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The first thing I think of or most people think of when they hear the word Mayans, is how they

Decent Essays

The first thing I think of or most people think of when they hear the word Mayans, is how they think the Mayans believed the world was ending December 21, 2012. From research though, you find out that this not the case at all. And the Mayans didn’t believe that at all it is just a new age theory. The Mayans are such a rich culture and have so much history behind them. The ethnic Mayans are one of the earliest developed civilizations. They are a native Mesoamerican people that were founded back in 250 A.D. The Mayans flourished until about 900 A.D., most say their fall came after the Spanish conquest. Some aspects though still are alive mostly the Mayan Indians of Mexico and Central America. The first 650 years scholars call the “Classic …show more content…

The first is human and the second is animal (Langill). Their most important God is Itzamná which is their creator God, god of fire and hearth. Another important God is Kukukán—the feather serpent who appears on many temples. Chac is their hooked-nose God of rain and lightning and another god that appears in a lot of Mayan art is Bolon Tzacab who is depicted with a branching nose and often held like a scepter in rulers’ hands; he was often thought as a god of royal descent. Mayan rulers were intermediaries between gods and people and sometimes thought as semi-divine themselves. Mayans view on afterlife consisted primarily of a dangerous voyage of the soul through the underworld populated by sinister gods and is represented by the jaguar (a symbol of night). Majority of Mayans were believed to go this underworld and Heaven is only reserved for people who were sacrificed or died in childbirth. Human sacrifice was a big Mayan practice in the ancient times. It encouraged fertility, piety, propriate the Gods, etc. Some different forms of sacrificing they performed were cutting the hearts out, heads off, or other body parts out and burning them for the gods to eat or push them down the temple stairs (Minister). Human blood was thought to nourish the Mayan Gods. They believed these rituals and sacrificed had to be done because if neglected they thought the Gods would cause chaos. Maya also thought sacrifice was related to birth and renewal. In the book

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