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Fred – My only clam to knowledge on the Mayan was an elective in anthropology some 30+ years ago. But I do remember I thoroughly loved the subject. I learned later that the Aztec (a bellicose race) move in behind the Mayan, but not until hundreds of years after the fall of the Mayan. The Aztec DID meet the incoming white man – and the rest is history.

This is one of the most enjoyable threads I’ve read yet!

My belief is that the government(s) of the Mayans gradually “fell”, or fell gradually, from a high peak of maybe a thousand years ago. I don’t think there was a sudden one-generation stoppage of the Mayan culture. There were probably many attempts at revivals over the years, but I think the culture and government(s) just gradually degenerated, and later the Aztecs finally emerged as the highest of the “Mayan revivalist” culture. However, the Aztecs didn’t just suddenly show up in one generation. I think they probably developed their culture for a couple of hundred years. (Just my opinion.)

Cortez had several men with him who later wrote books about their journey to Mexico City, and all agree that before their arrival at Veracruz, they stopped off a while along the coast of Yucatan, where the Mayans were thriving as farmers. In fact, Cortez and his men said there were a few earlier Spanish “explorers” living among the Mayans in Yucatan. However, at that time, the big Mayan “cities” were no longer as important as they had been in the past. They were like rundown and stuff. Sort of like Detroit. By then, most of the Mayan “culture” had become very rural as it had been in the past.

What is most interesting in my area of New Mexico is that there is some evidence of Mayan explorers visiting New Mexico about 1,000 to 1,200 years ago. I’ve read that New Mexico turquoise has been found at Chichen Itza, and Macaw feathers have been found at Chaco Canyon in New Mexico. Chaco thrived for about 200 years, then a big drought came and many of the early New Mexico Indians moved over along the Rio Grande, about 1,000 to 900 years ago.

I was able to visit Yucatan about three times in my life, and I still remember much of my 1964 trip as if it were just a few weeks ago. I love the place. It is more “tropical” than Northern Mexico. The local Hispanics, Spanish, and Mayan tend to not think of themselves as “Mexicans”. They are “Yucatecans”.