Oct 27, 2026 03:34 PM
(This post was last modified: Oct 27, 2026 11:29 PM by C C.)
Anti-capiltalist politicians sort of have to do their own version of this to obscure their wealth status.
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Ancient city is rewriting everything we thought we knew about the Maya
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a...180989648/
EXCERPTS: In Maya society, kings were seen as divine rulers who communicated with gods and ancestors, maintaining the cosmic order. During Te K’ab Chaak’s time, Caracol was strictly hierarchical, but the distance between royalty and commoners narrowed in the sixth and seventh centuries, after the successful battle with Tikal. Kings maintained their divinely appointed status but began to share their wealth in the form of luxury goods.
The Chases use the term “symbolic egalitarianism” to describe this system. “Symbolic egalitarianism is a business and management strategy. It’s where the upper corporate level doesn’t want to call attention to its own wealth,” said Arlen. The Chases believe Caracol’s rulers employed a similar strategy, securing their position by placating the people. “These guys were brilliant,” Arlen said.
His team could tell which tombs were royal because of their locations in the city and information found in the carved hieroglyphics at the sites. “But they aren’t that different from the tombs you’d find in a residential group,” he added. “There may be a little more jade, but that’s about it. And if you look at the structure of the city, instead of a single market, which is controlled by the central elite, Caracol has markets all over the city.”
Based on the deliberate way in which these markets were built into the city’s causeways and irrigation systems, the Chases have inferred that the placement of these markets was under elite control. But the goods they found in dwellings and burial sites indicate that residents were free to trade among themselves.
Scientists are still analyzing the remains and relics from Te K’ab Chaak’s tomb, but preliminary findings indicate that the king ate animals that fed on corn. This suggests that the elite of Caracol fed corn to deer, turkey and perhaps other creatures.
[...] In the late Maya period, the symbolic egalitarian system of Caracol appears to have crumbled. In most Maya cities, collapse was a drawn-out, multi-causal affair. But in Caracol, it came abruptly: In 895 the city burned and quickly emptied, its secrets buried under centuries of overgrowth.
“There was a breakdown in social structure,” Adrian told me. “Elites focused on palaces and temples rather than common infrastructure like causeways and markets.” Goods became less widely distributed, and glyphs on monuments from this time indicate that Caracol submitted to an outside ruler, perhaps from Chichén Itzá.
The Maya lived in a world where kings had cosmic power and a cyclical calendar ruled every aspect of life. Still, strolling through Caracol’s elegiac splendors, one can’t help thinking about how these ancients grappled with the most essential elements of the human experience: community, sustenance and survival in an interconnected world.(MORE - missing details)
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Ancient city is rewriting everything we thought we knew about the Maya
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a...180989648/
EXCERPTS: In Maya society, kings were seen as divine rulers who communicated with gods and ancestors, maintaining the cosmic order. During Te K’ab Chaak’s time, Caracol was strictly hierarchical, but the distance between royalty and commoners narrowed in the sixth and seventh centuries, after the successful battle with Tikal. Kings maintained their divinely appointed status but began to share their wealth in the form of luxury goods.
The Chases use the term “symbolic egalitarianism” to describe this system. “Symbolic egalitarianism is a business and management strategy. It’s where the upper corporate level doesn’t want to call attention to its own wealth,” said Arlen. The Chases believe Caracol’s rulers employed a similar strategy, securing their position by placating the people. “These guys were brilliant,” Arlen said.
His team could tell which tombs were royal because of their locations in the city and information found in the carved hieroglyphics at the sites. “But they aren’t that different from the tombs you’d find in a residential group,” he added. “There may be a little more jade, but that’s about it. And if you look at the structure of the city, instead of a single market, which is controlled by the central elite, Caracol has markets all over the city.”
Based on the deliberate way in which these markets were built into the city’s causeways and irrigation systems, the Chases have inferred that the placement of these markets was under elite control. But the goods they found in dwellings and burial sites indicate that residents were free to trade among themselves.
Scientists are still analyzing the remains and relics from Te K’ab Chaak’s tomb, but preliminary findings indicate that the king ate animals that fed on corn. This suggests that the elite of Caracol fed corn to deer, turkey and perhaps other creatures.
[...] In the late Maya period, the symbolic egalitarian system of Caracol appears to have crumbled. In most Maya cities, collapse was a drawn-out, multi-causal affair. But in Caracol, it came abruptly: In 895 the city burned and quickly emptied, its secrets buried under centuries of overgrowth.
“There was a breakdown in social structure,” Adrian told me. “Elites focused on palaces and temples rather than common infrastructure like causeways and markets.” Goods became less widely distributed, and glyphs on monuments from this time indicate that Caracol submitted to an outside ruler, perhaps from Chichén Itzá.
The Maya lived in a world where kings had cosmic power and a cyclical calendar ruled every aspect of life. Still, strolling through Caracol’s elegiac splendors, one can’t help thinking about how these ancients grappled with the most essential elements of the human experience: community, sustenance and survival in an interconnected world.(MORE - missing details)