HOW THE MAYAS GOT HIGH

The Mayas created one of the great civilisations in the
unprepossessing Central American jungle. Cities such as Tikal in
Guatemala and Chichen Itza in Yucatan amazed early explorers with
their massive temple-pyramids, striking stone sculptures and long
inscriptions in hieroglyphics.

Deciphering the dates on these monuments showed that the Mayas reached
their peak between AD200 and 900 - roughly coincident with the Roman
and early Byzantine Empires - before undergoing a mysterious collapse
that left most of their cities abandoned to the forest.

Over the past century, hundreds of these cities have been found in
Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. Tikal is estimated to have housed 70,000
people. The urban core of more than a square mile included broad
plazas linked by processional ways, and six large temples. One of
these, excavated in the 1960s, covered the tomb of a powerful ruler
known as Hasaw Kan K'awil, who died in AD734 after half a century
fighting to preserve the independence of Tikal.

Such real history is emerging rapidly from the decipherment of the
hieroglyphs. At the same time, investigation of Mayan culture's
economic and social foundations is revealing how this tropical forest
people developed and maintained a literate society for seven centuries
in such an unlikely place.

Pollen in swamp soils shows rainforest destruction by 2500BC and the
start of cultivation. Excavations at the oldest-known Mayan community,
Cuello in northern Belize, showed that by 1200BC many of the
foundations of Mayan life were already laid, including agriculture
based on maize, beans and root crops such as cassava, grown throughout
the Amazon basin and Mexico.

Maize was domesticated from teosinte in the highlands of Mexico; in
adapting it to the humid tropical lowlands, the Mayas showed a
sophisticated understanding of the potential of plant foods. They
exploited the forest fruits, including avocado and cocoa. Mayan cocoa
groves were so productive that the Aztecs, who flourished half a
millennium after the Maya went into decline, sent an expeditionary
force to seize the orchards on the Pacific coast of Chiapas.

A popular drink was balche, a mead in which was steeped the bark of
the balche tree. In one account, the jar was heated, and just before
serving, a toad was dropped in. The bufotenin released by its parotid
glands acted as a powerful hallucinogen.

Mayan pottery vessels show that such drugs were also administered as
enemas, bypassing the nausea caused by swallowing. Spanish sources
after the 1542 conquest of Yucatan mention "lands planted with wine
trees", as well as the drunkenness of their new subjects: the Roman
Catholic Church suppressed much Mayan plant lore.

In recent years, interest has revived: not just from scholars seeking
explanations for the abundant depictions of plants in ancient Mayan
sculptures and murals, but from those who believe that there is modern
knowledge to be gained.

While searches such as Professor Berlin's may well give the world the
basis for new drugs, local efforts such as the Panti Medicine Trail or
the La Milpa research station in Belize are trying to bring knowledge
of plants and their uses back to visitors and the Mayas themselves.