A Brief History Of The Mayan Civilization

​Many of the cultures that we have today have evolved from past events. Such as language it was something that became known throughout the years. Some of the languages that came from that were English, Spanish, German, and Latin to name a few. These languages were derived more past civilizations. One important civilization that is known for having great success is the Mayan civilization. The Mayan civilization is known for many things like they fully developed written language, art, architecture, math and some other factors. Historians have said that they don’t know an exact date of when this civilization rose up but they do mention that it flourished for about 2000 years. Although staring in 250 AD it is said that it was the start of their high point and it continued until the arrival of the Spanish in 1524. The Maya area covers southern Mexico and northwestern Central America. According to Sharer the area is divided into three regions: the Pacific coastal plain to the south, the highlands in the center, and the lowlands to the north. Even though these three regions were under the same civilization they all practiced different religious rituals. Religion plays a big role in every civilization. Some civilizations tend to praise more than one god and they always mention that what they have is thanks to their god. When they see things going wrong they often say that their god is punishing them because they did something that the god/s did not like. This tends to be the same

The Maya were a people from Middle America, which includes modern Guatemala, Southern Mexico, and Northern Belize (Editors). The Maya civilization was considered to be “one of the most dominant indigenous societies of Mesoamerica,” (Maya). “The Maya excelled at agriculture, pottery, hieroglyph writing, calendar-making, and mathematics, and left behind an astonishing amount of impressive architecture and symbolic artwork,” (Maya). They also gave mankind the modern calendar (Jarus, Maya). The Mayans were a very advanced people, but one of the most important things in the Mayan culture was their religion/god worshipping rituals.

The ancient Maya once occupied a vast geographic area in Central America. Their civilization inhabited an area that encompasses Mexico's Yucatan peninsula and parts of the states of Chiapas and Tabasco, as well as Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador. "From the third to the ninth century, Maya civilization produced awe-inspiring temples and pyramids, highly accurate calendars, mathematics and hieroglyphics, and a complex social and political order" ("Collapse..." 1). Urban centers were important to the Maya during the Classic period; they offered the Mayans a central place to practice religion.

The collapse of the Mayan Empire is one of history’s greatest mysteries. It was one of the most advanced and developed civilizations of its time period, reining during the Pre-Classic period and into the Classic and Post-Classic Periods (2000 B.C. – 900 A.D.). The territory stretched from the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, down to modern day El Salvador in Central America. Its achievements were monumental for the era, being the first empire communicating with the use of a written language having over 800 symbols and producing the first 365 day calendar. They maintained an in-depth understanding of astrological cycles that would assist in planning harvesting cycles and predicting solar eclipses. The Mayan’s

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.

The ancient Mayan civilization settled in the Yucatan Peninsula in around 900 AD. This civilizations was one of the most advanced of its times. They created their own religion, language, mathematical structure, a very precise calendar, and many other things.

The Mayan have done remarkable achievements throughout their time. They created the Mayan trade network, they built a city, they created the Mayan number system, and they created the Mayan calendar. I find how they created the Mayan calenders was the most remarkable. The mayans were remarkable people. I just didn't like how they sacrificed humans to satisfy the gods.

The early Mayan civilization had lowly beginnings. They rose to remarkable heights in a seemingly inhospitable land. As Maya scholar Arthur Demarest said “Such a civilization, had no business there.” The Mayans had to battle with torrential rain in the rainy season, and when the weather turned hot, it scorched the land and their water supplies would plummet. They were always faced with floods or drought. They were probably forced here due to overcrowding from other tribes. But nonetheless they began to conquer these threats as they learned advanced farming techniques to make the shallow earth fertile. They burned and cleared jungle to make room for their agriculture, particularly maize. They then began the process of crop rotation, long before anyone else. As the Mayan civilization began its steady uprising they began to redouble their efforts, they started composting, cultivating, they built irrigation systems and began to terrace the landscape to make farming more efficient and prevent erosion. They dammed rivers and flooded swamplands and marshes to create rich farmland. They instituted transport systems to move fertile silt and mud from lowlands to higher enclosed gardens and farms and created man made lakes and ponds that they used to fish and systems of corrals held wild game. They maximized their talents and squeezed out enough nourishment to support their population which had risen to several million people.

