ANCIENT MAYAN
2015
COMPLETE THE KWL
ANTICIPATION GUIDE
AND
 What do you already know about Ancient Mayan Civilization?
 What do you want to know about Ancient Mayan Civilization?
 What do you want to learn about Ancient Mayan Civilization?
 http://www.history.com/topics/maya/videos/mayan-
encounter?m=528e394da93ae&s=undefined&f=1&free=false
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99foDilswZA
MAP
 Mapping Reminders:
 Colour all in one direction
 Ensure to label everything horizontally with a ruler
 Fine line all labels
 Include a compass rose
 Spelling Counts
 A DOT (.) should be used when labeling cities, placing the name of the city as close
as possible
 Double check the criteria sheet to ensure you have all cities, towns and capitals
labeled properly
MAP – WHAT TO LABEL
 Mexico
 Yucatan Peninsula
 Belize
 Guatemala
 Honduras
 El Salvador
 Gulf of Mexico
 Pacific Ocean
JOURNAL CLUES
 Read through the Journal Clues to Track The Expeditions.
 Order the First and Second Expedition
 Trace out the two routes on the map provided using two different
colours
 Complete the three regions, central, northern and southern jigsaw
activity. Answer the questions in complete sentences on a separate
sheet of paper.
 Which region(s) did the Mayan Civilization flourish?
 The Mayan Civilization flourished in the Central and Northern regions.
SOUTHERN REGION –
Area –
- highly mountainous, many of which are volcanoes
- soil is volcanic origin and is quite fertile
- the land contains many plants and animals
- towns are found in the valleys of mountains and plateaus
- Guatemalan highlands and adjacent parts of El Salvador
- rainfall is adequate and the temperature is neither extremely hot
nor cold.
SOUTHERN REGION  Clothing –
 Wears cotton fabric (nothing to thick/thin because of the temperature)
 Decorated cloths with feathers from the Quetzal birds
 Made from animal skin and tree bark
 Obsidian for knives and spears
 Iron pyrites for mirrors
 Hematite for red paint
 Gold and possibly copper accessories
 Food –
 Ancient Mayan crops include – maize, beans, squash, sweet potatoes and the cocoa beans
 Shelter –
 Volcanic stone for temples, temples were made of stone and had thatched or wooden
roofs
 Houses were not as large as houses in the north
CENTRAL REGION
 Area
 Central Mexico
 Comprised of low laying limestone
 Intersected with rivers and dotted with lakes and ponds (Now they are called
swampy areas)
 Rainfall is very high (10 feet/year) – drier season from January to May.
 They have forests of trees that are 150 feet tall
 The main animals of this area include birds, insects, lizards, a few jaguars, deer,
peccary, wild pigs, monkeys, turkeys and macaws
CENTRAL REGION
 Clothing –
 Have lots of clothing like ponchos and scarfs
 If it was really hot, they walked around naked.
 They had clothes made from jaguars, cougars, deer, monkeys and sloths
 Food –
 The sapodilla (product of chewing gum from rubber trees) was widely used
 They ate insects, birds, lizards, wild pig, bananas, and deer.
 Shelter –
 They live in forested areas. Trees are as high as 150ft.
 Some lived on farms with barns made from the wood of rubber trees.
 Some houses were made out of brick.
NORTHERN REGION
 Area
 Comprised mostly of the Yucatan Peninsula
 Air is clear and dry – much less rain then other regions
 Almost no rivers existed because earth was made of limestone
 Cotton was widely exported
 Natural wells were the only source of water (underground rivers)
 Vegetation is more shrub like
 Huge population
NORTHERN REGION  Clothing –
 Cotton was an important crop and most clothes were made from it – they dress
lightly due to the hot climate
 Jaguars were found in this region, but many other animals are not – they used jaguar
skins to elaborate their clothing
 Food –
 Only crop that really grew was well was cotton.
 Lack of animals and vegetation meant lack of food
 Shelter –
 Houses were build from trees and stones – the trees they imported from other
areas.
 Most of the houses would be made mostly from limestone.
DIARY ENTRY #1
 Considering what you learned about the regions we will visit, what are you
going to pack and why?
 You must include:
 Clothing items
 Four items for survival
 Your thoughts about the upcoming journey
 What area you want to visit the most and why
DAILY LIFE
 Read “The Mayas” and answer the questions in full, detailed sentences.
An example answer would be:
 1. What geographical features did the Mayan lands include?
 The geographical features that the Mayan lands included were very varied. The
Northern Lowlands were flat and had very little water. The Volcanic Highlands and
the Southern Lowlands were Rainforests.
DAILY LIFE – INFERRING PICTURE
Take a look at the following photos. With
your groups discuss what activities you see
taking place. What items, animals, activities
look familiar to you, which ones are you
unsure of.
DAILY LIFE – INFERRING PICTURE
 Now that you have seen and discussed a few daily life photos, you will
need to answer the following questions in complete sentences.
1. Based on the pictures, would you say Mayan people were active or
inactive, explain.
2. Describe at least 6 activities you see people doing.
3. Find at least 7 resources that Maya are using. An example of the would
be wood used for making spears.
4. List all of the animals and birds you can name.
5. Describe two adaptations that you can see which would have helped the
Maya to have more “free time”
DAILY LIFE – BASIC INTRODUCTION
 Ordinary ancient Maya did not live in the sprawling stone structures built for priests and
kings.
 Most Maya lived in small villages in simple communal houses. Houses had mud walls and
thatched roofs made of palm leaves or grasses. Parents, children and grandchildren all
lived in the same house. Every family kept a kitchen garden in which vegetables and fruit
were raised. Corn, beans, squash, and chile peppers were grown as well as papaya and
avocado. Cotton and cacao were grown as cash crops – cotton in the Yucatan and cacao
in Guatemala and other moist areas.
 The few clay griddles found were used for roasting cacao. Simple peasant cuisine
consisted of tamales, a cornmeal gruel seasoned with chile pepper, and a mixture of water
and sourdough transported in gourds to be eaten while working in fields.
 Men and boys farmed – clearing, weeding and planting. Women and girls maintained the
home making clothes, preparing meals, looking after the younger children, and fetching
firewood and water. Children did not go to school but learned important skills by
watching and helping adults.
DAILY LIFE - AGRICULTURE
 What crops do you think are important to the Mayans?
 “Our Creation Story teaches us that the first Grandparents of our people were made
from white and yellow corn. Maize is sacred to us because it connects us with our
ancestors. It feeds our spirit as well as our bodies.” Juana Batz Puac, K’iche’ Maya,
Day Keeper
 According to Mayan beliefs, the gods created the earth, sculpting the
landscape, planting plants, and creating all kinds of living creatures. Then
they decided to make human beings for the sole purpose of hearing
praise. First, they tried to make humans out of mud, but it rained and the
people melted. Then the gods carved humans out of wood, but the floods
came and drowned some of them. The survivors of the flood became
monkeys. In a final effort, the gods decided to make humans out of corn.
These corn people were the ancestors of the Mayas.

