The Ancient Maya

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The Maya Indian- also called  Meso-American Indians are living in a continuous territory in southern Mexico, Guatemala, and northern Belize. Most of the Maya people are bilingual in Spanish as well as the Mayan language, which is spoken by more than 800,000 people. Up until the Spanish conquest of Mexico and Central America, the Maya controlled one of the greatest civilizations of the Western Hemisphere. They built pyramids, temples and great stone buildings, worked gold and copper, practiced agriculture and made use of some hieroglyphic writing that has now largely been deciphered.
In 1500 BC the Maya started to settle in villages and developed an agricultural society- planting, growing, and harvesting crops of corn (maize), beans, and squash. They built ceremonial centers which by AD 200 had developed into large cities containing plazas, temples, pyramids and palaces. They also developed a hieroglyphic writing system and highly sophisticated systems relating to the science of astronomy. The ancient Maya practiced mainly slash-and-burn agriculture, but also used advanced techniques of terracing and irrigation. They wrote their hieroglyphs on paper books, made from the inner bark of wild fig trees. Their surviving books are called Codices. The Maya also developed a complex and beautiful tradition of sculpture and relief carving and today these architectural works and stone inscriptions are the main sources of knowledge about the Maya culture.
The rise of the Maya began about AD 250, and what is known as the Classic Period of Mayan culture lasted until about AD 900. At its peak period the Mayan civilization consisted of more than 40 cities and each one of them was occupied with an average population number of 5,000 to 50,000. Among the primary cities were Tikal (click here for more information), Uaxactún, Copán, Bonampak, Palenque, and Río-Bec. Researchers of the Mayan culture, conclude that during the height of the Mayan civilization the population may have reached 2,000,000 people with most of them settling in the lowlands of today's Guatemala. After AD 900, the classical Mayan civilization quickly declined and all the ceremonial centers and the great cities were left vacant and extensively overgrown with jungle vegetation. Scholars are uncertain of the reasons of this decline; but there are some suggested studies which claim that armed conflicts and the overuse of agricultural land were responsible. However during the Post-Classic period (900–1519), cities such as Chichén Itzá , Uxmal, and Mayapán in the highlands of the Yucatán Peninsula (north of Guatemala and part of Mexico and Belize ) continued to prosper for several centuries after the great lowland cities had been deserted. In the early 16th century, when the Spaniards conquered the area, most of the Maya lived in mere village rural communities, simple farmers who practiced the ceremonial acts of their long-dead-relatives. (For more info on the topic Google search “Pre-Columbian Civilizations”). The major existing Mayan cities and ceremonial centers with its variety of pyramidal temples and palaces richly decorated with narrative, ceremonial and astronomical reliefs and inscriptions have ensured the position of Mayan art as the premier among Indian cultures. However the true nature of the magnificent Mayan society, the meaning of its foundings and historical account remained unknown to researchers for centuries after the Spaniards discovered the ancient Mayan cities.
In the 1830s researchers set out to systematically explore the Mayan sites. In the mid-20th century a decryption of a small portion of the writing system, shed some light on Mayan religion The religion was based on a pantheon of nature gods which included the gods of the sun, the moon, rain, and corn and a special priestly class was responsible for a complex cycle of rituals and ceremonies.
Inextricable from Mayan religion, was the impressive elaboration of mathematics and astronomy. The development, with pictorial representation, and use of the zero represented a high point of intellectual achievement in mathematics. Mayan astronomy underlays a sophisticated and complex calendar system involving a error-free determination of the solar year (18 months of 20 days, plus an unlucky 5-day period), a sacred year of 260 days (13 cycles of 20 named days), and a variety of longer cycles culminating in the Long Count, based on a zero date in 3114 BC. Mayan astronomers had put together precise tables of positions for Venus and the Moon and were able to predict solar eclipses.
In the mid-20th, based on these discoveries, researchers mistakenly thought that Mayan society was composed of a peaceful day-dreaming priestly class and devout peasantry of calendar keepers. The Maya were thought to be completely absorbed in their religious and cultural pursuits, in favorable contrast to the more hostile and bloodthirsty Indian empires of central Mexico. Later discoveries from progressive decryption of nearly all of the Mayan hieroglyphic writing has provided a more precise though less elevating picture of Mayan society and culture. Many of the hieroglyphs depict the histories of the Mayan dynastic rulers, who waged war on rival Mayan cities and took their aristocrats captive to be tortured, mutilated and sacrificed to the Mayan gods. Indeed, human torture and sacrifice were thought to guarantee fertility and were in fact fundamental religious rituals in Mayan society. The drawing of human blood was thought to nourish the gods and consequently necessary to achieve contact with them. The Mayan rulers, were considered as the intermediaries between the people and the gods, therefor had to undergo ritual bloodletting and self-torture.

The Mayan Today
The present-day Mayan peoples can be divided by linguistic and geographic grounds into the following groups: the Yucatec Maya, inhabiting the Mexican Yucatán Peninsula and extending into northern Belize and northeastern Guatemala; the Lacandones, very few in number, occupying a territory in southern Mexico between the Usumacinta River and the Guatemalan border, with small numbers in Guatemala and Belize; the Quichéan peoples of the eastern and central highlands of Guatemala (Kekchí, Picomohi, Pocomam, Uspantec, Quiché, Cakchiquel, Tzutujil, Sacapultec, and Sipacapa); the Mamean peoples of the western Guatemalan highlands (Mam, Teco, Aguacatec, and Ixil); the Kanjobalan peoples of Huehuetenango in the same region and adjacent parts of Mexico (Motozintlec, Tuzantec, Jacaltec, Acatec, Tojolabal, and Chuj); the Tzotzil and Tzeltal peoples of Chiapas in southern Mexico; the Cholan peoples, including the Chontal and Chol speakers in northern Chiapas and Tabasco and the linguistically related Chortí of the extreme eastern part of Guatemala; and the Huastec of northern Veracruz and adjoining San Luís Potosí in eastern-central Mexico. The chief division in Mayan cultural type is between highland and lowland cultures. Yucatec, Lacandón, and Chontal-Chol are lowland groups. The Huastec are a linguistically and geographically isolated group who never were culturally Mayan, and the other Mayan people live in highlands across Guatemala.
The modern Maya are basically agricultural, raising crops of corn, beans, and squash. They live in communities organized around central villages, which may be permanently occupied but more commonly are community centers with public buildings and houses that generally stand vacant. The people of the community live on farm homesteads except during fiestas and markets. Cultivation is with the hoe and, where the soil is tough, the digging stick. The Yucatec usually keep pigs and chickens and, rarely, oxen that are used for farming. Industries are few, and crafts are oriented toward domestic needs. Usually some cash crop or item of local manufacture is produced for sale outside the region in order to provide cash for items not otherwise obtainable. Dress is largely traditional, particularly for women; men are more likely to wear modern ready-made clothing. Domestic spinning and weaving, which used to be common, is becoming rare, and most clothing is made of factory-woven cloth. Almost all Maya are nominal Roman Catholics, but their Christianity is generally overlaid upon the native pagan religion. Its cosmology is typically Mayan, and Christian figures are commonly identified with Mayan deities. Public religion is basically Christian, with masses and saint's-day celebrations; but the native pre-Columbian religion is observed in domestic rites.