What Mayan writing seems to represent is a sacred language used only by the elite, initiated, and known only by them. The language of the Mayan was identical with that of the Yucatan Indians, given the fact that writing was identical. The Maya kept records on large stone monuments called stelae. They used the Steele to record important dates and to take note of great events in the lives of their rulers.(Price 91)They also used the stelae to recount the positions of the “heavenly bodies”_ particularly the Moon, Venus, and Jupiter.(Miller)

The Classical Maya was lost to the archaeological records until the last 200 years due to it’s abandonment. When the Mayans left there great cities, thick vines and jungles overtook the great monuments they once built. But in the last 200 years, in depth research has lead to breakthroughs into what the Classic Maya was like. The earliest Mayans were agriculturalist, growing crops such as corn (maize), beans, squash and cassava. The Mayans also invented a very accurate calendar, a math code using 0’s, constructed buildings still intact today, and a writing system that took decades to decode. The Mayans were situated in one geographical block covering all of the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico), modern-day Guatemala, Belize, parts of the Mexican states of Tabasco and Chiapas, and the western part of Honduras and El Salvador. Due to their location on the

All three civilizations were very advanced for their time and helped develop many ideas that we use today. Early in the article “Mayan Civilization”, the author, Suzann Hopkins write, “Long before the rise of the Incan and Aztec Empires, Mayan civilization flourished in central America” (56). This meant that they didn’t have much competition. They had more resources available to them and their competition, if any, wasn’t very threatening. This allowed them to develop their empire easily without many obstacles in the way. Closer to the conclusion of the article, Suzanne Hopkins notes that, “…Temples and monuments remain as a testimony to the Mayan’s achievements”(56). In general, the Mayans had a very advanced way of life that put them down in history forever. In the article “the Aztecs” author Jose Maldonado claims, “when the Spanish first was the city, they thought they must be dreaming. It was larger and more impressive than any Spanish city of the time” (59). Their empire was so impressive that event the Spanish wished it was theirs. Their impressive construction and building design were one of their greater successes. Not only did they have very

Achievement Masters The Classic Mayan Civilization dominated lower Mexico and upper Central America to create a vast amount of achievements. The Mayans developed and mastered the practices of architecture and astronomy. These practices of Mayan architecture and astronomy can relate to today's advanced practices of theses subjects and to Mexican history. The Classic Mayan Civilization lasted from 250 CE to 900 CE which was the height of its civilization.

What causes a civilization to die out? Some cultures die out from war, rebellion, or foreign invasion. Others slowly disintegrate as people stray from the rule of the civilization. However, for the Ancient Maya civilization, the collapse was from a combination of environmental factors and hostility, both foreign and domestic. In Jared Diamond’s book, Collapse, he mentions his idea of the five main factors that cause civilization collapse. He states that all civilizations collapse because of either climate change, hostile neighbors, the collapse of alliances and essential trading partners, environmental problems, or failure to adapt. The ancient Maya civilization followed this pattern. The three most instrumental factors in the decline and collapse of the Mayans are Climate Change, Environmental Problems, and Hostility. However, to be able to prove this, we have to set up a bit of background for the Mayans.

In 800 A.D. the Maya Empire contained of a number of powerful city-states spreading from southern Mexico to northern Honduras. These cities were home to massive populations and were ruled by a leading choice that could understand vast armies and demanded to be inclined from the stars and planets themselves. Maya culture was at its highest, massive temples were lined up in exactness with the night sky, stone carvings were made to celebrate the events of great leaders and long distance skill was prosperous. However a hundred years later,

with understanding the how power is derived from the ruling classes, Ouelette delves into how kingship works (29). The ruling class used systems of organization, economic processes such as accumulation wealth and holding the highest religious status to maintain their position as leader. The stratified culture allowed the dominant class to have control over the population as dictated how the Maya culture progresses. The Maya culture was egalitarian at first, which means every individual is equal in nature and progressed to a state-level society. These natural functions in cultural evolution must be controlled by the ruling classes of Mesoamerica. These governing individuals did this by having a shared beliefs and religious practices. By the