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The characteristics of an empire:. Large army Absolute ruler Citizens pay tribute and receive protection Territory separated into lots Farms Strict laws Wealth concentrated on only the upper class. Social classes Conquering people. The Mayan Empire.
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The characteristics of an empire: • Large army • Absolute ruler • Citizens pay tribute and receive protection • Territory separated into lots • Farms • Strict laws • Wealth concentrated on only the upper class. • Social classes • Conquering people
The Mayan Empire • Was centered in the Yucatan Peninsula which is now a part of Mexico. Parts of the Mayan Empire were also in the modern day countries of Guatemala, Belize and Honduras.
Peace loving? • Historians used to believe that the Mayans were quiet, peace-loving scholars. Now we know that they were anything but peaceful. They were raiders and traders.
Trading • They traded widely throughout Central America and along the Caribbean coast. They traded items such as jade, salt, wax, cacao, honey, feathers, cotton and pottery.
Mayan Alphabet • The Mayans developed a written pictograph language that used pictures or symbols is a glyph. Over 800 of these have been identified so far. Each glyph represents not a letter, but an idea such as “birth”, “ capture” or “burial”
Only the upper classes used the Mayan written languages and wrote books called codex. When the Spanish arrived in Central America, they found these books and burned them because they believed them to be pagan. Codex (codecies)
Codex continued Only 2 complete Mayan books remain. We still cannot fully translate the language today.
Astronomy • Mayan priests charted the movements of the planets and stars. They were able to predict eclipses because of their precision.
Mayan Time • It has been said that the Mayan genius was in the area of astronomy but there real obsession was in the area of time. They developed an accurate calendar with 365 days in a year and a leap year every 4 years– years before Europeans came up with a similar idea. We now have a calendar that has a year of 365.2422 days.
The beginning of time? • For Mayans, the date of the beginning of time was Aug. 11, 3114 B.C. They divided time into many different units like our days, weeks, month etc. A day was a kin and a bactun was a period of 144,000 days. We have no idea why they needed a unit like this.
To do all these calculations, the Mayans created a system of mathematics that included the concept of zero. They did this 500 years before anyone else in the world thought of it. The Mayans Love Math!!
Mayan Social Classes • Mayan society was divided into rigid social classes. The priests and rulers and their families were at the top. These people possessed all the knowledge and learning. They were the only ones who could read and write the language and use the mathematics.
The upper class lived like kings in huge stone palaces and were carried everywhere they went in litters. There were at least two important Mayan rulers that were women. Social Classes continued…
Social Classes… • The Mayans buried their high-ranking dead in secret tombs under stone-temple pyramids.
Burial • The Mayans did not mummify their dead but they did have similarities to the Egyptian pharaoh burials. Also, like the pharaohs, many of the upper classes intermarried, probably brothers and sisters.
FOOD!!! • The most important food was corn along with the other crops they grew. They also hunted, fished and trapped. They raised an ugly, fat little breed of hairless dog that they ate and uses as sacrificial offerings to the gods.
Mayan Government • They were like ancient Greece in that they were organized into city-states. Each city seemed to have a different importance.
Cities or centers? • These places may not have been cities at all. They may have been ceremonial centers. They were not lived in year-round. Only priests, the rulers, and a few of the merchants lived there all the time. The ordinary people lived in small villages outside of the ‘city’ but came in for the religious ceremonies.
Religion • Religion controlled every aspect of Mayan life. The Mayans were polytheistic, meaning that they worshipped many gods. Every moment of the day was governed by a different god. You even had a special god of your birth that you were supposed to pay special attention to.
Other Mayan gods… • god of Rain and god of Corn.
Worship Ceremonies • The ceremonies often involved small offerings such as food or flowers. Sometimes they sacrificed small dogs. It doesn’t appear that they performed many human sacrifices however, they may have done “blood-letting”. The “Sacred Well of the Mayans” in Chichen Itza may have been an exception.
In this picture, a woman is performing the bloodletting ceremony by pulling a thorn-rope through her tongue.
The Mayans built Chichen Itza between two sacred wells. I think one theyused for drinking water and the other was used to throw stuff in, err... make sacrifices. Here are a couple pictures of the Sacred Cenote, which is the well they found a bunch of skeletons in (i.e. not the drinking one). I don't know about you, but this is not what I think of when I think of a well. The thing is huge. And deep. But you can understand why ancient people would regard it as sacred.
Don’t you wish we had a sacred ball game? • This was much more than a game; it was a religious ceremony. The two opposing teams may have represented good and evil. The game, in the Mayan language was pok-ta-pok. Today, it is known by its Spanish name, pelota.
Pok-ta-pok • The game was played, only by men, on a paved court shaped like a giant capital “I”. Each Mayan city had at least one ballcourt. Chichen Itza had 7.
Pok-ta-pok: The Facts • The ball was about the size of a melon. It was made of solid rubber and had the density and weight of a bowling ball. The game was dangerous and violent. Many men were usually hurt or killed in the game, even though they wore protective rubber padding and wooden helmets.
How would you do this? • There was a vertically mounted hoop about 15 foot off of the floor. The object of the game was to keep the ball moving and put the ball through the hoop without using your hands and your feet. The games sometimes went on for days before either team could score.
And the winner is… • After really important games, the winners would chase the losers and humiliate them by stealing their clothing, their jewelry and cutting off their long hair. Later, losers may have been killed. Temple murals show ballplayers with human heads hanging from their belts.
What do you consider beautiful? • Upper classes of society (men more than women) wore a lot of jewelry including pendants, breast plates, bracelets, decorated head bands and arm bands.
Beautiful or not? • Pierced nose, lips and ears? • Incised teeth with jade and coral? • Filed, sharp-pointed teeth? • Tattoos on the back of their hands using hollow fish bones to inject colored dyes into designs. They painted their ears, noses, lips, knees, necks, wrists and ankles in bright colors.
Beautiful or not? • Men and women wore their long hair in two or four braids that were elaborately arranged on their heads.
Short is in! • The Mayans were short, stocky people. They considered long, narrow, almost pointed heads quite beautiful. Using cradleboards, they shaped their babies’ heads shortly after they were born.
Look at that nose! • Long, hooked noses were also thought to be beautiful. They may have intentionally broken their noses to achieve their shape.
Crossed Eyes • Crossed eyes were also thought to be beautiful to the Mayans. They were able to do this by hanging a colored bead from a baby’s cradleboard of from a lock of hair. The baby’s eyes focused inward, on the bead, and eventually stayed that way.
Where did they go? • By about 1,000 AD the Mayans had abandoned their cities and no one really knows why. The theory is that Mayan society became increasingly violent and destroyed itself. Temple murals give evidence to this.
The steps to ruin… • City-state compete against each other. • Prisoners of war go from slavery to death. • They were first tortured and then sacrificed to the gods. • Would you stay? It’s not hard to imagine why the ordinary Mayans began to hide in the jungle and slip quietly away instead of killing each other off as the upper classes did.
