Culture of the Mayas•Isabella Lanza•Linda Orellana

Thousands of years before the Aztecs built Tenochtitlan, other cultures thrived in Middle America. The Mayas, established a great civilization and built many cities in this region of Middle America. The Mayas may have been influenced by Olmec culture. The Mayan life lasted for many centuries. Its greatest period was from about A.D. XXX

Farming Culture

Mayan farmers used a technique called slash-and-burn agriculture. They first cleared the land by cutting down trees. They then burned the tree stumps , saving the ash to use it as fertilizer.

Mayan life was based on farming. They grew a variety of crops, including beans, squash, peppers, papayas and avocados.

Religion

The Mayan religion was made up of nature gods and these gods derived from the Earth. They believed that these gods gave them the rain and corn that they needed to survive. The rulers in the Mayan culture were the gods.

The Mayans believed that when they died, they went to the underworld. To them, this was a place that was filled with bad gods. They were polytheist, since they believed in many gods.

Government

Each city-state had its own ruler and a city state served as a religious and governmental center.

The Mayas developed a hierarchical government ruled by kings and priests.

They lived in independent city-states consisting of rural communities and large urban ceremonial centers. 

There were no standing armies, but warfare played an important role in religion, power and prestige. 

Religion  was woven into all facets of daily life and was the major unifying factor of the civilization.  They practiced human sacrifice and would often raid other communities to obtain victims.

Advances in:

Math The Mayan number system was a base 20

system.The Maya came up with two symbols, a dot and a bar, to represent numbers, instead of representing them by different symbols as it isdone in our number system and that of the Romans. It is believed that because the cocoa

beans was used as the “unit of currency” throughout Central America, the Mayas

adopted a dot to represent unity or one.

Astronomy

The Maya's religious beliefs led them to make impressive achievements in science. They built large observatories, or buildings from which people would study the sky, so their priests could watch the stars and plan the best times for religious festivals.

With the knowledge they gained from astronomy, the Maya developed two calendars:

One with 365 days, that guided farming activities, such as planting and harvesting.

260 day calendar that they used for keeping track of religious events.

Mayans abandon their cities Around A.D.900, the Mayan

civilization began to decline. People stopped building cities and moved back into villages.

The reasons probably included drought, crop failures, war, disease, overuse of natural resources or a people´s rebellion against their leaders.

Major cities of the Mayan Civilization

Tikal or Chichen ItzaUxmalTulum

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