Mayan creation myth from the Popul Vuh
DAILY LIFE - AGRICULTURE
 For Mexicans, maize is not a crop but a deep cultural symbol intrinsic to daily life.
Corn was domesticated from a grass called teosinte by the peoples of MesoAmerica approximately 10,000 years ago. Often referred to as humanity’s greatest
agronomic achievement, maize is now grown all over the world. The yellow corn
commonly found in the United States pales in comparison to the shapes, sizes, and
colors of the traditional maize varieties cultivated by the indigenous peoples of
Mexico. The ears of corn may range from a couple of inches to a foot long, in colors
that include white, red, yellow, blue, and black. Some varieties even have an
assortment of colors on one ear.
 Corn is inextricably tied to the lives of the peasants and indigenous peoples of
Mexico. As the basic grain, it shapes daily meals, and it’s growing cycle influences the
timing of festivals. The image and shape of maize is a ubiquitous component of
architecture and crafts. Spiritually, physically, and economically, corn sustains
indigenous peoples. In the words of one woman, “Corn is so important because it
allows us to live at peace. It’s our form of food security.” Corn is linked to survival:
During rough economic times or in the face of natural disasters, families will
produce more maize to feed themselves. A Tzotzil Maya elder recounts, “During the
past five centuries, while our people have withstood suffering—enormous
sufferings—our corn has allowed us to survive.”
DAILY LIFE – AGRICULTURE
 Read Agriculture and answer questions in detail.
 Read Chocolate at Every Meal!
 As a class we will try to make Maya Hot Chocolate in a crockpot! Will
you be brave enough to try it?
DAILY LIFE - BEAUTY

