Mayan

Patrick &

Trinity

human sacrifices

• The most well known human sacrifice for the Mayan people was that of blood.

• It is said that sacrificing blood would bring them luck and fortune, and help their crops to grow.

bloodletting• The KING: Using a sting ray tail the King would pierce

his penis and then drag a rope through the hole to let more blood.

• The QUEEN: Used a rope of thorns to drag through a hole that she would have pierced in the middle of her tongue.

• The blood that they shed from these sacrifices would be collected on strips of bark or paper to be burned.

• They believed a vision of the gods would appear when they burned the blood soaked paper/bark.

• Reasons a Mayan person might want to let blood: warfare, a new ruler, birth of an heir or other important dates

The Greatest Sacrifice of them All…

• There were many steps to this pain filled ritual• First, they would paint the sacrifice victim the same color of a Smurf. • Second, they would hold the hands and feet of the victim which

made their chest arch outward and upward over a table, this was said to be very uncomfortable

• Third, the “priest” would cut under the victims right ribs by using a sharp stone and then would remove the heart while it was still beating with a pulse.

• The beating heart was placed into a bowl and burned for the gods. • If the sacrifice was a brave warrior, after he was killed, he would be

rolled down 365 temple steps down to a waiting crowd. • Then he would get torn apart and the priest would wear his skin and

dance around in it

Maya Queen "Lady Xoc" draws a barbed rope through her pierced tongue

Maya Burial Customs

• The Maya's dead would be put to rest with a piece of maize, or Indian corn, and a stone bead placed in their mouth.

• The maize served as food for their long journey to the heavens and the bead was used as a toll for them to get there.

• Their graves would face either north or west, the direction of the Maya heavens, so that it was easier for them to access the other world.

• Before the bodies were placed inside of their grave, they were wrapped in cotton blankets.

• Only people of the highest ranks were buried in actual tombs. The tombs had nine "step platforms" that represented the nine layers of the underworld.

• The Maya culture believed that the color red was a symbol of death and second birth. The dead bodies had scraps of cinnabar, or red sulfide, laid on them to substitute pigment.

Strange beliefs

• They saw bones as seeds and in that way they believed that everything dies and goes into the earth and from the earth comes new life.

• The Mayan shamans told them that there was a spirit world behind their reality. Birth was coming out of the spirit world and death was returning to the spirit world. They believed that there was an unending cycle that affected everything. The crops would grow and die if the spirit world let them.

Titlegoes

Rah Heer• The bodies of the dead were wrapped in cotton mantles before

being buried. Burial sites were oriented to provide access to the otherworld. Graves faced north or west, in the directions of the Maya heavens, and others were located in caves, believed to be entrances to the underworld.

• Burial practices of the Maya changed over the course of time. In the late Preclassic period, people were buried in a flexed position, later the dead were laid to rest in an extended position. In the late Classic period, the elite constructed vaulted tombs, and some rulers ordered the construction of large burial complexes. In the post-Classic period, cremation became more common than elaborate burial sites.

• http://conundrum08.blogspot.com/2008/05/maya-one-of-greatest-civilizations_27.html

• http://library.thinkquest.org/TQ0310200/beliefs.html • http://library.thinkquest.org/TQ0310200/beliefs.html • http://connections.smsd.org/csi/burial%20customs.htm• http://harmsc.pbworks.com/w/page/16800223/Maya-

Death-Rituals-and-Sacrifices • http://harmsc.pbworks.com/w/page/16800223/Maya-

Death-Rituals-and-Sacrifices