Births which occurred on
an October 13:
1982 Spreadsheet Lotus 1-2-3 is shown to the public for the first
time. The product imitates VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program. Lotus
founder Mitch Kapor focuses on marketing the product to large corporations
rather than to individuals. 1-2-3 would become the leading spreadsheet
until the introduction of Excel in 1985.
1962 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, by Edward Albee,
opens on Broadway.
1953 The Artmobile starts going
on tour
The "Artmobile," a novel way
of exposing fine art to the public, was conceived of and designed
by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts located in Richmond, Virginia.
On this day the Artmobile, the world's first mobile art gallery,
begin touring Virginia with an exhibition of art objects, making
its first stop in Fredericksburg. The Artmobile was an all-aluminum
trailer, measuring over 10 m in length with an interior height
of over 2 m. |
1932 John
Thompson, mathematician
1925 Margaret Thatcher, “the Iron Lady”, first female
UK prime minister (Tory)(1979-1990)
1925 Frank Gilroy (playwright: The Gig, Jinxed, From Noon till
Three, Desperate Characters, Fastest Gun Alive)
1910 Ernest Kellogg Gann, pilot and adventure novelist (Island
in the Sky, The High and Mighty).
1909 Herbert Lawrence Block "Herblock", multiple Pulitzer
Prize-winning political cartoonist.who died on 07 October 2001.
1902 Arna Bontemps Louisiana, black author (100 years of negro
freedom)
1893 Kurt
Reidemeister, mathematician
1890 Conrad Richter, novelist and short story writer (The Light
in the Forest)
1890 Feigl,
mathematician
1843 B'nai B'rith founded
B'nai B'rith, the oldest secular
Jewish organization in the United States, is founded in New
York City by Henry Jones and eleven others. B'nai B'rith, meaning
"Sons of the Covenant," organizes its first lodge in November,
and Isaac Dittenhoefer is elected the first president. The fraternal
organization goes on to become a national leader in charity
work and disaster relief, and in 1913 forms the Anti-Defamation
League to combat anti-Semitism. Today some 500'000 men and women
are members of B'nai
B'rith. |
1840 Mose Bianchi di Giosue, Italian artist who died on 15 May
1904. —
1835 François-Alfred Delobbe, French artist who died in
1920.
1817 William Kirby, Canadian writer. KIRBY ONLINE: The
Golden Dog (Le Chien d'Or)
1784 Ferdinand VII, king of Spain.
1782 Joseph Nigg, Austrian artist who died on 19 September 1863.
1775 The Continental Navy
The Continental Congress authorizes
construction and administration of the first American naval
force, starting with the construction of two warships.From the
outbreak of open hostilities with the British in April, little
consideration was given to protection by sea until Congress
received news that a British naval fleet was on its way. In
November, the Continental Navy is formally organized, and in
December Esek Hopkins is appointed the first commander-in-chief
of the Continental Navy. His first fleet consists of seven ships:
two twenty-four-gun frigates, the Alfred and the Columbus; two
fourteen-gun brigs, the Andrea Doria and the Cabot; and three
schooners, the the Hornet, the Wasp, and the Fly. |
1756 Augustin van den Berghe, Belgian artist who died on 11 April
1836.
1746 Johann-Christian-Jacob Friedrich, German artist who died
on 03 June 1813.
1474 Mariotto Albertinelli, Florentine painter who died on 05
November 1515. — MORE
ON ALBERTINELLI AT ART “4” OCTOBER
— LINKS
— Visitation
— Annunciation
— Birth
of Christ — Circumcision
0625 Balaj Chan K'awiil,
ruler of the minor Mayan state of Dos Pilas
^top^
Mayan date: 9.9.12.11.2, 8 ik' 5 keh (16 October Gregorian-extrapolated,
15 October G-e according to an alternate calculation which places
the start of the Mayan era 1 day earlier)
He is born in Mutul (now called
Tikal, Guatemala), one of the two major powers of the Mayan
region, constantly battling the other major power, Calakmul,
100 km to the north (now in Mexico). His father is the 24th
ruler of Tikal, K'inch Waaw (or “Animal Skull”) who
dies in 628, leaving his succession in turmoil, but eventually
taken over by his son Nuun U Jol Chak, older brother of Balaj
Chan K'awiil.
