Paper instructions:
The instructions are included. It is important to connect all the evidence from the readings and create an explanation of why the Mayan city of Copan collapsed. Its important to mention what was happening in other cities at the same time. The weather patterns. The culture of the Mayans and how that could have affected Copan. Etc. I do not need you to explain the evidence, but rather connect it together.

NEW vnsws or THE CLASSIC PERIOD
I ‘ slamd 3 glyph that appeared on monuments with captorfeaptive
mm-I-3 as “captu re.” The archaeologist_]oyce Marcus of the University
Eitiirlieliigan was able to argue in a 1974- article entitletl “The lconog-
0;‘ Power“ that captoiuhzaptive motifs were 21 significant part of
3111:5156 Maya art. Marcus suggested that lcapl;tm’cap{ive scenes were
usfid [0 :.;y[1‘1l)t’Jll2?.(3 and stre(ngth.en the polttuzal power of the eaplzors.
She went on to say that themes of prisoners or military triumphs
chaI.a(_j[(_’.l”iZC early lblesoamericart states, perhaps especially during
Periods when they wished to appear in p.ossess1o11_of.powers which
were not yet completely secure and uistituttonally elleetwe. To arrive
at her conclusions, Marcus carefully analyzed the corpus of monu-
ments showing captive [igures that had been discovered, photo-
graphed, and publishedthroiigh the years, many quite a long time
ago, Since 1974-, new information from sites like Dos Pilas and
Quiriguzi has strengthened Marcus’ original arguntent’.. Hieroglypliic
inscriptions and stone carvings from the former, for instance, reveal
the presence of considerable conflict in the Pasifsn River drainage area
during the Late Classic period, including the capture and killing of the
ruler of Seibal by Dos Pilas. Alta: Seibal
The conquest of the cities of Altar de Sacrificios and Seibal was
unveiled by research directed in the late 195os through late 196os by Sacirjiiicios
Gordon Willey and Ledyard Smith of the Peabody Museum, Harvard
University. Altar dc Sacrificios sits at the juncture of the Pasién and
Usumacinta Rivers on the western border of the Southern Lowlands,
and Seibal is found upstream on a bluff overlooking the Pasién. A wide
array of data indicate that non-Classic Maya peoples from the Gulf
Coast lowlands had invaded these centers by the beginning of the
ninth century A.D. These peoples have often been called Ghontal Maya
or Putun; they spoke a Maya language but were not part of the Classic
Maya civilization. Evidence of the invasion came from ceramic analy-
ses in particular, first by the archaeologist Richard E. W. Adams at
Altar dc Sacrificios and then by Gordon Willey and myself at Seibal,
where I worked as a graduate student for four field seasons from 1965
to 1968. A foreign pottery that appeared to originate in the
Usumacinta drainage in or near the Gulf Coast lowlands was found in
quantities at both sites, while designs on some pieces were closely
related to foreign figures and motifs on the Seibal stelae. Some foreign
elite pottery types replaced locally made forms at the two sites.
A host of information indicated that Seibal was taken over by a
foreign elite who deposed the indigenous Maya rulers. One strong clue