The Ancient Maya Essay, Research Paper
The Maya of Mesoamerica, along with the Aztecs of
Mexico and the Incas of Peru, made up the high
civilizations of the American Indians at the time of the
Spanish conquest. Both the Aztecs and the Incas were late
civilizations, between 1300-1533 AD, but the Maya of the
Yucatan and Guatemala exhibited a cultural continuity
spanning more than 2,000 years, 1000 BC-AD 1542.
Many aspects of this culture continue yet today. The
Ancient Maya in their time had actually refined writing.
They had an extensive written language, which was both
phonetic as well as ideographic. One of only five
independently created writing systems in human history.
Maya words were in hieroglyphs, each picture with its own
meaning. Unlike other ancient Central American
civilizations, the Maya could write in words, sentences, and
even stories. Arranging several pictures together in a logical
form would create a story. The Maya covered their cities
and buildings with hieroglyphs carved into the stone. Most
of the Maya could read some hieroglyphs, but the priests
and nobles were the only people who actually had
knowledge of the entire language. The Maya would also
use quills made of turkey feathers to write in books made
of soft bark taken from a type of fig tree. Religion was the
center of the Mayan life. Mayans believed that there were
two levels of the world. The first level was the physical
world and the second was the spiritual world, which
consisted of the old dead ancestors, gods, and other
supernatural creatures. The Mayan kings and spiritual
leaders would tell the lower levels of the society what
would please the gods. The gods were modeled after
animals for sacrificial purposes and religious ceremonies.
The ancient Maya had many beliefs. They had possessed
an in depth understanding of astronomy, engineering, and
mathematics. The Maya believed that the Sun, Moon, and
other planets, had been journeys of the gods. The Mayan
priests studied their measurement of time. The Maya had a
calendar with 18 months each containing 20 days, plus 5
unlucky days that made up the Mayan year. They also had
a religious calendar that had 260 days in it. Each day was
given a name and a number. They believed that each day
was a god that carried the weight of the day on its back.
The Mayan civilization in all stages has been based on
agriculture. Indian corn or maize was domesticated from a
wild grass in central Mexico about 7,000 years ago and
sustained most sedentary Indian civilizations from that time.
In the humid areas, a surplus of water and rapid growth of
trees and vines encouraged the slash-and-burn farming
method. The farmer cleared the cornfield by cutting bushes
and girdling the trees, usually near the end of the rainy
season, allowing the piled brush to dry under the hot sun of
the dry season. It is known that the Mayas enjoyed
chocolate. They had it in many forms from a frothy drink to
a pulpy mush. The Mayas referred to chocolate as "The
Drink of the Gods." They had other food such as cornmeal,
maize, black beans, roasted meat, rabbit stew, turkey and
other meats. Many people chewed of the leaves of the
sapodilla tree as a gum-like substance. The Mayan culture
had many arts, such as dance, music and clothing. They
had more than 5,000 dances and loved music. Dancing
was a huge part of religious ceremonies. Musicians played
wooden flutes and trumpets made of wood, seashells, or
clay, and drums made from turtle shells. For clothing the
men would have worn an ex (pronounced eh-sh) which is a
loincloth. The women would wear loose sack-like dresses.
The clothes of the nobles and priests were made up of finer
materials and had many shells and beads on them. For
ceremonies they would wear beautiful headdresses for
religious purposes. As for beauty, the Mayans had a sense
of beauty that would be seen as hideous in our present
society. They practiced skull deformation by tying boards
to the forehead of newborn children. They also had filed
their teeth down to a point and then placed jade into the
holes. The Maya had also traded their possessions for
many things such as gold, copper, jade, cotton, salt,
feathers, and cacao. These are all examples of art to the
Maya. The Maya were an incredible civilization. Nobody
knows exactly why the empire had fallen. Maybe it was
when the peasants got sick of the priests telling them what
to do and had abandoned villages, causing the collapse. At
any rate, there were many interesting facts that were not
covered here. Here now are a few examples. During
droughts, the Mayans would eat pets to survive, and the
Maya were the first people in the New World to keep
historical records, and that a law stated that Mayan men
would have to marry by the time that they were 20. The
women would also had to be wed at a young age, usually
around the age of 16. There are many wonderful facts
about the Maya culture because of the time that they were
around was quite long. As you see, I highlighted many facts
about the Maya, including their writing, beliefs, religion,
agriculture, arts, and other interesting facts. The Maya were
an interesting civilization and continue to exhibit their
strange but wonderful beliefs yet today. The mayan people
had accomplished many things that few other ancient
civiliations have accomplished, including their ablility to
write, have a good comprehension of astronomy, and still
survive the changing world for many years.
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