Tikal founded an outpost at Dos
Pilas, some 115 km to the southwest, and, on 25 June 629 (9.9.16.6.13,
7 ben 16 xul), Balaj Chan K'awiil was brought to live there,
and, on 9.10.2.7.17, 7 caban 10 xul (18 June 635), is crowned
as its first ruler.
is entroned as its ruler on becoming its first ruler in 635,
while his brother ruled Tikal.
hen a hurricane ripped through
the jungle of northern Guatemala a year ago, an uprooted tree
at the base of temple ruins at Dos Pilas exposed stones bearing
one of the longest texts of Maya hieroglyphs ever found. Part
of a grand staircase leading up the side of a pyramid, the inscribed
stones recorded the triumphs and defeats of one city caught
in the middle of protracted warfare between two superpowers
— the city-states of Tikal and Calakmul — that split much of
the Maya civilization some 1,500 years ago. Advertisement The
text is expected to cast light on the clashes of arms at the
zenith of the classic Maya culture, which embraced much of central
America and southern Mexico, and perhaps the causes of its eventual
collapse, more than two centuries later. The translations of
the Dos Pilas glyphs have just been completed by Federico Fahsen,
a Guatemalan specialist in Maya writing, and were announced
yesterday by Vanderbilt University and the National Geographic
Society, which supported the research. The discovery will also
be described in the October issue of National Geographic.
Archaeologists and other Maya scholars said the hieroglyphic
stairs revealed the largely unknown story of 60 years in the
life of a Dos Pilas ruler, Balaj Chan K'awiil. It is at times
a grisly account of flowing blood and piles of skulls after
a battle was over and the vanquished were sacrificed. The ruler
found himself at times on one side, then another, and must have
been both clever and fortunate to have survived to a ripe age,
some scholars said. Of particular importance, some scholars
said, the Dos Pilas glyphs supported an emerging consensus that
local and dynastic rivalries were not mainly responsible for
most battles, as once supposed. Instead, much of the Maya world
in those years was apparently in an almost constant state of
belligerence between Tikal and Calakmul and their respective
blocs of allies. One of the largest cities in Maya history,
Tikal, then known as Mutul, was in what is now northern Guatemala,
but had a much wider sphere of influence in the Maya world.
Calakmul, known as the "snake kingdom," was about 60 miles farther
north, in Mexico. The glyphs provide new evidence that Dos Pilas
was established as a military outpost by Tikal, about 70 miles
to the northeast of Dos Pilas, and was never a major city or
independent power. "It now appears that Dos Pilas was a pawn
in a much bigger battle," said Dr. Arthur A. Demarest of Vanderbilt's
Institute of Mesoamerican Archaeology, who organized the new
glyph research. "In today's terms, Dos Pilas was the Vietnam
of the Maya world, used in a war that was actually between two
superpowers." A leading Maya scholar, Dr. David Webster of Pennsylvania
State University, said that although he had not yet studied
the staircase glyphs, "they sound like a very exciting find."
He is the author of "The Fall of the Ancient Maya," published
earlier this year by Thames & Hudson. Ever since scholars learned
to decipher more and more Maya glyphs, beginning in the 1970's,
they have realized that the classical Maya elite were using
their advanced writing system to record narratives of their
rulers, wars and celebrations. Scribes usually carved the texts
on soft stones, which were then displayed as monuments in the
city center or in tombs. Not having metal, they carved with
pieces of hard rock. Before the hurricane last year, only eight
steps at the base of the pyramid were known, and their inscriptions
were limited. The story of war and Dos Pilas came alive when
Mr. Fahsen — who is based in Guatemala City and is also an adjunct
professor of archaeology at Vanderbilt — began translating the
10 other steps, those cleared by the storm.
