2012, end of the world

The ruins of Palenque

Preclassic

There is some dispute about when this era of Mayan civilization began. Recent discoveries of Maya occupation at Cuello, Belize have been carbon dated to around 2600 BC. This level of occupation included monumental structures. The Maya calendar, which is based around the so-called Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, begins on a date equivalent to 11 August 3114 BC.

However the most widely accepted view, as of 2010, is that the first clearly Maya settlements were established around 1800 BC in the Soconusco region of the Pacific Coast. This period, known as the Early Preclassic, was characterized by sedentary communities and the introduction of pottery and fired clay figurines.

Important sites in the southern Maya lowlands include Nakbe, El Mirador, Cival, and San Bartolo. In the Guatemalan Highlands Kaminal Juyú emerged around 800 BC. For many centuries it controlled the Jade and Obsidian sources for the Petén and Pacific Lowlands. The important early sites of Izapa, Takalik Abaj, and Chocolá at around 600 BC were the main producers of Cacao. Mid-sized Maya communities also began to develop in the northern Maya lowlands during the Middle and Late Preclassic, though these lacked the size, scale, and influence of the large centers of the southern lowlands. Two important Preclassic northern sites include Komchen and Dzibilchaltun. The first written inscription in Maya hieroglyphics also dates to this period (c. 250 BC).

There is disagreement about the boundaries which differentiate the physical and cultural extent of the early Maya and neighboring Preclassic Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Olmec culture of the Tabasco lowlands and the Mixe–Zoque- and Zapotec-speaking peoples of Chiapas and southern Oaxaca, respectively. Many of the earliest significant inscriptions and buildings appeared in this overlapping zone, and evidence suggests that these cultures and the formative Maya influenced one another. Takalik Abaj, in the Pacific slopes of Guatemala, is the only site where Olmec and then Maya features have been found.

Classic

The Classic period (c. 250–900 AD) witnessed the peak of large-scale construction and urbanism, the recording of monumental inscriptions, and a period of significant intellectual and artistic development, particularly in the southern lowland regions. They developed an agriculturally intensive, city-centered empire consisting of numerous independent city-states. This includes the well-known cities of Tikal, Palenque, Copán and Calakmul, but also the lesser known Dos Pilas, Uaxactun, Altun Ha, and Bonampak, among others. The Early Classic settlement distribution in the northern Maya lowlands is not as clearly known as the southern zone, but does include a number of population centers, such as Oxkintok, Chunchucmil, and the early occupation of Uxmal.

During this period the Mayas numbered in the millions, they created a multitude of kingdoms and small empires, built monumental palaces and temples, engaged in grandiose ceremonies, and developed an elaborate hieroglyphic writing system. The social basis of this exuberant civilization was a large political and economic intersocietal network (world system) extending throughout the Mayan region and beyond to the wider Mesoamerican world. The political, economic, and culturally dominant ‘core’ Mayan units of the Classic Mayan world system were located in the central lowlands, while its corresponding dependent or ‘peripheral’ Mayan units were found along the margins of the southern highland and northern lowland areas. But as in all world systems, the Mayan core centers shifted through time, starting out during Preclassic times in the southern highlands, moving to the central lowlands during the Classic period, and finally shifting to the northern peninsula during the Postclassic period. In this Mayan world system the semi-peripheral (mediational) units generally took the form of trade and commercial centers.

The most notable monuments are the stepped pyramids they built in their religious centers and the accompanying palaces of their rulers. The palace at Cancuén is the largest in the Maya area, though the site, interestingly, lacks pyramids. Other important archaeological remains include the carved stone slabs usually called stelae (the Maya called them tetun, or “tree-stones”), which depict rulers along with hieroglyphic texts describing their genealogy, military victories, and other accomplishments.

The Maya civilization participated in long distance trade with many of the other Mesoamerican cultures, including Teotihuacan, the Zapotec, and other groups in central and gulf-coast Mexico, as well as with more distant, non-Mesoamerican groups, for example the Taínos in the Caribbean. Archeologists have also found gold from Panama in the Sacred Cenote of Chichen Itza. Important trade goods included cacao, salt, seashells, jade, and obsidian.

