Flintshield

"Flintshield" (the name of the Maya glyph for war) takes strong exception to the view of the ancient Maya as a peaceable people ruled by stargazing priest-kings. It also takes exception with those who acknowledge the presence of war among the Maya but who dismiss it as episodic or incidental. Instead, "Flintshield" convincingly demonstrates that warfare was an endemic component of shifting political and military alliances between contending Maya city-state empires, and between the Maya and political powers in Central Mexico. In fact, it was wars of imperial conquest - not overpopulation or drought or disease or deforestation of the land - that were the primary cause of the eventual collapse of Maya civilization. Written by one of the leading interpreters of Maya history and archaeology for popular audiences, "Flintshield" draws its evidence both from archaeological excavations and from new readings of Maya hieroglyphics. It traces the practice of Maya warfare from Preclassic times to the Classic Maya collapse, and thence through the Spanish Conquest to the modern struggle for Maya cultural survival.
As the written record of the Maya becomes increasingly clear to us, the past meets the present, and the lost legacy of the Maya becomes knowable again as documented Maya history. The text is extensively illustrated, including 12 drawings by Terry Rutledge commissioned expressly for this volume.