The steps in the center section described the first 23 years
of the life of Balaj Chan K'waiil, the ruler. The glyphs even
tell when he was born: Oct. 15, 625, as it would be on the modern
calendar. He was brought from Tikal as a 4-year-old, and ascended
to the throne of Dos Pilas in 635. Mr. Fahsen said the glyphs
revealed that Balaj Chan K'awiil became a great warrior and
for many years was loyal to Tikal, the dominant city ruled by
his brother. The texts give no hint that the two brothers were
enemies, as once thought by scholars. The stairway's east section
tells the next chapter in the story. When the king was in his
20's, the other superpower, Calakmul, attacked and defeated
Dos Pilas. This was a major surprise. Mr. Fahsen said it had
not previously been established that Calakmul actually invaded
and defeated Dos Pilas. Although the young king fled the city,
it seems that he returned and was installed on the Dos Pilas
throne as a "puppet king," controlled by Calakmul. Given the
customs of the time, it was probably that or death. Now the
king displayed his loyalty to Calakmul by undertaking a decade-long
war — a kind of "proxy war," Dr. Demarest said, like some conflicts
in the cold war — against Tikal. Balaj Chan K'awiil's forces
sacked Tikal and captured its ruler, his own brother, to be
sacrificed. This part of the story is laid out on the west section
of the staircase, and the details are graphic. The inscriptions
on the steps report that after the Dos Pilas victory over Tikal,
"Blood flowed and skulls of the 13 peoples of the Tikal place
were piled up." Then the glyphs record that late in his life,
the Dos Pilas king did a "victory dance" with Calakmul's king,
his ally. The inscription on that final step ended with a domestic
note, the ruler recording the name of his wife, Ix Itzan Ajaw,
and their child, his heir. Dr. Demarest and other scholars said
the translations supported a concept advanced by two Maya scholars,
Dr. Simon Martin of University College, London, and Dr. Nikolai
Grube of the University of Bonn. They contend that the turmoil
of the seventh and eighth centuries resulted from the contest
between the Tikal and Calakmul superpowers, along with their
blocs of allied city-states, for complete dominance. "This didn't
happen," Dr. Demarest said. "Instead, the giant war went back
and forth. After Tikal was sacked, it eventually roared back
and crushed Calakmul. And then the Maya world just broke up
into regional powers, setting the stage for a period of intensive,
petty warfare that finally led to the collapse of the Maya."
Dos Pilas itself was abandoned in 760.
hen a hurricane ripped through the jungle of northern Guatemala
a year ago, an uprooted tree at the base of temple ruins at
Dos Pilas exposed stones bearing one of the longest texts of
Maya hieroglyphs ever found. Part of a grand staircase leading
up the side of a pyramid, the inscribed stones recorded the
triumphs and defeats of one city caught in the middle of protracted
warfare between two superpowers — the city-states of Tikal and
Calakmul — that split much of the Maya civilization some 1,500
years ago. Advertisement The text is expected to cast light
on the clashes of arms at the zenith of the classic Maya culture,
which embraced much of central America and southern Mexico,
and perhaps the causes of its eventual collapse, more than two
centuries later. The translations of the Dos Pilas glyphs have
just been completed by Federico Fahsen, a Guatemalan specialist
in Maya writing, and were announced yesterday by Vanderbilt
University and the National Geographic Society, which supported
the research. The discovery will also be described in the October
issue of National Geographic. Archaeologists and other Maya
scholars said the hieroglyphic stairs revealed the largely unknown
story of 60 years in the life of a Dos Pilas ruler, Balaj Chan
K'awiil. It is at times a grisly account of flowing blood and
piles of skulls after a battle was over and the vanquished were
sacrificed. The ruler found himself at times on one side, then
another, and must have been both clever and fortunate to have
survived to a ripe age, some scholars said. Of particular importance,
some scholars said, the Dos Pilas glyphs supported an emerging
consensus that local and dynastic rivalries were not mainly
responsible for most battles, as once supposed. Instead, much
of the Maya world in those years was apparently in an almost
constant state of belligerence between Tikal and Calakmul and
their respective blocs of allies. One of the largest cities
in Maya history, Tikal, then known as Mutul, was in what is
now northern Guatemala, but had a much wider sphere of influence
in the Maya world. Calakmul, known as the "snake kingdom," was
about 60 miles farther north, in Mexico. The glyphs provide
new evidence that Dos Pilas was established as a military outpost
by Tikal, about 70 miles to the northeast of Dos Pilas, and
was never a major city or independent power. "It now appears
that Dos Pilas was a pawn in a much bigger battle," said Dr.