The Maya collapse

The Maya centers of the southern lowlands went into decline during the 8th and 9th centuries and were abandoned shortly thereafter. This decline was coupled with a cessation of monumental inscriptions and large-scale architectural construction. There is no universally accepted theory to explain this collapse.

Non-ecological theories of Maya decline are divided into several subcategories, such as overpopulation, foreign invasion, peasant revolt, and the collapse of key trade routes. Ecological hypotheses include environmental disaster, epidemic disease, and climate change. There is evidence that the Maya population exceeded the carrying capacity of the environment including exhaustion of agricultural potential and overhunting of megafauna. Some scholars have recently theorized that an intense 200 year drought led to the collapse of Maya civilization. The drought theory originated from research performed by physical scientists studying lake beds, ancient pollen, and other data, not from the archaeological community. Newer research from 2011, with use of high-resolution climate models and new reconstructions of past landscapes, suggests that converting much of their forest land into cropland may have led to reduced evapotranspiration and thus rainfall, magnifying natural drought. A study published in Science in 2012 found that modest rainfall reductions, that amount to only 25 to 40 per cent in annual rainfall, may have been the tipping point to the Maya collapse. Based on samples of lake and cave sediments in the areas surrounding major Maya cities, the researchers were able to determine the amount of annual rainfall in the region. The mild droughts that took place between AD 800-950 were enough to rapidly reduced open water availability.

Postclassic period

During the succeeding Postclassic period (from the 10th to the early 16th century), development in the northern centers persisted, characterized by an increasing diversity of external influences. The Maya cities of the northern lowlands in Yucatán continued to flourish for centuries more; some of the important sites in this era were Chichen Itza, Uxmal, Edzná, and Coba. After the decline of the ruling dynasties of Chichen and Uxmal, Mayapan ruled all of Yucatán until a revolt in 1450. (This city’s name may be the source of the word “Maya”, which had a more geographically restricted meaning in Yucatec and colonial Spanish and only grew to its current meaning in the 19th and 20th centuries). The area then degenerated into competing city-states until Yucatán was conquered by the Spanish.

The Itza Maya, Ko’woj, and Yalain groups of Central Peten survived the “Classic Period Collapse” in small numbers and by 1250 reconstituted themselves to form competing city-states. The Itza maintained their capital at Tayasal (also known as Noh Petén), an archaeological site thought to underlay the modern city of Flores, Guatemala on Lake Petén Itzá. It ruled over an area extending across the Peten Lakes region, encompassing the community of Eckixil on Lake Quexil. The Ko’woj had their capital at Zacpeten. Postclassic Maya states also continued to survive in the southern highlands. One of the Maya nations in this area, the K’iche’ Kingdom of Q’umarkaj, is responsible for the best-known Maya work of historiography and mythology, the Popol Vuh. Other highland kingdoms included the Mam based at Huehuetenango, the Kaqchikels based at Iximché, the Chajoma based at Mixco Viejo and the Chuj, based at San Mateo Ixtatán.

Colonial period

Shortly after their first expeditions to the region, the Spanish initiated a number of attempts to subjugate the Maya who were hostile towards the Spanish crown and establish a colonial presence in the Maya territories of the Yucatán Peninsula and the Guatemalan highlands. This campaign, sometimes termed “The Spanish Conquest of Yucatán”, would prove to be a lengthy and dangerous exercise for the conquistadores from the outset, and it would take some 170 years and tens of thousands of Indian auxiliaries before the Spanish established substantive control over all Maya lands.

Unlike the Aztec and Inca Empires, there was no single Maya political center that, once overthrown, would hasten the end of collective resistance from the indigenous peoples. Instead, the conquistador forces needed to subdue the numerous independent Maya polities almost one by one, many of which kept up a fierce resistance. Most of the conquistadors were motivated by the prospects of the great wealth to be had from the seizure of precious metal resources such as gold or silver; however, the Maya lands themselves were poor in these resources. This would become another factor in forestalling Spanish designs of conquest, as they instead were initially attracted to the reports of great riches in central Mexico or Peru.

