The Ancient Maya

 

The history of the ancient Maya runs for some 3,000 years, a span of time scientists have divided into three periods: Pre Classic, Classic and Post Classic, each of which is then broken down into early, middle and late.

 

The Maya are one of the greatest civilizations Middle America ever produced. They held traits in common with their Olmec, Teotihuacan, Zapotec, Mixtec, Toltec and Mexica or Aztec cultures, but the heights they reached in science and art make them unique. 

 

Let's look at a few of their most impressive achievements. The Maya used a sacred, or divinatory calendar for religious purposes and a 365-day solar calendar for they're agricultural needs (the latter more accurate than the one used in Europe at the time).

 

A single individual in whose hands rested both civil and religious power governed their city-states. They are best known, however, for their advances in astronomy and timekeeping, insights made possible by the development of a mathematics that included the use of zero and permitted complex calculations. The Maya figured the orbits of the earth, the moon and Venus.

 

They computed equinox and solstice down to the minute and predicted eclipses of both the sun and moon. Many of their finest buildings are cosmic clocks that precisely reflect the movement of the earth and stars.

 

 

 

Their written language, a combination of hieroglyphics and phonetic figures, is capable of telling a story or recording data and was the only writing in three Americas that could. 

 

Perfect examples of both it, and the Maya dating system, is found on stelae scattered throughout the territory. These freestanding stone tablets and bas-reliefs, document important events in Mayan history and more often than not bear a detailed likeness of the leader under whose reign the event took place, or whose deed it was. 

 

The creation of the so-called "corbel", or false arch gave the Maya greater architectural freedom and led to structures that were at once lovely and spacious.

 

Their vision of the universe included a definition of time and space and a cosmos divided between heaven, earth and the underworld. The individual's place within the scheme of things was firmly established and as mediator between man and his gods, man had priests. 

 

The level of achievement reached by the Maya is that much more amazing given it was brought about by few individuals (only the elite had time for contemplation) and in a natural environment hostile to man.

 

The jungle preserved the more than 1000 ceremonial centers of the Classic period (200 - 900 A.D.) until the 1900s when a sudden interest in Middle America attracted droves of foreigners to the area.

 

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