Arthur Demarest of Vanderbilt's Institute of Mesoamerican Archaeology,
who organized the new glyph research. "In today's terms, Dos
Pilas was the Vietnam of the Maya world, used in a war that
was actually between two superpowers." A leading Maya scholar,
Dr. David Webster of Pennsylvania State University, said that
although he had not yet studied the staircase glyphs, "they
sound like a very exciting find." He is the author of "The Fall
of the Ancient Maya," published earlier this year by Thames
& Hudson. Ever since scholars learned to decipher more and more
Maya glyphs, beginning in the 1970's, they have realized that
the classical Maya elite were using their advanced writing system
to record narratives of their rulers, wars and celebrations.
Scribes usually carved the texts on soft stones, which were
then displayed as monuments in the city center or in tombs.
Not having metal, they carved with pieces of hard rock. Before
the hurricane last year, only eight steps at the base of the
pyramid were known, and their inscriptions were limited. The
story of war and Dos Pilas came alive when Mr. Fahsen — who
is based in Guatemala City and is also an adjunct professor
of archaeology at Vanderbilt — began translating the 10 other
steps, those cleared by the storm. The steps in the center section
described the first 23 years of the life of Balaj Chan K'waiil,
the ruler. The glyphs even tell when he was born: Oct. 15, 625,
as it would be on the modern calendar. He was brought from Tikal
as a 4-year-old, and ascended to the throne of Dos Pilas in
635. Mr. Fahsen said the glyphs revealed that Balaj Chan K'awiil
became a great warrior and for many years was loyal to Tikal,
the dominant city ruled by his brother. The texts give no hint
that the two brothers were enemies, as once thought by scholars.
The stairway's east section tells the next chapter in the story.
When the king was in his 20's, the other superpower, Calakmul,
attacked and defeated Dos Pilas. This was a major surprise.
Mr. Fahsen said it had not previously been established that
Calakmul actually invaded and defeated Dos Pilas. Although the
young king fled the city, it seems that he returned and was
installed on the Dos Pilas throne as a "puppet king," controlled
by Calakmul. Given the customs of the time, it was probably
that or death. Now the king displayed his loyalty to Calakmul
by undertaking a decade-long war — a kind of "proxy war," Dr.
Demarest said, like some conflicts in the cold war — against
Tikal. Balaj Chan K'awiil's forces sacked Tikal and captured
its ruler, his own brother, to be sacrificed. This part of the
story is laid out on the west section of the staircase, and
the details are graphic. The inscriptions on the steps report
that after the Dos Pilas victory over Tikal, "Blood flowed and
skulls of the 13 peoples of the Tikal place were piled up."
Then the glyphs record that late in his life, the Dos Pilas
king did a "victory dance" with Calakmul's king, his ally. The
inscription on that final step ended with a domestic note, the
ruler recording the name of his wife, Ix Itzan Ajaw, and their
child, his heir. Dr. Demarest and other scholars said the translations
supported a concept advanced by two Maya scholars, Dr. Simon
Martin of University College, London, and Dr. Nikolai Grube
of the University of Bonn. They contend that the turmoil of
the seventh and eighth centuries resulted from the contest between
the Tikal and Calakmul superpowers, along with their blocs of
allied city-states, for complete dominance. "This didn't happen,"
Dr. Demarest said. "Instead, the giant war went back and forth.