The Spanish Church and government officials destroyed Maya texts and with them the knowledge of Maya writing, but by chance three of the pre-Columbian books dated to the post classic period have been preserved. These are known as the Madrid Codex, The Dresden Codex and the Paris Codex. The last Maya states, the Itza polity of Tayasal and the Ko’woj city of Zacpeten, were continuously occupied and remained independent of the Spanish until late in the 17th century. They were finally subdued by the Spanish in 1697.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

An inscription in Maya glyphs from the site of Naranjo, relating to the reign of king Itzamnaaj K’awil, 784-810

The Maya script, also known as Maya glyphs or Maya hieroglyphs, is the writing system of the Maya civilization of Mesoamerica. Presently the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered, the earliest inscriptions found which are identifiably Maya date to the 3rd century BCE in San Bartolo, Guatemala.^[1][2] Writing was in continuous use until shortly after the arrival of the conquistadors in the 16th century CE (and even later in isolated areas such as Tayasal).

Maya writing used logograms complemented by a set of syllabic glyphs, somewhat similar in function to modern Japanese writing. Maya writing was called “hieroglyphics” or hieroglyphs by early European explorers of the 18th and 19th centuries who did not understand it but found its general appearance reminiscent of Egyptian hieroglyphs, to which the Maya writing system is not at all related.

Although most Mayan languages utilize the Latin alphabet, Maya writing is still used and taught in some Maya speaking areas of Mexico where it has received official support and promotion by the Mexican government and is taught in universities and public schools in Mayan speaking areas.

Languages

It is now thought that the codices and other Classic texts were written by scribes, usually members of the Maya priesthood, in a literary form of the Ch’olti’ language. It is possible that the Maya elite spoke this language as a lingua franca over the entire Maya-speaking area, but also that texts were written in other Mayan languages of the Peten and Yucatán, especially Yucatec. There is also some evidence that the script may have been occasionally used to write Mayan languages of the Guatemalan Highlands.^[3] However, if other languages were written, they may have been written by Ch’olti scribes, and therefore have Ch’olti elements.

Researchers

Current leaders in the field of interpreting Maya culture and Maya decipherment include many archaeologists, epigraphers, linguists, and art historians. Key names working at present are:

David Stuart at the University of Texas
Dmitri Beliaev, Russian State University for the Humanities, Moscow
Diane Chase and Arlen Chase at the University of Central Florida
John Costello, linguist at New York University
Arthur Demarest at Vanderbilt University
William Fash at Harvard University
David Freidel at SMU
Nikolai Grube at the University of Bonn, Germany
Stephen Houston at Brown University
linguists Katherine Josserand (deceased as of 2007) and Nicholas Hopkins
Tom Jones at Humboldt State University
Alfonso Lacadena at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Simon Martin at the University of Pennsylvania Museum
linguist John Robertson at Brigham Young University
Robert Sharer at the University of Pennsylvania
William Sanders of Pennsylvania State University (deceased as of 2008)
Karl Taube at the University of California, Riverside
Dennis Tedlock at the State University of New York at Buffalo
Marc Zender at Harvard, Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology
linguist Søren Wichmann, the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology at Leipzig

and many others, including a growing number of scholars in Latin America, in the nations of the Maya area.

epigrapher Yuriy Polyuhovich, at the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv
linguist Talakh Viktor at Kiev.

