The Maya Socialization, A Mesoamerican Civilization

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.

​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 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 maya live over 2,300 years ago and farmed hunted and many amazing things. Tikal was a large maya city. They did human sacrifices for their gods they captured the humans from other city state they had war with. They learned how to clear thick brush and cut down trees and burned dead brush to make fields for farming the ash from the fire made great nutrients for the ground. They grew corn and squash and many other plants. Tikal was one of the largest Maya cities there was 60,000 people who lives there. They wrote on Stone slates that was their paper. What is now Chiapas Mexico a beautiful Maya City Was found by a Explorer named Palenque. All had different choices that people lived it was like a pyramid graph it had the rich on top and

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

The coasts, traces of humans presence have been submerged by rising sea levels, and in the highlands, volcanic eruption may have buried evidence under thick layer of ash. By 700 B.C.E., Kaminaljuyu already had constructed a major irrigation canal, and by 500 B.C.E., it began carving freestanding stone slabs called stelae. This canal was a new technology by Kaminaljuyu and it advanced trade in many ways.(Foster, 31) People started to migrate from Teotihuacan to Tikal starting from 500 B.C.E. In Maya preclassic hiatus, droughts and volcanic eruptions occurred during this period and could have caused the social displacement and political upheaval that explain the increase in fortifications at this time. This wasn’t a natural disaster but instead it was caused by deforestation. Its high climate drove people out of Mirador Basin and also due to its high climate, it turn Earth into hard to farm clays. It destroyed elaborate gardens and wetland agriculture of dykes and artificial fields that sustained large preclassic populations in the lowlands. In southern Maya area, the impact of drought was compounded by the eruption of the Ilopango volcano from 200 C.E. to 250 C.E. in central El Salvador.(Foster, 42) During the late classic period, Chalchuapa started the manufacture of obsidian blades and became a very important trade item. It also caused

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

     The Maya civilization can be divided into three main periods: Pre-Classic, Classic, and Post-Classic. Their greatest accomplishments most likely took place in the Classic period. This period occurred between 250 and 910AD. An extensive trade network was in place during this period that allowed the civilization to grow as large as sixty separate kingdoms. Other technological advances also took place during this time.

Mesoamerica is the area in which the ancient Maya had lived, and is the area where modern Mayans are still reside. According to Coe, the Mayan geographic can range from Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Yucatan Peninsula, and the Mexican States of Chiapas and Tabasco (1966:17). Yet these areas are not limited to just Mayan. Many structural architecture remains today has proven the complexity of the Mayan culture in Mesoamerica.