Mario

History of Mayan Culture

History of Mayan Culture

The mysterious culture of ancient Maya once covered a vast geographic area in Central and South America. The Mayan culture lived n Mexico and Central America. The southern part of Mexico included dense swamps. The Mayans had massive empire that stretched from the Yucatan peninsula in South Mexico, to South Guatemala, where I am from andfrom east Yucatan, to middle Honduras, and everything in between.

The Mayans first settled in 1500BC. The Mayans environment consisted of tropical rainforests, which was also one of their main sources of resources, they turned the jungles into great cities. The rainforest would provide them with food, clothing, weapons, tools, and many more useful items. It rained almost everyday, but thetemperature was not cold at least in the daytime. The environment played a major role in what the Mayans culture became, they needed rain and heat to survive both the humans and the animals. The Mayans learned the methods of doing things like planting crops, making clothing, jewelry etc. The Mayans grew mainly maize (corn), beans, and squash together with yucca, manioc, and sweet potatoes.APPEARANCE

Beauty was very important to the Mayan people. Though beauty through the Mayan eye was very unusual from today’s definition of the word. To make their heads longer, Mayan babies heads were squeezed between two pieces of wood. Another thing they did was to break their nose and reshape it, to make it look more hooked. Body Piercing and body painting was one of the major parts of how Mayanslooked. Most Mayans were tanned and had black hair and eyes. Both men and women had long hair, which was braided into two or four braids. They wore very little clothing but it was very decorative, with the fanciest piece of clothing being headdresses worn by nobles. Their bodies were painted differently according to tradition and occasions. Priests wore blue, warriors wore red and black, andteenagers wore white. Jewelry was a very important part of appearance.

LANGUAGE, EDUCATION, ASTRONOMY

The Mayans had over 800 symbols for their writing system. It is said to be the most complex form of writing. The most important eastern Maya languages are Quiche, and Cakchiquel. The largest western Maya language is Tzeltal, spoken in Chiapas Mex. The Mayans had another 15 languages.

TheMayans way of education was taught to only the higher authority such as priests, leader/chiefs, war leaders etc. As far as the rest of the Mayan population went, education and learning existed in their homes, where their parents taught them information that they knew for growing up and information that passed down to them generation to generation.

Their numerical system was based on symbols, whichwere given a value according to position and the concept of zero existed. Three symbols were used in writing numbers, a dot for one, a bar for five and a stylized shell for zero. All other numbers were written by combining these. The Mayas also devised glyphs for the numbers zero to nineteen, which were often used instead of the other system.

Astronomy was a very important factor of Mayanculture. The astronomers would devote their time to finding harmony in the universe and its recurring cycles of time, had to make complicated calculations to predict natural events and connect them with the fate of the population. The Mayan philosophy is very special because no other culture of the period was obsessed with time. They had two calendars the ritual one called “ Tzolkin “ that was usedfor calculating religious ceremonies and festivals and predicting the destiny of people. The second calendar was the solar calendar called “ Haab “ containing 18 months of 20 days each plus five unlucky days called “ Uayeb “. The two calendars were used in conjunction and the Maya calculations were so accurate that they were able to make exact reckonings predict eclipses and plot the orbit of the...