Notes

Bibliography

Links

• Introduction to Maya Hieroglyphs by Harri Kettunen and Christophe Helmke
• A partial transcription, transliteration, and translation of the Temple of Inscriptions text by Michael D. Carrasco
• A Preliminary Classic Maya-English/English-Classic Maya Vocabulary of Hieroglyphic Readings by Eric Boot
• FAMSI resources on Maya Hieroglyphic writing
• Maya Writing in: Guatemala, Cradle of the Maya Civilization
• Mayaweb: Learn how to write your name in Maya Hieroglyphs
• Nova online – ‘Cracking the Maya Code’
• Wolfgang Gockel’s morphemic interpretation of the glyphs
• Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions Program at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University
• Corpus of Maya Hieroglyphic Inscriptions, Volumes 1–9. Published by the Peabody Museum Press and distributed by Harvard University Press
• Talakh Viktor (2011-03-19). “Introduction to hieroglyphic script of the Maya. Manual”. www.bloknot.info. Retrieved 2011-03-24.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

A stucco relief in the museum at Palenque

Maya society shared many features with other Mesoamerican civilizations, for there was a high degree of interaction and cultural diffusion throughout the region. Although aspects such as writing and the calendar did not originate with the Maya, the Maya script and their calendar were among the most developed in Mesoamerica. Maya cultural influences can be detected as far afield as central Mexico, more than 1000 km from their homelands. Equally, many external influences are to be found in Maya art and their architecture, particularly in the Postclassic period; these are thought to be mainly a result of trade and cultural exchange, rather than direct external conquest.

The arts

Artistic expression

Many consider Classic period (200 to 900 AD) Maya art to be the most sophisticated of the ancient New World. The carvings and stucco reliefs at Palenque and the statuary of Copán depict accurate representations of the human form. We have only hints of the advanced painting of the classic Maya; mostly what have survived are funerary pottery and other Maya ceramics. Also a building at Bonampak holds ancient murals that survived by serendipity. With the decipherment of the Maya script it was discovered that the Maya were one of the few civilizations where artists attached their name to their work.

Architecture

As unique and spectacular as any Greek or Roman architecture, Maya architecture spans many thousands of years; yet, often the most dramatic and easily recognizable as Maya are the fantastic layered, stepped pyramids from the Terminal Pre-classic period and beyond.

Technology

Maya civilization is regarded as the most technologically advanced of all pre-Columbian civilizations in the Americas. It can be classified as a stone age civilization which had just begun experimenting with metals by the time of Spanish conquest. A lack of draft animals (like old world domesticated horses, oxen, donkeys, etc.) in the ancient Americas may explain lack of use of wheels and therefore the need of paved roads. Obsidian (volcanic glass) was a major material for various cutting tools and weapons due to its cleaved sharpness.

Mathematics

In common with the other Mesoamerican civilizations, the Maya used a base 20 (vigesimal) and base 5 numbering system. Also, they independently developed the concept of zero by 357 AD (Asian Indians did not embrace zero until the 9th century, and Europeans not until the 12th century). Inscriptions show them on occasion working with sums up to the hundreds of millions and dates so large it would take several lines just to represent it. They produced extremely accurate astronomical observations; their charts of the movements of the moon and planets are equal or superior to those of any other civilization working from naked eye observation.

Also in common with the other Mesoamerican civilizations, the Maya utilized a highly accurate measure of the length of the solar year, far more accurate than that used in Europe as the basis of the Gregorian Calendar. They did not use this figure for the length of year in their calendar, however. Instead, the Maya calendar(s) were based on a year length of exactly 365 days, which means that the calendar falls out of step with the seasons by one day every four years. By comparison, the Julian calendar, used in Europe from Roman times until about the 16th Century, accumulated an error of one day every 128 years. The modern Gregorian calendar accumulates a day’s error in approximately 3257 years.

Agriculture

The ancient Maya had diverse and sophisticated methods of food production. It was formerly believed that slash and burn (swidden) agriculture provided most of their food but it is now thought that permanent raised fields, terracing, forest gardens, managed fallows, and wild harvesting were also crucial to supporting the large populations of the Classic period in some areas. Indeed, evidence of these different systems persist today: raised fields connected by canals can be seen on aerial photographs, contemporary rainforest species composition has significantly higher abundance of species of economic value to ancient Maya, and pollen records in lake sediments suggest that corn, manioc, sunflower seeds, cotton, and other crops have been cultivated in association with deforestation in Mesoamerica since at least 2500 BC.