After Tikal was sacked, it eventually roared back and crushed
Calakmul. And then the Maya world just broke up into regional
powers, setting the stage for a period of intensive, petty warfare
that finally led to the collapse of the Maya." Dos Pilas itself
was abandoned in 760.
A bitter war between rival Maya city-states may have set the
stage for the collapse of that once-great civilization, say
scientists who translated recently found hieroglyphics on stone
stairs in an ancient pyramid in Guatemala. A hurricane last
summer began exposing the carvings at a site known as Dos Pilas,
and the story they tell is forcing scholars to rewrite history.
What was once thought to be a series of separate local conflicts
in the seventh and eighth centuries turns out to have been the
equivalent of a "world war" for the Maya, with battle lines
formed by vassal states controlled by two superpowers, Arthur
Demarest, of Vanderbilt University's Institute of Mesoamerican
Archaeology, said Wednesday. Demarest said in a telephone interview
that the discovery is forcing him to rewrite part of his institute's
lengthy history of the Maya civilization. "The hundreds of new
glyphs fill in a vital 60-year gap of unknown Maya history and
clarify many of the political and military relationships of
this critical period," Federico Fahsen, a Maya specialist at
Vanderbilt, added in a statement. Their discovery was supported
by the National Geographic Society, Vanderbilt, the Foundation
for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies and Guatemala's
Ministry of Culture. National Geographic, which reported the
discovery of the steps in the October issue of its magazine,
announced the details of the findings. The 18 steps were discovered
after a storm blew down a tree in Dos Pilas. Demarest, who previously
had explored there, returned with other scholars to investigate.
"I didn't think for a minute it would be anything like this,"
he said. "We thought it was just going to be a few steps, and
it kept growing and growing." While many scholars believed the
wars of this time were local and unrelated, the discovery supports
the theory of Simon Martin of University College, London, and
Nikolai Grube of the University of Bonn, Germany, that this
period in Maya history was a "long world war" between the superpowers
Tikal and Calakmul, said Demarest. (AP) Archaeologist Arthur
Demarest,left, and epigrapher Federico Fahsen, both of Vanderbilt
University,... Full Image This staircase is overpowering confirmation
of their theory, he said. Demarest said he had not been able
to contact Martin and Grube to tell them of the find because
they are doing field work. Dos Pilas was established as a military
outpost of the great Maya city of Tikal in A.D. 629, and the
king of Tikal placed his young brother on the throne of the
new city. Later battles between the communities had been thought
to be a rivalry between the brothers, but the new translations
reveal a much larger and more complex conflict. Instead, the
step writings say the king of Dos Pilas grew up to become a
great warrior and for many years was an ally of his brother
in Tikal. Then the city-state Calakmul, located to the north
in what is now Mexico, conquered Dos Pilas, took the king prisoner,
and then restored him to the throne as a puppet ruler. "When
I read those glyphs, I had to blink to make sure I was reading
it correctly," Fahsen said. "I had never heard of Calakmul actually
invading and defeating the king of Dos Pilas. We thought that,
at most, they may have had a weak alliance of some type." But
the new carvings say that the king, now loyal to Calakmul, launched
a decade-long war against Tikal that ended in his victory. His
forces sacked Tikal and brought its ruler - his own brother
- and other Tikal nobles to Dos Pilas to be sacrificed. "This
west section of the steps was very graphic," said Fahsen. "It
says, 'blood flowed and skulls of the thirteen peoples of the
Tikal place were piled up.' The final glyphs describe the king
of Dos Pilas 'doing a victory dance.'" Dos Pilas then launched
a campaign of conquest with Calakmul's backing and became a
major regional power. "Rather than being an independent actor
as previously thought, it now appears that Dos Pilas was a pawn
in a much bigger battle," said Demarest. He says this appears
to be a time when the Maya civilization was on the verge of
moving to a higher level of organization and consolidating into
a single empire. "However, this didn't happen. Instead, the
giant war went back and forth. After Tikal was sacked, it eventually
roared back and crushed Calakmul. And then the Maya world just
broke up into regional powers, setting the stage for a period
of intensive, petty warfare that finally led to the collapse
of the Maya," said Demarest. By 760, Dos Pilas was abandoned.
