History Of The Ruins
Once the most important city state on the southern fringes of the Maya world, Copan was largely cut off from all other Maya cities except Quirigua , 64km to the north in Guatemala. Archeologists now believe that settlers began moving into the Rio Copan valley from around 1400 BC, taking advantage of the area's rich agricultural potential, although construction of the city is not thought to have begun until around 100 AD. Copan remained a small, isolated settlement until the arrival in 426 AD of an outsider, Yak K'uk Mo' (Great Sun First Quetzal Macaw), the warrior-shaman who established the basic layout of the city and founded a royal dynasty which lasted for 400 years. It's unclear whether he was from either Teotihuacan, the Mesoamerican superpower, or Tikal (which was under strong Teotihuacan influence at the time), but Yak K'uk Mo' became the object of an intense cult of veneration, first established by his son Popol Hol and continued by subsequent members of the dynasty over fifteen generations. Little is known about the next seven kings that followed Popol Hol, but in 553 AD the golden era of Copan began with the accession to the throne of Moon Jaguar , who constructed the magnificent Rosalila temple, now buried beneath Temple 16. The city thrived through the reigns of Smoke Serpent (578-628 AD), Smoke Jaguar (628-695 AD) and Eighteen Rabbit (695-738 AD), as the great fertility of the Copan region was exploited and wealth amassed from control of the jade trade along the Rio Motagua. These resources and periods of stable government allowed for unprecedented political and social growth, as the population boomed to around 28,000 by 760 AD, the highest urban density in the entire Maya region. Ambitious reconstruction of the city continued throughout this era, using local andesite, a fine-grained, even-textured volcanic rock that was easily quarried and particularly suited to detailed carving, as well as the substantial local limestone beds, which were ideal for stucco production. The highly artistic carved relief style for which Copan is famous reached a pinnacle during the reign of Eighteen Rabbit - whose image is depicted on many of the site's magnificent stelae and who also oversaw the construction of the Great Plaza, the final version of the ball court and Temple 22 in the East Court. Following the audacious capture and decapitation of Eighteen Rabbit by Quirigua's Cauac Sky, construction at Copan came to a complete halt for seventeen years, possibly indicating a period of subjugation by its former vassal state. The royal dynasty subsequently managed to regroup, however, flourishing gloriously, albeit briefly, once more. Smoke Shell (749-763 AD) completed the construction of the Hieroglyphic Stairway , one of the most impressive of all Maya constructions, in an effort designed to symbolize the revival. Optimism continued during the early years of the reign of Yax Pasah (763-820 AD), Smoke Shell's son, who commissioned Altar Q , which illustrates the entire dynasty from its beginning, and completed the final version of Temple 16 , which towers over the site, around 776 AD. Towards the end of his rule, however, the rot set in: skeletal remains indicate that the decline was provoked by inadequate food resources created by population pressure, resulting in subsequent environmental collapse. The seventeenth and final ruler, Ukit Took' , assumed the throne in 822 AD, but his reign proved miserably inauspicious. Poignantly, the only monument to his reign, Altar L, was never completed, as if the sculptor had downed his tools and walked out on the job. The site was known to the Spanish, although they took little interest in it. A court official, Don Diego de Palacios, in a letter written in March 1576, mentions the ruins of a magnificent city "constructed with such skill that it seems that they could never have been made by people as coarse as the inhabitants of this province". Not until the nineteenth century and the publication of Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas and Yucatan by John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Catherwood did Copan become known to the wider world. Stephens, the then acting US ambassador, had succeeded in buying the ruins in 1839 and, accompanied by Catherwood, a British architect and artist, spent several weeks clearing the site and mapping the buildings. The instant success of the book on publication and the interest it sparked in Mesoamerican culture ensured that Copan became a magnet for archeologists. British archeologist Alfred Maudsley began a full-scale mapping, excavation and reconstruction of the site in 1891 under the sponsorship of the Peabody Museum, Harvard. A second major investigation was begun in 1935 by the Washington Carnegie Institute, which involved diverting the Rio Copan to prevent it carving into the site. A breakthrough in the understanding not only of Copan but of the whole Maya world came in 1959 and 1960, when archeologists Heinrich Berlin and Tatiana Proskouriakoff first began to decipher hieroglyphs , leading to the realization that they record the history of the cities and the dynasties. Since 1977, the Instituto Hondureno de Antropologia e Historia has been running a series of projects with the help of archeologists from around the world. Copan is now perhaps the best understood of all Maya cities, and a series of tunnelling projects beneath the Acropolis have unearthed remarkable discoveries including the Rosalila Temple, buried beneath Temple 16, in 1989, which is now open to the public. In 1993, the Papagayo Temple, built by Popol Hol and dedicated his father Yax K'uk Mo', was uncovered, and in 1998 further burrowing unveiled the tomb of the founder himself.
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