and the stone used to build extensive defensive walls—
provides one vivid example. As we’ll see in the next
chapter, it was very similar to what happened in the later
Roman Empire. Later, even in places such as Copán,
where there are fewer signs of violence at the time of the
collapse, many monuments were defaced or destroyed. In
some places the elite remained even after the initial
overthrow of the k’uhul ajaw . In Copán there is evidence of
the elite continuing to erect new buildings for at least
another two hundred years before they also disappeared.
Elsewhere elites seem to have gone at the same time as
the divine lord.
Existing archaeological evidence does not allow us to
reach a definitive conclusion about why the k’uhul ajaw and
elites surrounding him were overthrown and the institutions
that had created the Maya Classical Era collapsed. We