Contemporary Maya peoples still practice many of these traditional forms of agriculture, although they are dynamic systems and change with changing population pressures, cultures, economic systems, climate change, and the availability of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

References

• Aoyama, Kazoa. (2005) Classic Maya Warfare and Weapons: Spear, dart, and arrow points of Aguateca and Copan. Ancient Mesoamerica 16(2): 291-304.
• Barrett, Jason and Andrew Scherer. (2005) Stones, Bones, and Crowded Plazas: Evidence for Terminal Classic Maya Warfare at Colha, Belize. Ancient Mesoamerica 16(1): 101-118.
• Bunson, Margaret R., and Stephen M. Bunson. (1996) Warfare, Maya. Encyclopedia of Ancient Mesoamerica. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 1996.
• Foster, Lynn V. (2001) Handbook to Life in the Ancient Maya World. New York: Facts on File, Inc.
• Martin, Simon, and Mary Miller. Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2004.
• Sanders, William and David Webster (1988) The Mesoamerican Urban Tradition. American Anthropologist 90(3): 521-546.

Links

• “Maya Ruins”. NASA Earth Observatory. Retrieved 2006-04-28.
• Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies
• Mayaweb (Dutch and English)
• Maya articles by Genry Joil.
• Mesoweb by Joel Skidmore.
• The Daily Glyph by Dave Pentecost.
• Junglecasts – podcasts by Ed Barnhart, Nicco Mele, Dave Pentecost
• Ancient Civilizations – Mayan Research
• Maya Warfare Research
• Modern Maya Photos

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Maya numerals were a vigesimal (base-twenty) numeral system used by the Pre-Columbian Maya civilization.

The numerals are made up of three symbols; zero (shell shape), one (a dot) and five (a bar). For example, nineteen (19) is written as four dots in a horizontal row above three horizontal lines stacked upon each other.

Numbers above 19

Numbers after 19 were written vertically in powers of twenty. For example, thirty-three would be written as one dot above three dots, which are in turn atop two lines. The first dot represents “one twenty” or “1×20″, which is added to three dots and two bars, or thirteen. Therefore, (1×20) + 13 = 33. Upon reaching 20^2 or 400, another row is started. The number 429 would be written as one dot above one dot above four dots and a bar, or (1×20^2) + (1×20^1) + 9 = 429. The powers of twenty are numerals, just as the Hindu-Arabic numeral system uses powers of tens.^[1]

Other than the bar and dot notation, Maya numerals can be illustrated by face type glyphs or pictures. The face glyph for a number represents the deity associated with the number. These face number glyphs were rarely used, and are mostly seen only on some of the most elaborate monumental carving.

Zero

The Maya/Mesoamerican Long Count calendar required the use of zero as a place-holder within its vigesimal positional numeral system. A shell glyph was used as a zero symbol for these Long Count dates, the earliest of which (on Stela 2 at Chiapa de Corzo, Chiapas) has a date of 36 BC.^[3]

However, since the eight earliest Long Count dates appear outside the Maya homeland,^[4] it is assumed that the use of zero predated the Maya, and was possibly the invention of the Olmec. Indeed, many of the earliest Long Count dates were found within the Olmec heartland. However, the Olmec civilization had come to an end by the 4th century BC, several centuries before the earliest known Long Count dates–which suggests that zero was not an Olmec discovery.

In the calendar

Detail showing three columns of glyphs from La Mojarra Stela 1. The left column uses Maya numerals to show a Long Count date of 8.5.16.9.7, or 156 CE.

In the “Long Count” portion of the Maya calendar, a variation on the strictly vegidecimal numbering is used. The Long Count changes in the third place value; it is not 20×20 = 400, as would otherwise be expected, but 18×20, so that one dot over two zeros signifies 360. This is supposed to be because 360 is roughly the number of days in a year. (Some hypothesize that this was an early approximation to the number of days in the solar year, although the Maya had a quite accurate calculation of 365.2422 days for the solar year at least since the early Classic era.) Subsequent place values return to base-twenty.

