Mayan Civilization
https://www.ducksters.com/history/maya/maya_civilization_timeline.php
● Building Structure
The Maya built great temples, palaces, and pyramids in their city centers. These
were often mighty stone structures, over which wooden buildings and thatched roofs
were often built.
● Government
The Mayans developed a hierarchical government ruled by kings and priests. They
lived in independent city-states consisting of rural communities and large urban
ceremonial centers. There were no standing armies, but warfare played an important
role in religion, power and prestige.
● Gender roles
The Ancient Maya civilization saw to it that women were held in high regard and were
fairly equal to males. Women were looked at as important in Maya society since they
bore the children. Women also could take place in economic and political discussions,
as well as practice farming.
● Writing
The Maya writing system is considered by archaeologists to be the most sophisticated
system ever developed in Mesoamerica. The Maya wrote using 800 individual signs or
glyphs, paired in columns that read together from left to right and top to bottom.
● Economy
The Mayas of Toledo mostly depend on agriculture for their economy and growth.
Industrial development is a negative notion among the Maya people. In the past the
Maya people depended mostly on trading their produce with neighboring Maya
communities.
● Currencies
Mayan Civilization
The ancient Mayans used cocoa beans—the principal ingredient in chocolate—as a
currency, according to a study published in the journal Economic Anthropology. The
research suggests that during the Classic Maya period (250-900 CE) cacao was
exchanged for goods and services.
● Language
Yucatec language, also called Maya or Yucatec Maya, American Indian language of
the Mayan family, spoken in the Yucatán Peninsula, including not only part of Mexico
but also Belize and northern Guatemala.
● Mayan Calender
The Maya calendar is a system of calendars used in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and
in many modern communities in the Guatemalan highlands, Veracruz,
The Maya calendar consists of several cycles or counts of different lengths. The
260-day count is known to scholars as the Tzolkin, or Tzolkʼin. The Tzolkin was
combined with a 365-day vague solar year known as the Haabʼ to form a
synchronized cycle lasting for 52 Haabʼ, called the Calendar Round.
● The Maya Wrote books and the Europeans burned them
The Maya wrote books in their elaborate hieroglyphic script on long strips of
durable paper made from the inner bark of fig trees. But there are just three
Maya codices that survive today: the Dresden Codex, the Madrid Codex, and the
Paris Codex. (There’s also the fragmentary Grolier Codex, but scholars dispute
its authenticity.) Many more Maya books fell victim to the damp conditions of
Mesoamerica—or the arrival of Europeans who purposefully destroyed Maya
texts.
● THEY HAD PRETTY INTENSE BEAUTY REGIMENS
The Maya were not content with simply donning clothes and makeup to make
themselves beautiful. In childhood, males and females alike had their heads
bound to artificially deform their skulls into an elongated shape, which probably
signified their social status. The Maya also drilled holes into their front teeth and
Mayan Civilization
inlaid them with jade, pyrite, hematite or turquoise. They basically invented the
grill.
● THEY PAINTED HUMAN SACRIFICES BLUE.
The vivid pigment known as Maya Blue has long fascinated archaeologists
because it’s incredibly resilient, surviving for centuries on stone monuments even
in the harsh conditions of Mesoamerican jungles. But the cheerful color was also
used in human sacrifice. When the Maya wanted to please the rain god, they
painted human sacrifices blue and cut their hearts out on stone altars or threw
them down wells.
● ARCHAEOLOGISTS STILL DEBATE WHY THE CIVILIZATION WENT INTO
DECLINE.
The civilization was really hitting its stride at the peak of the Classic Maya period
(300 to 660 CE). But things started to go south in the 8th and 9th centuries. Maya
cities in the southern lowlands that once boasted populations up to 70,000
people were abandoned. Scientists and archaeologists have pointed to a variety
of culprits to explain what happened, including drought, rampant raiding and
warfare among Maya city-states, migration to the beach and overpopulation, or
perhaps some fatal combination of those things.
● THEY DIDN’T VANISH.
Sure, many of the great Maya cities were mysteriously deserted, but the people
didn’t disappear [PDF]. The descendants of the Maya are still around today,
many of them living in their ancestral homelands, like Guatemala, where Maya
people actually make up a majority of the population. “Maya” is really an umbrella
term for many different indigenous ethnic group who may speak different Mayan
languages such as Yucatec, Quiche, Kekchi, or Mopan.
Mayan Civilization