“Slightly crossed eyes were held in great esteem,” writes Yale anthropologist Michael Coe in his book The
Maya. “Parents attempted to induce the condition by handing small beads over the noses of their children.”
The Mayas also seemed to go in for shaping their children’s skulls: they liked to flatten them (Although this may
have simply been the inadvertent result of strapping babies to cradle boards) or squeeze them into a cone.
Some Mayanist speculate that the cone head effect was the result of trying to approximate the shape of an ear
of corn.
 The Maya filed their teeth, sometimes into a T shape and sometimes to a point. They also inlaid their teeth
with small, round plaques of jade or pyrite. According to Coe, young men painted themselves black until
marriage and alter engaged in ritual tattooing and scarring.
 Beauty was a way to display social, if not moral, value among the Maya. The wealth they invested and pain they
endured to create bodies that reflected their social beliefs make our modern-day obsession with beauty seem
less excessive. Like us, the Maya indulged in self-deception about appearance, preferring to let artistic
depictions conform to their ideals rather than reality. Although hearty and robust for an old man of 80, Pakal's
depiction never aged; he remained a youthful Maize God, just on the cusp of maturity. The Maya saw what the
Maya wanted to see when they looked into their pyrite mirrors: green and blue jewels, perhaps a few daubs of
red paint, and the youthful vigor of agricultural fertility.


From Time August 9th, 1993 p. 48

Secrets of the Maya
DAILY LIFE - CLOTHING
 Not a lot known about how the Maya dressed in ancient times, and what is known mostly is
information on people understood to have been elites. This is because of the environment in which
the ancient Maya lived -- like the codices, the clothing, has rotted away. Instead, archaeologists try to
interpret the fashion sense of the ancient Maya via art mediums such as ceramic ware, carvings,
ceramic figurines and murals as well as the 1500s records by Spanish colonists.
As it is currently understood, the ancient Maya had different ideas about clothes than people do today.
For one thing, they never made clothes so they fit close to the body of their own accord. Clothes
tended to be held in place by being knotted or were held in place by belts made of cloth.
 It has been discovered that the ancient Maya used bark cloth, hemp fiber and cotton as materials for
their clothing. It is thought that bark cloth was a material for ritual clothing.
Beyond the materials themselves, the ancient Maya would dye their clothing, via plant and animal
sourced dyes. Examples of colors available to the ancient Maya dyers include green, purple, black, blue
and various sources of red.
DAILY LIFE - CLOTHING

Men

Men wore different fashions of turban-like headdresses. They also seem to have worn other kinds of headdresses, that
were complicated structures made from various materials such as feathers, gems and animal hides.
Menswear included a kind of breech-clout that was, approximately “5 fingers wide and 10 feet long” This breech-clout
was wrapped around the waist repeatedly before being passed between the legs. For the upper classes, they were
commonly decorated with featherwork on the ends. Lower class men wore undecorated loincloths.
Seemingly not as common as the breech-clout, some depictions of men show them also wearing a pati. A pati is a big,
square-shaped piece of cloth that is -- like the breech-clout -- decorated in relation to the class of the wearer. The pati
was tied around the wearer's shoulders. The pati was thought to be used for both day wear and sleeping.

Women
Women tended to wear either a complicated hairstyle that involved intertwining the hair with cloth, or -- like men -wore turban-like headdresses. However, women's head wear fashions seem to have been less diverse than men's head
wear fashions.