In fact, every known example of large numbers uses this ‘modified vigesimal’ system, with the third position representing multiples of 18×20. It is reasonable to assume, but not proven by any evidence, that the normal system in use was a pure base-20 system.

Notes

References

Links

• Maya Mathematics online converter from decimal numeration to Maya numeral notation.
• Anthropomorphic Maya numbers online story of number representations.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Maya mythology is part of Mesoamerican mythology and comprises all of the Mayan tales in which personified forces of nature, deities, and the heroes interacting with these play the main roles. Other parts of Maya oral tradition (such as animal tales and many moralising stories) do not properly belong to the domain of mythology, but rather to legend and folk tale.

Sources

The oldest myths date from the 16th century and are found in historical sources from the Guatemalan Highlands. The most important of these documents is the Popol Vuh or ‘Book of the Council’, which contains Quichean creation stories and the adventures of the Hero Twins, Hunahpu and Xbalanque.

Yucatán is an equally important region. The Books of Chilam Balam contain mythological passages of great antiquity, and mythological fragments are found scattered among the early-colonial Spanish chronicles and reports, chief among them Diego de Landa’s Relación, and in the dictionaries compiled by the early missionaries.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, anthropologists and local folklorists have committed many stories to paper. Even though most Maya tales are the results of an historical process in which Spanish narrative traditions interacted with native ones, some of the tales reach back well into pre-Spanish times. Now, at the beginning of the 21st century, the transmission of traditional tales has entered its final stage. Fortunately, however, this is also a time in which the Mayas themselves have begun to salvage and publish the precious tales of their parents and grandparents.

Bibliography and References

Links

• Public domain translations of some important Maya texts, including Popol Vuh, Chilam-Balam.
• Representation of Deities of the Maya Manuscripts, by Paul Schellhas, 1904, from Project Gutenberg
• Maya Religion, in Guatemala Cradle of the Maya Civilization

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

Maya art, here taken to mean the visual arts, is the artistic style typical of the Maya civilization, that took shape in the course the Preclassic period (1500 B.C. to 250 A.D.), and grew greater during the Classic period (c. 200 to 900 AD), and went through a Postclassic phase until the upheavals of the sixteenth century destroyed courtly culture and put an end to a great artistic tradition. The Olmecs, Teotihuacan and the Toltecs have all influenced Maya art. Traditional art forms have mainly survived in weaving and the design of peasant houses.

Architecture

A Maya temple at Tikal

Maya architecture is first of all the lay-out of the impressive houses, courtyards, and temples where the kings resided, characterised by the immense horizontal floors of the plazas located at various levels, and the broad and often steep stairs connecting these. Dam-like causeways spread from these ‘ceremonial centers’ to other nuclei of habitation.

Bibliography

• Dale M. Brown ed. Lost Civilizations: The Magnificent Maya. Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life books, 1993.
• Carol Kaufmann. 2003. “Maya Masterwork”. National Geographic December 2003: 70-77.
• Constantino Reyes-Valerio, “De Bonampak al Templo Mayor, Historia del Azul Maya en Mesoamerica”, Siglo XXI Editores, 1993.

Links

• Web page of the Maya Blue Pigment
• Maya Art with Photos

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

A unique and spectacular style, Maya architecture spans several thousands of years. Yet, often the most dramatic and easily recognizable as Maya are the stepped pyramids from the Terminal Pre-classic period and beyond. Being based on the general Mesoamerican architectural traditions these pyramids relied on intricate carved stone in order to create a stair-step design. Each pyramid was dedicated to a deity whose shrine sat at its peak. During this “height” of Maya culture, the centers of their religious, commercial and bureaucratic power grew into large cities, including Chichen Itza, Tikal, and Uxmal. Through observation of the numerous consistent elements and stylistic distinctions, remnants of Maya architecture have become an important key to understanding the evolution of their ancient civilization.

References

• Martin, Simon, and Mary Miller. Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya. New York: Thames & Hudson, 2004.
• “Maya Ruins”. NASA Earth Observatory. .

