mayans began to develop around 300 a.d. in what is now southern mexico, guatemala, belize, honduras,...
TRANSCRIPT
Mayans
• Began to develop around 300 A.D. in what is now southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador
• Known as “The People of the Jaguar”
Characteristics of a Civilization
• Intensive agricultural techniques like animal power, crop rotation, and irrigation
• A social hierarchy• Organized religion and education• Development of complex forms of economic
exchange• Development of new technologies
Agriculture• Soil in Mesoamerican
lowlands was thin and quickly lost fertility– Mayans built terraces to
retain the silt and therefore greatly improved agricultural production
• Raised maize, cotton, and cacao– Cacao was a precious
commodity consumed mostly by nobles and even used as money
Cacao tree
Cities
Cities: Tikal
• From about 300 to 900, the Maya built more than eight large ceremonial centers– All had pyramids, palaces, and temples
• Some of the larger ones attracted dense populations and evolved into genuine cities– The most important was Tikal– Small city-kingdoms served as the means of
Mayan political organization
Cities: Tikal
• Tikal was the most important Mayan political center between the 4th and 9th Centuries– Reached its peak between 600 and 800 with
a population of nearly 40,000
• The Temple of the Jaguar dominated the skyline and represented Tikal’s control over the surrounding region which had a population of about 500,000
Tikal: Temple of the Jaguar
• 154 feet high• Served as
funerary pyramid for Lord Cacao, Maya ruler of the late 6th and early 7th centuries
Social Hierarchy
A Mayan PriestA Mayan Warrior
Social Hierarchy
• King and ruling family• Priests• Hereditary nobility (from which came the
merchant class)• Warriors• Professionals and artisans• Peasants• Slaves
Social Hierarchy• King and ruling family
– Ruled from the city-kingdoms such as Tikal
– Ruled by semi-divine right and believed their connection with the gods was maintained by ritual human sacrifice
– Often had names associated with the jaguar
• Priests– Maintained an elaborate
calendar and transmitted knowledge of writing, astronomy, and mathematics A Mayan King
Social Hierarchy
• Hereditary nobility (from which came the merchant class)– Owned most of the land and cooperated with the kings
and priests by organizing military forces and participating in religious rituals
• Warriors– Mayan kingdoms fought constantly with each other
and warriors won tremendous prestige by capturing high-ranking enemies
– Captives were usually made slaves, humiliated, tortured, and ritually sacrificed
Social Hierarchy
• Professionals and artisans– Architects and sculptors supervised construction of
the large monuments and public buildings
• Peasants– Fed the entire society
• Slaves– Provided physical labor for the construction of cities
and monuments– Often had been captured in battle
Religion and Education
Human Sacrifice and Bloodletting Ritual
Bloodletting Rituals
• Mayans believed the shedding of human blood would prompt the gods to send rain to water the maize
• Bloodletting involved both war captives and Mayan royals
Mayan queen holds a bowl filled with strips of paper used to collect blood.
Economic Exchange
Mayan symbol for movement
Economic Exchange
• Traveling merchants served not just as traders but also as ambassadors to neighboring lands and allied people
• Traded mainly in exotic and luxury goods such as rare animal skins, cacao beans, and finely crafted works of art which rulers coveted as signs of special status
• Cacao used as money
New Technologies
Mayan Calendar Observatory at El Caracol
New Technologies• Excelled in astronomy and
mathematics– Could plot planetary cycles and
predict eclipses of the sun and moon
– Invented the concept of zero and used a symbol to represent zero mathematically, which facilitated the manipulation of large numbers
– By combining astronomy and mathematics, calculated the length of the solar year at 365.242 days– about 17 seconds shorter than the figure reached by modern astronomers
Mayan numerical
system
New Technologies: Calendar
• Mayan priests developed the most elaborate calendar of the ancient Americas
• Interwove two kinds of year– A solar year of 365 days governed the agricultural
cycle– A ritual year of 260 days governed daily affairs by
organizing time into twenty “months” of thirteen days each
• Believed each day derived certain characteristics from its position on both the solar and ritual calendars and carefully studied the combinations– Lucky and unlucky days
Art and Writing
Mayan writing
Mayan Decline
• By about 800, most Mayan populations had begun to desert their cities– Full scale decline followed everywhere but in the
northern Yucatan
• Possible causes include foreign invasion, internal dissension and civil war, failure of the water control system leading to agricultural disaster, ecological problems caused by destruction of the forests, epidemic diseases, and natural disasters