Mayan Agriculture

​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 believed to existence in 1800 BC and gone by 1500 AD. They had a lot of big cities but no capital. Many of the people lived in hay huts, some in limestone buildings built on tall pyramids which could actually be used as landmarks. They have a constant reminder the gods are present with the pyramids and first one was built right before Christ birth. Their agriculture was based on the economy, there main crop was corn but also grew cotton, beans, squash and cocao. They hunted deer, duck, turkey, monkeys, iguana, and other things with bow and arrows, blowguns, darts to eat, they did a little fishing. The Mayan art was about politics, the

Throughout time, there are many instances of early civilizations accomplishing breathtaking feats that we find awe worthy even today. These cultures helped shape humanity as a whole, and paved the way for people everywhere. Of these early cultures, one of the most remarkable was undoubtedly the Mayans. The Mayans lived in Mesoamerica, around Southern Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and Belize. They were an isolated group of people that thrived on farming and raised crops such as Maize, Beans, and Chili Peppers. They also Fished often and hunted Deer and other woodland creatures.

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 Mayans employed tactics resemblent to our modern ones, they used technology to fix problems in an attempt to terraform their environment to meet their needs. They used things like Dams to store water and slash-and-burn agriculture to produce their crops. However, due to their location in Central America there was very little arable land for them to work on However, as they continued to grow in size, they were forced to increase their slash and burn techniques, which contributed to topsoil erosion and provided a logistical crisis for the Mayans regarding how they would feed their people. However because of the practices they relied upon, they never invested in things like terracing, or future proofing in the case of disaster.

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.

The Mayans economy was that they would grow beans, squash, and chilli peppers.they meet they would eat was what every that was around which was usually buffluio. They had to use a special type of framing

The Maya civilization was one of the most dominant indigenous societies of Mesoamerica. The growth of the great Mayan civilization is as much a mystery as its disappearance. The Maya Empire, centered in the tropical lowlands of what is now Guatemala, reached the peak of its power and influence around the sixth century A.D (http://www.history.com/topics/maya#). As a youth growing up in Belize Central America, I was very much intrigued by the Mayan civilization as we would regularly take educational field trips to the massive stone temples of Xunantunich and Altun Ha. Both Mayan ruins were no more than 50 miles away from my childhood home. Most of what we know about the Maya comes from what remains of their architecture and art, including stone carvings and inscriptions on their buildings and monuments. The Maya were deeply religious, and worshiped various gods related to nature, including the gods of the sun, the moon, rain and corn.

The Mayan economy depended upon trading and centralized markets to sustain itself. They used canoes to transport goods across rivers and lakes. Cacao beans were used as currency, or traders bartered with each other to exchange goods. They traded food with societies close to them and nonperishable goods, such as obsidian, with societies farther from them. In Mayan society, agriculture was looked upon as a key part to the economy. The Mayans main crops that were grown were corn, beans, chili peppers, and squash. These crops were a very big priority for the Mayan settlement and economy for trading purposes. The Mayans also developed wonderful cities with larger community centers. These centers featured temples, pyramids, and palaces. These were good strategic central location which would enhance the economy. The Mayan economies wonderful trade and agricultural products all helped form a great base for the Mayan economy. Those aspects like agriculture and trading also immensely helped the Aztec civilization.

Although the Mayans are often thought of as one entire civilization, the Mayans were never united as a single empire. The Mayans lived in separate political states that coexisted with trade and political alliances. Squash, corn, fish and beans are just examples of what trade occurred throughout the empire. In order to grow and produce these crops for trade they needed to master their environment. This involved the use of agricultural techniques like the slash and burn, terrace and raised field farming. Ultimately, the key to maintaining healthy political alliances among themselves was by their mastery of their environment.

Agriculture was the basis of the economy of the Mayan and corn was the principal food.(Voorhies 324) Other crops included avocados, tomatoes, and chili peppers. They cultivated an enormous variety of plants.(Foley 20)

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

Maya culture is one of the oldest and most intelligent tribal races. The flourishing period of Maya was between 300 and 900. The principal food in Maya was maize, which was also called “the maize culture”. They had no livestock such as sheep and horses. Also, they made the calendar and divided a year to 18 months. In addition, they built huge stone temples and held bloodletting ceremonies in order to sacrifice

Throughout the three civilizations, various methods of dealing with crops were introduced in attempts of increasing yield and production. The Olmecs developed irrigation, which made agriculture an important element of Mesoamerican life as it brought surpluses that led to population growth and civilization expansion. Alongside irrigation is the extensive planting and harvesting of crops like beans, squash, and especially maize that became the basis and stable crops of the community. The Mayans continued the agricultural success of the preceding people by draining swamps and erecting platforms for farming. These two practices greatly expanded the amount of land agriculture could take place in a geography without vast fertile lands, further leading to population boost and empire building in addition to the long-lasting practice of irrigation. With with the aid of innovations made into reality by the two previous groups of people, the Aztecs kept the tradition of constant improvement to current conditions. Building up on the Mayan efforts of draining swamps, the Aztecs developed Chinampas. These aquatic water beds that acted as floating islands extended the existing use of irrigation on the rich aquatic environment of the capital, Tenochtitlan. With these multiple examples and instances of agricultural advancements that continued and improved on the products and practices of previous civilizations, changes still coexist in the middle as the use of calendar differed from one civilization to the next despite sharing a root of calendar