The Four Heavens

A New History of the Ancient Maya

David Stuart

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2026
• Print ISBN:
  9780691283531
  9780691213842
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691286075
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: Social Sciences

“An extraordinary recovery of a lost world.”—Peter Brown, author of The World of Late Antiquity

From the world-leading expert on the Maya, a monumental history of a flourishing civilization across three millennia

The Four Heavens brings to life the cultural and visual splendor of the ancient Maya, drawing on the oldest indigenous texts of the Americas and the latest archaeological discoveries to present an entirely new history of this spectacular civilization. Renowned historian and archaeologist David Stuart, who has made groundbreaking contributions to the decipherment of Maya hieroglyphics, shows how there was no single rise and fall of the Maya but a series of births and collapses over a breathtaking span of nearly three millennia.

Maya history was seemingly lost forever when the first Europeans encountered the great ruins of ancient cities in what is today Mexico and Central America. Today, with the recent decipherment of their ancient writings, the story of the Maya can now be told from their perspective. Stuart traces the rapid emergence of permanent settlements in the rainforest, which gave rise to monumental architecture and a flourishing urbanism and ushered in the Classic period of Maya civilization beginning in the mid-second century CE. He reveals a world of majestic royal courts tightly bound together by marriages, shifting alliances, and warfare, much of it driven by the ambitions of two major dynasties, the Kanuls and Mutuls. Stuart describes how the long-standing rivalry between these two great houses shaped the fates of the surrounding kingdoms and may have set the stage for “the Great Rupture” of the ninth century, when the royal courts buckled under the weight of internal strife, social unrest, and environmental crisis, transforming Maya civilization yet again.

With stunning illustrations, including many of Stuart’s own drawings and images, The Four Heavens is a work of momentous historical sweep, one that paints an unforgettable portrait of the Maya and the richly complex social, political, and cosmological worlds in which they lived.

Available in Spanish from our partners at Grupo Planeta

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Contents
• List of Maps
• Foreword
• Preface
• Part I. Paskab: The World Revealed
• Part II. Kabch’en: The Earth and Caves
• Part III. Chante’chan: The Four Heavens
• Part IV. Lok’oy: The Leaving
• Color illustrations
• Appendix A. Family Relations
• Appendix B. Selected Timeline
• Appendix C. Maya Timekeeping
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Series List