THE MAYA ANIMAL KINGDOM
In the year A.D. 776, the warrior-king Yax Pasaj Chan Yopaat, the sixteenth and final ruler of the Maya city of Copan, built a temple. In front of the temple, he dedicated an altar to the city’s founding three and a half centuries earlier. There, archaeologists believe, he ordered the sacrifice of 16 big cats, including jaguars, pumas, and an ocelot. A cat is thought to have represented each of his 15 predecessors, who are depicted on the temple’s altar in a succession ending with yax Pasaj Chan Yopaat himself. The sacrifice, archaeologists say, was an act of desperation. Deforestation and environmental degradation threatened