Women would wear a skirt and/or a sleeveless, poncho-like tunic (huipil) or a dress. Maya skirts were either tied with a
belt or was knotted in place with the tunic worn over the skirt. Elite women's skirts, as with other clothing, were more
decorated than skirts of the lower classes -- they would have decorative fringes and knots.
DAILY LIFE – CLOTHING
 Footwear
The ancient Maya wore sandals. Ancient Maya sandal straps had two thongs. One thong went in the space
between the first and second toe while the second went between the third and fourth toe.
As with other aspects of ancient Maya society, it seems that elaboration and material usage depended on
where a person ranked in society. Men who were not upper class wore deer-hide sandals that were
untanned, with hemp cord for straps. For elites however, it seems they had much more complicated
sandals.
Decorations for sandals also existed. Depictions of sandals exist with such embellishments as pompoms, or
jaguar skin.
It was thought that women often walked around barefoot.
Activity: - Label the Mayan Clothing
DAILY LIFE – BEAUTY – CLASS DISCUSSION
 1. What do we do in our society to make ourselves more attractive?
 2. Are any of these practices painful?
 3. Can you think of any practices that are dangerous?
 4. Can you think of what people in other societies do to make
themselves more attractive?
 5. What is beauty and who determines it?
DAILY LIFE
 Compare Daily Life in Ancient Maya with your daily life using a venn
diagram. We are looking for a minimum of 5 points on each side and 2
in the middle. Be specific, details count!
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVMt-_11CFI
DAIRY 2 – DAILY LIFE
 If you were to travel back in time and live among the Ancient Mayan as a
commoner, describe your typical day. Include when you woke up, what
you wear, who you talked to, what you ate, activities you did during the
day, etc.
SOCIAL STRUCTURE
 Read a complex social structure.
 Complete Mayan Social Structure Pyramid.
SOCIAL STRUCTURE - ASSIGNMENT
 Using the paper provided, in each section, record and describe who
belongs in each social level. Highest ranking people should be at the top
of the pyramid.
 Ensure that both outside and inside words are bold or finelined
 Include drawings or clip are for each level. These can be pasted outside
the pyramid and connected with a straight, ruler drawn, line.
ARCHITECTURE
 Read pyramids of the Maya Part 1 and 11. Answer questions in
complete sentences on a separate sheet of paper.
 Read Mayan Cities and answer questions on a separate sheet of paper.
WRITING
 Read Mayan Writing and answer questions in a complete sentence on a
separate sheet of paper.
 Write your own name in glyphs activity – hieroglyphic staircase in
Copan.
MATH
 The math of the Mayas was build on a base 20 system. The base 20 system
was also used on calendars. Mayan numerals consisted of dots (valued at 1),
bars (valued at 5), and a symbol looking like a shell (valued at 0). The Mayas
were the first known civilization to use a symbol for zero. Smaller numbers
were written horizontally, while larger numbers were written vertically. For
each position going up, the column represented a multiplication by 20.
 We currently use a base 10 system for math.
Base 10 System
23 = (2 x 10 + 3)
Base 20 System
= (1 x 20)
= ( 3 x 1)
MATH
 Complete the Mayan Math Problems
 Create 5 of your own problems to share and have a peer solve next
block.
CALENDAR
 The Mayas used three main types of calendars. One type of calendar, the
Long Count, was used for historical purposes and began its date with 3114
BC. Another calendar, the Haab – which was also called the Vague Year –
was used for planning crops. This solar calendar of 365 days was divided
into 18 months. Because each month had 20 days, there were five
remaining days that the Mayas considered unlucky. Another calendar, the
Tzolkin, chronicled the sacred year and was primarily used for religious
purposes and naming children. This 260-day calendar was divided into 13
cycles of 20 days. Each of the 20 days had its own name and was
represented by a unique symbol. The Mayas usually determined the date by
combining the Tzolkin and the Haab calendars.
 Create your own Mayan Sacred Calendar.
GODS
 Read Many Gods and Life After Death
 Read Mayan Religion http://brbell.blogs.sd73.bc.ca/files/2011/04/Mayan-
Religion-Worksheet.pdf
 Complete Mayan God Scavenger Hunt
 Complete Questions in full sentence answers on a separate sheet of
paper.
 Create your own God.
GODS
 Scan copies of student work
PASS TIME
 Read Arts and Crafts
 Read Ball Games
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmcnZ5lP9tg&list=PLug1dafi-
Y49t2SqhOIALW5sJqxiA-SMo&index=3
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WzFziF9IJkw
THE DEMISE OF THE MAYANS