THE MAYANS

The Mayans

The Mayans

Introduction

Ancient Mayans "The Maya are as little known as the dark side of the moon once was." The Mayas of Middle America created two great centres. In their first cities in Guatemala and Honduras stood stone temples and huge monuments, or steles, carved with images of gods and sacred animals and bearing the date in their numbering system. The astronomer-priests devised a calendar and wrote religious and scientific books in hieroglyphic writing. This era, the classic period, lasted from 250-900 AD. Mayan land was once covered by rain forest and jungle. This made it difficult for Mayans to farm. They used "slash and burn "agriculture as their descendants still do today. (Slash and burn is a method of cutting down trees and burning all the vegetation to clear the dense forest land for farming) (Prechtel, 1998).

These farmlands had to be abandoned after about two years due to the lack of nutrients in the soil. This became a severe problem in later years because large amounts of food were needed to support their immense population. Even Mayan blood sacrifices and rituals could not save the farmland from natural decay. Historians still do not understand Mayan religion. They do know that the Mayans worshipped many gods, many having to do largely with nature. One account of Mayan religion mentioned more than 160 gods. The jaguar rain gods appeared in several carvings (Prechtel, 1998).

Each day of the Mayan year had special religious importance, and there were festivals nearly every day in honour of different gods. Priests played a very important role in Mayan society, and could very possibly have made up an aristocratic class. The priests preformed rituals that were believed to please the gods. The Mayans also took part in special burial ceremonies for the dead. The corpses were painted the sacred colour red, the colour of blood, and wrapped in straw mats along with many personal belongings. They were buried under the floors of the houses in which they had once lived. Mayan rulers were buried in their finest clothing. Servants were killed and buried along with important people, along with jewellery. The Mayan King and Queen were also Held in High regards (as if they themselves were gods).

The History of the Mayan

The indigenous people and civilization of the Maya area have attracted a great deal of attention, both academic and popular, ever since Stephens and Catherwood "discovered" abandoned pre-Columbian cities in Yucatan, Guatemala, and Honduras a century and a half ago. Since that time, our understanding of Maya society before Europeans reached the New World has grown considerably, just as the living Maya have been so thoroughly studied that an anthropologist can now be found in or near most of today's Maya communities (Meyer & Gellenkamp, 1995).

The fate of the Mayas in between ancient splendour and modern observation has remained more obscure, partly because the lack of monumental architecture and hieroglyphs and the absence of living witnesses made the Mayas under colonial rule seem less accessible and ...