Putun Maya

The Putún Maya were described as a people of merchants and merchants in the Spanish colonial era. They are often equated or confused with the Chontal Maya , who operated coastal trade along the Mexican Gulf coast to the Caribbean coast of the Yucatán during the post-classical period .

Eric Thompson (1898–1975) in particular saw the Putún Maya as a Maya group that was culturally strongly influenced by Central Mexico. Already during the Endklassik they should have thus contributed in the northern lowlands to the collapse of the classic Maya culture. Ceramic finds, the steles in Seibal and the Altar de Sacrificios are named as evidence for this thesis . Under the leadership of Cocom , as the Mayan Toltecs of Chichén Itzá, they later dominated large parts of the Yucatán from Ich Paa until the so-called League of Mayapán collapsed .

The more recent Maya research does not negate the central Mexican, in particular the Toltec influence of the post-classical period in the Mayan cultural area, but criticizes the invasive thesis and its deductions.

literature

• Brigitte Beier: New Chronicle of World History. Gütersloh / Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-577-14639-5 , pp. 288-289.
• Nikolai Grube (ed.): Maya, god kings in the rainforest. Potsdam 2012, ISBN 978-3-8480-0033-3 , p. 436.