Dzuluinicob

Dzuluinicob was a Postclassic Maya polity (kuchkabal) in the southern Maya Lowlands, in what is now Belize. It is thought to have been established during the Postclassic period, and to have been annexed by Spanish Yucatan in 1544, upon the successful Pachecos entrada. Scarce little is yet known about the province, having only been rediscovered or proposed in the 1980s by Grant D. Jones, a Mayanist scholar from the American Hamilton and Davidson Colleges. Consequently, Dzuluinicob is today noted in specialist literature, but little known elsewhere, including in popular culture.

Geography

Dzuluinicob is most commonly thought to have encompassed, at least, the majority of the Belize River drainage basin. Some scholars further locate the drainage basins of the New, Sibun, and Sittee Rivers within the province. The province thus abbutted Chetumal to the north, the Mopan and Manche Ch'ol territories to the south, and the Peten Itza kingdom to the west. Neighbours further afield included Waymil to the north, and the Kowoj and Yalain polities to the west.

History

With few notable exceptions, the ninth and tenth centuries of the Classic collapse are thought to have been a period of gradual but marked political and demographic collapse in city-states within what would later become Dzuluinicob. Though scarce little is known of the province's pre-Columbian history, given the aforementioned population glut, it has been suggested that Dzuluinicob may have emerged as a polity after a significant wave of immigration into the region.