The Four Heavens brings to life the cultural and visual splendor of the ancient Maya, drawing on the oldest indigenous texts of the Americas and the latest archaeological discoveries to present an entirely new history of this spectacular civilization. Renowned historian and archaeologist David Stuart, who has made groundbreaking contributions to the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphics, shows how there was no single rise and fall of the Maya but a series of births and collapses over a breathtaking span of nearly three millennia.
Maya history was seemingly lost forever when the first Europeans encountered the great ruins of ancient cities in what is today Mexico and Central America. Today, with the recent decipherment of their ancient writings, the story of the Maya can now be told from their perspective. Stuart traces the rapid emergence of permanent settlements in the rainforest, which gave rise to monumental architecture and a flourishing urbanism and ushered in the Classic period of Maya civilization beginning in the mid-second century CE. He reveals a world of majestic royal courts tightly bound together by marriages, shifting alliances, and warfare, much of it driven by the ambitions of two major dynasties, the Kanuls and Mutuls. Stuart describes how the long-standing rivalry between these two great houses shaped the fates of the surrounding kingdoms and may have set the stage for 鈥渢he Great Rupture鈥� of the ninth century, when the royal courts buckled under the weight of internal strife, social unrest, and environmental crisis, transforming Maya civilization yet again.
With stunning illustrations, including many of Stuart鈥檚 own drawings and images, The Four Heavens is a work of momentous historical sweep, one that paints an unforgettable portrait of the Maya and the richly complex social, political, and cosmological worlds in which they lived.
Available in Spanish from our partners at Grupo Planeta
David Stuart is the David and Linda Schele Professor of Mesoamerican Art and Writing and director of the Mesoamerica Center at the University of Texas at Austin. His books include Palenque: Eternal City of the Maya, The Order of Days: Unlocking the Secrets of the Ancient Maya, and Spearthrower Owl: A Teotihuacan Ruler in Maya History. He is the youngest person ever to be awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
"[A] superb, sprawling account of Maya civilization. . . . Thanks in large part to Stuart, our knowledge about things we never imagined we would know is reaching new heights. Being able to read the newly available sources—'the oldest extant voices anywhere in the Americas,’ as Stuart puts it—is nothing short of a gift."鈥擨lan Stavans, American Scholar
"History, like gossip, is only interesting if you know the players. A series of unfamiliar names, dates and events has little meaning without such knowledge or, at least, an exceptionally wise and intuitive guide. David Stuart exemplifies the latter."鈥擬ax Carter, Wall Street Journal
"A robust scholarly contribution to new understandings of ancient peoples as adaptable and open to social experimentation."鈥�Publishers Weekly
“An extraordinary recovery of a lost world.”—Peter Brown, author of The World of Late Antiquity
“Reading this marvelous book, two long-standing mysteries were resolved for me. With the brilliant David Stuart as a guide, I didn’t just learn all that I have wanted to learn about the history of the Maya, but also how we have come to know what we know.”—Camilla Townsend, author of Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs
“Drawing from a lifetime of insights and fresh research, Stuart vividly describes a civilization with ups and downs, migrations and resolute journeys, scuffles and grand stratagems. He invites us to meet the people who shook this top-heavy world, from sacred kings to mythic heroes to invading foreigners, and shows that collapses were adaptive responses to a landscape of great fluidity. For the Maya, history was an act of ordering and remembering. The Four Heavens tells us their thrilling story by the one person who could write it.”—Stephen Houston, coauthor of The Maya
“This is Maya history as never encountered before. Combining his own decades of experience with new hieroglyphic decipherments and archaeological discoveries, Stuart introduces readers to a world of powerful princesses, doomed warriors, and the brilliant researchers who brought all of them into focus. Most of all, we discover the Maya world from the Maya themselves, celebrating their centuries of artistic creativity, cultural innovation, and dynamic resilience. The Four Heavens is history at its best.”—Caitlin C. Earley, author of The Comit谩n Valley: Sculpture and Identity on the Maya Frontier