Federico Fahsen Rescuing
the Origins of Dos Pilas Dynasty: A Salvage of Hieroglyphic
Stairway #2, Structure L5-49 (Interim Report 10 September 2002)
Maya Hieroglyphs Recount "Giant War"
The Writing on the Wall Federico Fahsen, an expert in the interpretation
of Maya hieroglyphs, said the text carved into the staircase
of a pyramid at Dos Pilas in Guatemala is unusual because it
documents not only the city's triumphs but also its setbacks
and tragedies. Various sections of the steps provide details
such as these: • The central section spans the first 23 years
of the life of the first king of Dos Pilas, Balaj Chan K'awiil.
Text on Step 6 describes his birth: "It came into being the
day 8 lK' 5th of the month KEH when was born Balaj Chan K'awiil
divine Mutul lord." (The abbreviations stand for the day and
month of the Maya calendar, and "Mutul" is the city now known
as Tikal.) • Step 4 details the ceremony leading up to Balaj
Chan K'awiil's ascension to the throne in the year A.D. 635.
—an event referred to as "the taking of the headband." According
to the inscriptions, he traveled 60 miles (97 kilometers) to
Tikal for the ceremony, a long trip in ancient times. • The
east section of the staircase describes a "star war" attack
on Dos Pilas by the king of Calakmul—so called because the attack
was influenced by astrological movements and the dominance of
Venus. The attack in 658 was marked by Balaj Chan K'awiil's
flight to the "twin capital" of Dos Pilas, a city known today
as Aguateca. Steps 1 and 2 tell of Calakmul's conquest of Dos
Pilas, a move that displaced Tikal from its former sphere of
influence. • The west section of the staircase spans 12 years,
beginning with the wars between Balaj Chan K'awiil and his brother,
the ruler of Tikal. It shows that Balaj Chan K'awiil was forced
to flee for five years, then returned with a vengeance and defeated
his brother on behalf of Calakmul. • Step 2 explains that Balaj
Chan K'awiil did a "victory dance" in A.D. 682 with Calakmul's
king, his ally, to celebrate the Dos Pilas ruler's nearly 60
years of life. The text ends on a note of domestic tranquility,
with the ruler of Dos Pilas recording the name of his wife,
Ix Itzan Ajaw, and their child. The inscriptions describe only
the first 60 years at Dos Pilas, but historians know that Tikal
ultimately came back to crush Calakmul. Three more kings followed
Balaj Chan K'awiil at Dos Pilas before the city was abandoned
about A.D. 760.
The texts show that Dos Pilas played a major role in fierce
and bloody warfare that raged back and forth between the major
Maya cities of Tikal and Calakmul for a century, until Tikal
finally prevailed in about A.D. 695. The inscriptions offer
strong evidence supporting a theory proposed a decade ago by
two Maya experts who challenged the prevailing belief that conflicts
in the region were mainly local clashes between independent
city-states. In their alternative interpretation, Simon Martin
and Nikolai Grube proposed that these campaigns reflected a
larger struggle between major powers. Arthur Demarest, a professor
of anthropology at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee who organized
the translation of the newly revealed glyphs, said their content
has convinced him, after years of skepticism, that Martin and
Grube were right. "Rather than being an independent actor, as
previously thought, it now appears that Dos Pilas was a pawn
in a much bigger battle," said Demarest. "In today's terms,
Dos Pilas was the Somalia or Vietnam of the Maya world, used
in a war that was actually between two superpowers." Some of
the inscriptions at Dos Pilas first came to light years ago.
