Maya civilization

As you know the earth is wide and there’re so many exciting and mysterious things. One of them is Maya civilization. It’s a Mesoamerican civilization developed by the Maya peoples. It was famous for the prediction of 2012, and its art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system were developed. I’ ll introduce you what is Maya civilization and something about its developed system and mysterious artifacts.

1.Ancient empire-Maya civilization.

2.The history of Maya.

3.Maya mythology.

4.Mayan calendar.

5.Mayan ruins.

6.Crystal skulls

1.Ancient empire-Maya civilization.

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. The Maya excelled at agriculture, pottery, hieroglyph writing, calendar-making and mathematics, and left behind an astonishing amount of impressive architecture and symbolic artwork. Most of the great stone cities of the Maya were abandoned by A.D. 900, however, and since the 19th century scholars have debated what might have caused this dramatic decline.

The Maya civilization was one of the most dominant indigenous societies of Mesoamerica (a term used to describe Mexico and Central America before the 16th century Spanish conquest). Unlike other scattered indigenous populations of Mesoamerica, the Maya were centered in one geographical block covering all of the Yucatan Peninsula and modern-day Guatemala; Belize and parts of the Mexican states of Tabasco and Chiapas and the western part of Honduras and El Salvador. This concentration showed that the Maya remained relatively secure from invasion by other Mesoamerican peoples.

2.The history of Maya.

The earliest Maya settlements date to around 1800 B.C., or the beginning of what is called the Pre-classic or Formative Period. The earliest Maya were agricultural, growing crops such as corn (maize), beans, squash and cassava (manioc). During the Middle Pre-classic Period, which lasted until about 300 B.C., Maya farmers began to expand their presence both in the highland and lowland regions. The Middle Pre-classic Period also saw the rise of the first major Mesoamerican civilization, the Olmecs. Like other Mesoamerican peoples, such as the Zapotec, Totonac, Teotihuacán and Aztec, the Maya derived a number of religious and cultural traits–as well as their number system and their famous calendar–from the Olmec.

In addition to agriculture, the Pre-classic Maya also displayed more advanced cultural traits like pyramid-building, city construction and the inscribing of stone monuments.

The Late Pre-classic city of Mirador, in the northern Peten, was one of the greatest cities ever built in the pre-Columbian Americas. Its size dwarfed the Classic Maya capital of Tikal, and its existence proves that the Maya flourished centuries before the Classic Period.

And then, the Classic Period, which began around A.D. 250, was the golden age of the Maya Empire. Classic Maya civilization grew to some 40 cities, including Tikal, Uaxactún, Copán, Bonampak, Dos Pilas, Calakmul, Palenque and Río Bec; each city held a population of between 5,000 and 50,000 people. At its peak, the Maya population may have reached 2,000,000.

Excavations of Maya sites have unearthed plazas, palaces, temples and pyramids, as well as courts for playing the famous Maya ball game ulama, all ritually and politically significant to Maya culture. Maya cities were surrounded and supported by a large population of farmers. Though the Maya practiced a primitive type of “slash-and-burn” agriculture, they also displayed evidence of more advanced farming methods, such as irrigation and terracing.

The Maya were deeply religious, and worshiped various gods related to nature, including the gods of the sun, the moon, rain and corn. At the top of Maya society were the kings, or “kuhul ajaw” (holy lords), who claimed to be related to gods and followed a hereditary succession. They were thought to serve as mediators between the gods and people on earth, and performed the elaborate religious ceremonies and rituals so important to the Maya culture.

3.Maya mythology.

The Maya had a lengthy and complicated mythical origin story that is recorded by the K’iche Maya (based in Guatemala) in the Popol Vuh, the “Book of Counsel,” wrote Coe in his book. According to the stories, the forefather gods Tepew and Q’ukumatz “brought forth the earth from a watery void, and endowed it with animals and plants.”

Creating sentient beings proved more difficult, but eventually humans were created, including the hero twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque, who embark in a series of adventures, which included defeating the lords of the underworld. Their journey climaxed with the resurrection of their father, the maize god. “It seems clear that this whole mythic cycle was closely related to maize fertility,” Coe writes.

4.Mayan calendar.

The Maya calendar system was complicated. “By some 1,700 years ago speakers of proto-Ch’olan, the ancestor for three Maya languages still in use, had developed a calendar of 18 20-day months plus a set of five days,” wrote Weldon Lamb, a researcher at New Mexico State University, in his book “The Maya Calendar: A Book of Months” (University of Oklahoma Press, 2017).

This calendar system also included what scholars call a “long-count” that kept track of time by using different units that range in length from a single day to millions of years (the unit in millions was rarely used).

Contrary to popular belief, this system did not predict the end of the world in 2012, the unit in millions of years providing evidence of this.

5.Mayan ruins.

The Maya community today totals around 7 million people who live by the traditions and are still native speakers of the Mayan language – rather than Spanish which now dominates the countries in which they reside.

However Mexico is littered with crumbling Mayan cities built by their late ancestors, pyramids of stone abandoned for various reasons and left to be overtaken by the jungle.

Many Mayan ruins have been excavated and opened to the public — but some, in particular, stand out more than others.

One of the greatest Maya cities in Mexico was Chichen Itza – a sacred city which covers around six square miles and was once home to hundreds of buildings which were built in both the classic Maya period and the later Maya-Toltec period.

Chichen Itza is probably the most visited Mayan ruins in Mexico, since being named one of the New Wonders of the World. The highlight is Kukulkan Pyramid which stands at 75 feet tall and built for astronomical/sacrificial purposes.

6.Crystal skulls

Beginning in the late 19th century, around a dozen carved skulls made of clear or milky white quartz—also known as rock crystal—made their way into private and public collections around the globe. Since then, the origins of these “crystal skulls” have been the subject of ongoing mystery and controversy. According to the people who claimed to have discovered the skulls, they date back thousands or even tens of thousands of years, to ancient Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Aztec, Toltec, Mixtec or Maya. Many of those who believe in the crystal skulls’ ancient provenance attribute supernatural powers to the objects, including healing properties and the power to expand a person’s psychic abilities in their presence. Some have linked the skulls to the lost city of Atlantis, or claimed them as proof that extraterrestrials visited pre-Columbian civilizations such as the Aztecs. The 2008 movie “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” capitalized on the ongoing mystery, as well as the passion the skulls’ believers bring to their side of the argument.

Scientists and archaeologists, on the other hand, are skeptical. For one thing, not one of the skulls was recovered on a documented excavation. And while skulls were a common motif in ancient Mesoamerica, and particularly Aztec, artwork (several Aztec gods are represented by skulls), the style and technique of the crystal skulls do not resemble genuine pre-Columbian representations of skulls. Recently, scientists from the British Museum in London and the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. conducted analyses of crystal skulls using electron microscopes. After finding markings that could only have been made by modern-day carving implements—rather than the stone, bone and wooden tools that would have been used in pre-Colombian times—they concluded that the skulls were likely fakes. The scientists believe they were probably manufactured in the late 1800s, in response to a surge of interest in the ancient world and its artifacts.

Maya civilization was a great empire. Developed art, architecture, mathematics, calendar, and astronomical system can be very attractive for us. On the other hand, the empire got collapsed that we can just find some artifacts from the ruins. We can think of what we get from such ancient empire, and how to use it for our future.