The Ancient Mayan Culture

The Mayans achieved many accomplishments. They had a very advanced system of writing hieroglyphics. They also, were advanced in carving and sculpting. They were good at making paper from fig trees They had an advanced calendar that had 18 months and each had 20 days.

Throughout the humanities course, I have been intrigued by a vast amount of information on different cultures. However, there was a particular section that truly caught my attention, and has piqued an interest in me that has caused me to do my own research aside from this paper. The culture of the Mayas, and the Aztecs has been extremely fundamental in understanding my ancestry, being that I am Mexican American. I took an interest in their beautiful architecture, their ritualistic and sacrificial religious practices, as well as their history and how they began. Throughout this paper I will outline the similarities and differences of these two cultures, as well as articulate an understanding of the humanity disciplines outlined above.

The complex societies and civilizations that the world is made up of today, were formed and shaped by groups of smaller traditional societies of the past. These small traditional civilizations that popped up and evolved all around the world in all sorts of different areas and locations laid the stepping stones for life as we know it today. While the civilizations did not necessarily press their values on others, other societies saw valuable practices and took them on themselves. One unique traditional society that has had a lasting impact on the world is the ancient Maya civilization. What makes the Mayans and their society a unique civilization were their economic activities, social arrangements, and political organizations which all helped their society develop over time, thus helped future civilizations to come to flourish using their ideas and traditions.

The Mayans were an advanced civilization that had made great accomplishments. They had an advanced culture with gods and plenty of sacrifices to them. They also invented the basis of basketball, writing, and herbal medicines. Their cities were remarkable and they had schools, ball courts, shops, and hospitals too. The Mayans lived for a very peaceful time, until the Spanish came.They started to take down the Mayan civilization. the Spanish burned their codices and destroyed the basis of Mayan culture. Many Mayans died and the rest of them lived in small villages scattered around Mexico. The once inhabited land of the Mayans and their cities were just now overgrown

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.

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.

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Who were the Ancient Mayans? The Ancient Mayans were a religion/culture that was in Mesoamerica (Southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize) beginning at around 250 CE. They believed in over 165 gods and made advanced calendars and astronomical buildings, they believed heavily on the fact that religion and science were the same thing. They were able to calculate solar years and predict solar eclipses. The Maya believed everyone went to the underworld ruled by evil gods shown as jaguars. The three major gods were the god of the sun, the god of maize, and the god of rain but they had a god for almost everything in nature and had a strong belief in forest spirits. They had many ancient texts all written in hieroglyphs which is hard

The Mayan Civilization at its height was one of the greatest civilization to ever reign on the planet. Their advances in astronomy and mathematics well in advance has helped present civilizations to prosper. But one of the great questions is what happened to the Mayans? Why did they collapse? What caused them to collapse? It is a question that had gone unanswered for decades until some of the worlds great historians and scientist finally concluded to three reasons why the Mayan Civilization collapsed. The Mayans Collapse was fast and occurred due to Deforestation and Climate Change, Overpopulation, and Internal and Exterior Rivalry.

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)

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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 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.

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Many decades ago, northern Central America and southern Mexico cultures developed complex political and social ranks. Researchers today know this region as Mesoamerica, known for its rich soil, abundant amount of rainfall, and agriculture. (Judge & Langdon, 2012) The Mesoamericans, Aztec and Mayan tribes, developed into complex civilizations for multiple reasons. These societies were advanced and complex for their time in areas, such as architecture, agriculture, militarism, and education. Each had unique religion and political systems as well. The rise and fall of both were due to several factors.