USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -The Maya city-states went to war with one another for several different reasons. Part of it was military dominance: to bring more territory or vassal states under the command of a larger city. Capturing prisoners was a priority, especially high-ranking ones.

Detailed explanation-2: -War was a common occurence throughout the history of the ancient Maya, and was conducted for the purpose of destroying rival states, gaining tribute, and capturing victims for human sacrifice.

Detailed explanation-3: -Scholars have widely assumed that the Maya practiced “total war"-that is, devastating violence that involved the destruction of cities-only after they began to compete for food resources during a series of droughts beginning in the 9th century A.D.

Detailed explanation-4: -The first Maya encountered by Europeans in the early sixteenth century were exceedingly warlike, but by the 1940s the earlier Classic Maya (AD 250–1000) were widely perceived as an inordinately peaceful civilization. Today, in sharp contrast, conflict is seen as integral to Maya society throughout its history.

Detailed explanation-5: -But though the Maya shared a society, it was not an empire. Instead, city-states and local rulers vacillated between peaceful coexistence and wrestling for control. Some places, such as the village of Joya de Cerén, seem to have been run by collective rule instead of an elite overlord.