Analysis Of Katun : A Twenty Year Journey With The Maya

​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.

With the major religions constantly crashing together, the principles and customs of each religion seem to always build similarities each time you study them. This is what occurred to me when i began reading “Living religions” studying practices and rites. Beginning with the traditional indigenous groups - descendants of the original inhabitants of lands now controlled by larger political systems in which they may have little influence (33) -, I observed the common rites performed by the different indigenous groups. Many groups lean on the word “spiritual”, rather than “religious”. There’s really no clarification as to why this is the case, but the author, Fisher addressed that religion has

The priestly class lived in the cities, while the general population lived away in small farming villages. The priests would carry out daily religious duties, particularly sacrifices, and the peasants would gather periodically for religious ceremonies and festivals. They built the ceremonial centers in a specific design for religious practices. They constructed tall pyramid temples, warren-like single story palaces, and a ball court that was surrounded by a broad central plaza. The architectural features of the Mayan pyramids include towering roofs, corbel vaults, and elaborate embellishment with stucco reliefs (Palfrey 2). It is amazing to imagine the detail that the Mayans were able to create in their architecture with only primitive tools. For the Mayans, science and religion were linked. Time was extremely important and their agriculture and religious ceremonies required a system that could record time.

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.

Carrasco defines religion in three categories worldmaking, worldcentering, and worldrenewing. Carrasco’s idea of worldcentering is similar to the idea of cosmos in Eliade’s work. In Carrasco’s work worldcentering is the notion in which individuals look to their surroundings to account for their existence and the way their world functions. Carrasco provides an explanation as to how communities would “center” their world; using symbols as well as rituals would be used to explain how their world operated. Likewise Read and Gonzalez suggest that cosmic topography was used to structure the Mesoamerican life, cosmic topography helped explain that “Mesoamericans live in worlds shaped by mythological visions” (Read and Gonzalez 20). They used features that were defined as a town landscapes to form a vision of their world and “own unique cosmology” (Read and Gonzalez 20), these visions differed by community but essentially they all shared one vision. Similarly Eliade incorporates the idea of cosmos and chaos in his model of the sacred and the profane. Eliade explains that cosmos existed among the religious to maintain them away from the chaos. The cosmos is the idea of a world created by the gods and what remained outside of their world was considered the chaos. In order to keep a connection with their gods and the heavens they would use symbols such as pillars to center their world and have an existing connection the

‘’Have you ever known about the Mayan religious and the American religious, like how they are similar and different like the sacrifices,home's,beauty,and the numbering system.

The Mayan way of life revolved their religion. They had a polytheistic religion praising many gods. Each god had a certain thing that they would rule over or take care of. Chac was the god of rain, Kinich Ahau was the sun god, and Yum Cimil was the god of the underworld. There were many gods and goddess for almost every reason one could think of, there is even a goddess of suicide. They would perform human sacrifices, bleeding rituals, and dances to praise and to

After reading about the Maya,Aztecs,and the Inca i can say that all of these societies are very alike in many ways.Both the Maya and the Aztecs had a mathematical system based on the unit 20.All the societies had vary strong beliefs when it came to there religion and there gods.The societies all had a strong beliefs but nun like the Aztecs, the Aztecs would go as far as to do a human sacrifice so they could keep the sun alive and pleas there gods.Also in all of the articles that i read it seamed to be the Spanish that would take down the civilizations.The conquistadors would always arrived to there native land and as there name implied they would conquer the natives.The Maya however did something that the other two societies didn't do.The

The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization that settled what we now know as South America. The Maya had no central ruler to run their huge empire. They set up what they called city-state and it consisted of separate areas each had its own ruler and class system. The Mayans were also known for building pyramids and temples and they built them all without metal tools. The Mayan also developed a written language and created a calendar. The Mayans were a very religious people they had many different gods and rituals. One of these rituals was human sacrifice. The Mayan people believed that human sacrifices pleased the gods and was needed to keep the world in balance. It is still a mystery as to the why the Mayans civilization declined some believe it was

The Mayan religion was based in the regions of Honduras, Guatemala, Belize, and some southern parts of Mexico. It is a southeastern variant of Mesoamerican religion. Death and afterlife beliefs have always played an important role in all religions. Some religions have similar beliefs while others are very different. The Maya religion is very similar to Roman Catholicism. Many Mayas were able to adopt Catholic beliefs while still maintaining their own faith: many of their customs remain evident today.

The Mayan people of the Yucatan Peninsula have endured great changes over their history, but many changes have occurred more recently as documented in the book by Cindy Hull. During a study in which she lived in Yaxbe for several decades, Hull examined the effects that this change has had on the people of the village and the Mayan people at large. Initially, Hull found that much was different about living with the people because she was used to the US Midwest. She was not used to the diet or to the family structure she found among the people, but she quickly adjusted to the changes and became a member of the village. Her task while she was there was to discover the social structure of the clan and how the culture has changed over time. She conducted a longitudinal study (one in which she became an integral member of the tribe) because she wanted to understand the people from a basal level. She believed that, despite the differences to what she experienced in her normal life, that the hardships she would face would get her closer to understanding the culture she was studying.

Almost every aspect of Maya life was centered on religion. These ancient Mesoamerican peoples worshipped many gods and goddesses; this was part of their daily lives, despite class differences in their sophisticated society. Religion served as a basis for the government and social life. Priests and shamans played an important role in their government, conducted religious ceremonies, and made sacrifices to the gods. The Maya believed in the supernatural, and used this belief to explain life and their universe. Every object, whether it is part of nature or man made, was considered sacred and worshipped.

Religious syncretism is a blending of two or more religious belief practice into a new system, or the merging into a religious tradition of beliefs from different traditions. This can occur for many reasons but happens quite frequently in areas where multiple religions exist nearby to each other and are active in the culture. When a culture is conquered, the conquerors bring their religious beliefs with them, but do not succeed in entirely wiping out the old beliefs or practices. Such adherents sometimes see syncretism as a betrayal of their pure truth. They feel by adding an incompatible belief ruins and changes the original concept and practice of the original religion, thus rendering it no longer true. By bringing in a new view, belief, or practice into a religious system actually distort the original faith.

When Spaniards first set foot on Mesoamerican shores in the early sixteenth century, they encountered not the godless mass of natives they believed they found, but a people whose rich spiritual traditions shaped and sustained them for thousands of years. These diverse spiritual practices legitimized nearly every aspect of Mesoamerican daily life, from science and architecture to art and politics (Carmack 295), in many of the same ways Catholicism did in Spain. The collision of these cultures in the Great Encounter and the resulting Spanish colonial state mixed not solely two different peoples—Indian and Spanish—but thousands of variants: elites and slaves, peasant farmers and