholars believed that the Toltecs, whose empire flourished in Tula, fifty miles northwest of Mexico City, actually conquered much of the Yucatan Peninsula. But some now view the Toltec episode as a more local resurgence of Mexican culture. In either case, much of what traditionally has been considered Toltec actually was already firmly and widely implanted among the Maya five centuries earlier, during Teotihuacan times. An example is the presumed Toltec ballgame scene carved into the sides of the Chichen Itza ball court. This scene, which depicts the sacrifice of a defeated player (probably a captive warrior), had several complete prototypes 500 years earlier in the Tiquisate area, on vases now preserved in Guatemala's Museo Popol Vuh. Middle America was an international region as early as 2,800 years ago, when Olmec trade routes stretched from southern Mexico through the Tiquisate area and south to Costa Rica. The Teotihuacanos had considerable impact at Monte Alban, a Zapotec site in Oaxaca, while there was a settlement of Zapotecs from Monte Alban within the imperial capital. An obscure local Tiquisate deity, Curly Face, is portrayed in Monte Alban on a clay pot, suggesting that the Teotihuacanos absorbed some of native Tiquisate culture and spread it back into Mexico. The Maya, too, had an impact: the major deity of their pantheon, known to scholars as God N, appears in a mural at Teotihuacan, and new finds in the murals of Cacaxtla, just a hundred or so miles from Teotihuacan, picture Maya deities (including God L) and Maya warriors with plenty of Teotihuacan features on the side. The international nature of Guatemala more than 1,000 years ago is a glorious chapter of its history that deserves to be remembered and preserved.