The Mayan Civilization

The Mayan civilization was a group of indigenous people that lasted from 1000 B.C-1542

AD. The Mayans originated from Yucatan area which is now modern day Mexico. They then

spread to Central America , Guatemala, Belize, and Western Honduras. The mayans ruled with a

God like structure that passed down to family, at first the civilization started with city-states

and then transitioned to a Monarch government. The Mayans were polytheistic and worshipped

many of the Nature Gods, astronomy was also a big part of their religion. One of the ways to

reach salvation in the mayan religion was to sacrifice yourself to the gods by having the priest

cut out your heart while you were still alive. Some of the cultural and intellectual developments

are the mayan calendar, the yucatec language, and pyramids. The Mayans have two calendars the

religious one and the astronomical calendar. The religious calendar has two cycles, one cycle is

twenty days and the othe other has thirteen, both cycles will add up to a two hundred and sixty

day year. The astronomical calendar that has three hundred and sixty five days in each year, but

this calendar has nineteen months with twenty days in each month but the nineteenth month

which has five unlucky days. The pyramids was another cultural developments that inspired the

egyptians. The economic patterns of the mayans was largely based on agriculture and trade,

many people worked as farmers or cloth makers. The social classes of the Mayans were divided

by wealth and economic status. First there was the rulers because they made the most money,

then there was the priests and nobles, next there were the merchants, finally you had the peasants

and slaves. The slaves were not treated poorly and helped a lot with the farming. The slaves had

no privileges or rights, so they were at the bottom of the social class. This affected how they

lived greatly because it affected where they lived, or how much food they could get. In

Conclusion this is how the mayan civilization lived.

References
http://history-world.org/maya.htm
http://www.crystalinks.com/mayangeography.html
http://www.ancient.eu/Maya_Government/
http://anthropology.msu.edu/anp264-ss13/2013/04/24/mayans-religion-gods-animal-spirits-and-
pyramids/
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Mayan-languages
http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/Maya/p/Ancient-Maya-Architecture.htm
https://maya.nmai.si.edu/calendar/calendar-system
https://sites.google.com/site/ancientmayancivilization/ancient-mayan-economics
http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/c.php?g=424847&p=3593020
http://ancientmayacivilization.weebly.com/government-and-social-structure.html