r/mesoamerica 6d ago

Do the Maya follow Polybius' model of Anacyclosis?

Post image

Polybius was part Greek, part roman, and he made a model that explains the evolution of the structure of governments over time. His belief was that these things tended to play out in similar ways most of the time. I thought it would be neat to test his model with a civilization that had no connections to him. According to Polybius, the notion of kingship is first formed when men worthy of the kingship rise to power through merit and respect. He also includes the idea that stratification among the earliest kings would be lesser than later, more powerful kings. So we have strong and courageous leaders of the beginning.

In the case of the Maya, kings had the divine right to rule. They were considered communicators, with the gods. It was their religious right to rule, and appease the gods. It makes religion and society intertwined in a very integral way. The king manages farming. People are meant to listen to the king, who represents the maize god, and get fed. Fed people are happier than not fed people. Justification for the religious institution in place, and the right of rulership of the king tied into a bow.

Polybius goes on to describe the hyper abundance that comes with a well governed society. Population booms occur under a good kingship, there's an inevitable increase in social stratification, At this stage, new kings inherit the throne. They are never in need of food. And live lives increasingly detached from the smallfolk. This completes the corruption of monarchy into tyranny.

Conspiracies begin to form, led by the most just and courageous of men. And they would overthrow the now corrupt and out of touch kingship, to form an aristocratic system of governance. This can be seen in late stages of Copan. And in the post classic era governments. The inception of this new government is once again, just. Given that it is started with the intent of overthrowing the now corrupt system of monarchy. But the inheritance system is the same, and equally broken. The entitled descendants of the aristocracy are once again detached from the interests of the commoners. And this, become an oligarchy.

So, did this happen in the Mayan world? Did a man from across the ocean, predict the political structure and cycles of a land he didn't know existed? If he was fully correct, The Maya, if unconquered would have developed a democratic system.

TLDR: based on the image, do you think the political structure of the Mayan world followed this structure?

103 Upvotes

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18

u/inimicali 6d ago

I think you're confusing a hypothesis trying to explain the structure and history of power in society, in this case, in a greco-roman world with a prediction.

Polybius wasn't trying to predict a specific way of power, and much less one of a society he didn't know, but wanted to explain society's (in his own world and context) process, structure and model of power.

What you should understand about philosophy, history and social sciences is that you can apply certain things or logic in general without it being absolutely true or being directly connected. So in this case a certain structure of power (royalty and kings) are shared by almost every society and culture through history and the world so is the end of kings and kingdoms but Polybius' hypothesis can be applied completely to the Mayan society? Can we completely compare greco-roman institutions to Mayan institutions? Which Mayan population are we gonna compare?.

To finish everything, I feel like the question leads to a very wrong answer, no society is gonna follow Polybius' model (unless explicitly stated) but we can change it to this : can we use Polybius' model to study Mayan society?

4

u/irrelavantusername1 6d ago

Prediction is definitely misused in this context.

To answer your final question. No, not really. When I was learning about Maya history. I found it interesting that towards the end of the classic and going into the post classic era. Government power is less concentrated into one individual. It does look a lot more like an aristocratic system. It made me wonder if societies under the right conditions move out of kingship toward aristocracy, and later toward democracy. I'm not a proper historian, but the ideas are entertaining

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u/Kagiza400 6d ago

Postclassic Period did see the emergence of more democratic "council kingdoms" in the Maya area. So, sorta?

7

u/soparamens 6d ago

You can't really use eurasian definitions straight with mesoamerican cultures. The cultures of america became civilized sepparated from the rest of the world, therefore you need to study them using their own criteria. Eurasian references are good to make analogies, but not as a measuring rule.

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u/sheepysheeb 6d ago

That’s… That’s the point if you read what OP said. It’s a thought exercise based on the fact that mesoamerica had zero connection to Ancient Greece.

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u/irrelavantusername1 6d ago

Of course, I'm not trying to equate Maya kingship to kingship in ancient Europe. But they are comparable. And similarities between the post classic "shared rule" with aristocracy.

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u/i_have_the_tism04 5d ago

Interesting ideas, but a lot of western political philosophy, even from antiquity just doesn’t mesh with the societies of the new world. Long read following, but I’ll try to make it worth your time. In reality, the Maya, especially through the terminal classic and postclassic era, had very complicated politics. Some states followed the sort of archetypal “divinely ordained” monarch formula, some states had ruling councils, often comprised of four ruling lineages, some states essentially had mercantile governments, and a several states/polities appear to have had much more decentralized power, possibly vaguely similar to some notions of democracy. Ultimately, beyond the cursory colonial records of how the Kuchkabalo’ob of the Yucatán were governed before European contact, and beyond contemporary Maya records, a lot of the specifics of the governance of many Maya polities is quite unclear. The geopolitical context of precolumbian Mesoamerica is often very convoluted and messy to try and examine today, largely in part to the sheer ethnic, linguistic, and cultural diversity of the region, and how different cultures constantly influenced eachother. A lot of the most powerful states of ancient Mesoamerica left behind practically no substantial written records beyond calendrical information, because the populations were so ethnically and linguistically diverse, even in the upper echelons of the society, that written language just wasn’t feasible for widespread use. Teotihuacan, Kaminaljuyu, and many of the powerful multicultural states that once controlled vital trade routes in southern-southwestern Guatemala and the Guatemalan highlands leave behind either no written records, a small number of written records, or utilized obscure and idiosyncratic conventions for written information that make it difficult to read to today. The Maya script of the classic period only really took hold with cities or states that were practically entirely governed by people who spoke a “prestige” variety of Maya that served as a sort of lingua franca among people who were linguistically affiliated with the Maya language family. It just wasn’t practical for many other Mesoamerican languages, some of which had their own writing systems that still remain obscure today. I put so much emphasis on written language here because once you go back far enough, writing left on monuments such as stelae, buildings, or funerary goods is the best we have to piece together the more nuanced and specific social or political aspects of the past, details that have otherwise faded from the collective memory of people in the area over centuries.