The glyphs describe repeated clashes between Dos Pilas and Tikal,
a successful attack on Tikal by Calakmul, and eventually a great
defeat for the king of Tikal. Information about these events
was fragmentary, however, and many questions were left unanswered.
Two years ago, a storm blew through Dos Pilas, knocking down
a tree and exposing ten more steps, which have provided a much
more complete picture of events. Federico Fahsen, a Guatemalan
expert on Maya glyphs, headed a team that traveled to Dos Pilas
last year to excavate the steps and document the inscriptions.
"The hundreds of new glyphs fill in a vital 60-year gap of unknown
Maya history and clarify many of the political and military
relationships of this critical period," said Fahsen, an adjunct
professor at Vanderbilt. Demarest added, "It's rare that you
find a new monument and it fills in such a large blank spot
about the history of a region." Puppet State One of the biggest
mysteries the inscriptions answered was the nature of Dos Pilas's
relations with Tikal and Calakmul. Tikal (known at that time
as Mutul) was located in what is now northern Guatemala; Calakmul
was about 60 miles (97 kilometers) further north, in Mexico.
Dos Pilas is about 70 miles (113 kilometers) southwest of Tikal.
Many scholars have thought that any alliances between Maya kingdoms
were weak associations between entities that were essentially
autonomous. Thus, the researchers were surprised to discover
from the new inscriptions that Dos Pilas was conquered by Calakmul
and became its puppet state for many years. "When I read those
glyphs, I had to blink to make sure I was reading it correctly,"
said Fahsen. "I had never heard of Calakmul actually invading
and defeating the king of Dos Pilas. We thought that, at most,
they may have had a weak alliance of some type." The text also
forced researchers to revise earlier assumptions about the conflict
between Dos Pilas and Tikal. "This had previously been known
as only a domestic quarrel between two brothers. Now we know
it was part of a more global conflict between Tikal and Calakmul,
in which Dos Pilas played a part," said Fahsen. "Like U.S.-Russian
fighting by proxy," he added, "this introduces the whole concept
of a sort of global fighting in the Maya civilization." Dos
Pilas was first established in A.D. 629 as a military stronghold
of Tikal. Dos Pilas was important to Tikal and later to Calakmul
because it strengthened their clout at the southern edge of
the Maya lowlands, which was a major gateway for trade. Precious
goods such as jade, obsidian, quetzal feathers, and shells from
the Caribbean flowed between the highlands and lowlands via
the region"s Pasón River. When Dos Pilas was founded, the ruler
of Tikal installed his four-year-old brother on the throne.
The glyphs include a detailed account of significant events
in the life of this first king, Balaj Chan K'awiil, who lived
to be about 60. The inscriptions show that Balaj Chan K'awiil
became a young warrior and remained loyal to his brother and
other members of the royal family at Tikal for years. But when
he was in his 20s, Calakmul conquered Dos Pilas and the young
king was forced to shift his alliances. Under the banner of
Calakmul, K'awiil waged war against Tikal for a decade and eventually
sacked the city-state, carrying its ruler—his brother—and other
members of the nobility back to Dos Pilas to be killed. The
text at Dos Pilas describes the bloodshed and the celebration
that followed. "The west section of the steps was very graphic,"
said Fahsen. "It says, 'Blood was pooled and the skulls of the
people of the central place of Tikal were piled up.' The final
glyphs describe the king of Dos Pilas doing a victory dance."
After the victory over Tikal, Dos Pilas embarked on a campaign
of conquest with Calakmul's backing and became a major regional
power until it collapsed in A.D. 760.
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1970
Communist Angela Davis arrested unjustly
1943
Poet Robert Lowell to prison for draft evasion