Links

• Maya ruins image gallery
• Ancient Civilizations – Mayan Research site for kids
• Mayacaves.org A Mesoamerican cave archaeology community forum, field notes, and report site. The site is run by the Vanderbilt Upper Pasion Archaeological Cave Survey and is intended to be a resource for students and researchers in Guatemala and working in caves in Mesoamerica.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

The Maya calendar is a system of calendars and almanacs used in the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica, and in some modern Maya communities in highland Guatemala and Oaxaca, Mexico.

The essentials of the Maya calendric system are based upon a system which had been in common use throughout the region, dating back to at least the 6th century BC. It shares many aspects with calendars employed by other earlier Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Zapotec and Olmec, and contemporary or later ones such as the Mixtec and Aztec calendars. Although the Mesoamerican calendar did not originate with the Maya, their subsequent extensions and refinements of it were the most sophisticated. Along with those of the Aztecs, the Maya calendars are the best-documented and most completely understood.

By the Maya mythological tradition, as documented in Colonial Yucatec accounts and reconstructed from Late Classic and Postclassic inscriptions, the deity Itzamna is frequently credited with bringing the knowledge of the calendar system to the ancestral Maya, along with writing in general and other foundational aspects of Maya culture.^[1]

Notes

Links

• Today’s Long Count
• Maya Calendar notes by M. Finlay, Maya Astronomy (Uses the proleptic Gregorian calendar.)
• Maya Cycles of Time at Convergence
• The Maya Calendar by the Maya World Studies Center in Yucatán Mexico
• Maya Calendar and Links on diagnosis2012.co.uk (The calculator uses the proleptic Gregorian calendar, with a number of links to other Maya calendar sites.)
• Interactive Maya Calendars
• Day Symbols of the Maya Year at Project Gutenberg 1897 text by Cyrus Thomas
• Maya Calendar, Date conversions, contemporary year version, Tzolkin and Haab day in Calendar Rounds

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.

The Maya is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as its art, architecture, and mathematical and astronomical systems. Initially established during the Pre-Classic period (c. 2000 BC to 250 AD), according to the Mesoamerican chronology, many Maya cities reached their highest state development during the Classic period (c. 250 AD to 900 AD), and continued throughout the Post-Classic period until the arrival of the Spanish. At its peak, it was one of the most densely populated and culturally dynamic societies in the world. ^[1]

The Maya civilization shares many features with other Mesoamerican civilizations due to the high degree of interaction and cultural diffusion that characterized the region. Advances such as writing, epigraphy, and the calendar did not originate with the Maya; however, their civilization fully developed them. Maya influence can be detected from Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and to as far as central Mexico, more than 1000 km (625 miles) from the Maya area. Many outside influences are found in Maya art and architecture, which are thought to result from trade and cultural exchange rather than direct external conquest.

The Maya peoples never disappeared, neither at the time of the Classic period decline nor with the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores and the subsequent Spanish colonization of the Americas. Today, the Maya and their descendants form sizable populations throughout the Maya area and maintain a distinctive set of traditions and beliefs that are the result of the merger of pre-Columbian and post-Conquest ideas and cultures. Many Mayan languages continue to be spoken as primary languages today; the Rabinal Achí, a play written in the Achi’ language, was declared a Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO in 2005.

Footnotes

References

Further reading

Links

• Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, Inc (FAMSI)
• Mayan Math and astronomy
• Mayaweb (Dutch and English)
• Guatemala, Cradle of The Maya Civilization
• Maya Society and some photos of Tools, Weapons & Artifacts
• Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya at the National Gallery of Art
• Learn more about Maya hieroglyphs and Maya numbering from the National Gallery of Art
• Primary sources of Maya history – part one by Ronald A. Barnett
• Maya articles by Genry Joil.
• Mesoweb by Joel Skidmore.
• The Daily Glyph by Dave Pentecost.
• Junglecasts – podcasts by Ed Barnhart, Nicco Mele, Dave Pentecost
• Ancient Civilizations – Maya Research site for kids
• The Mayan Kingdom A Photographic Web Book on the Mayan Civilization by Tony Trupp

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.