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The Ancient Maya
The Maya of Mesoamerica, along with the Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru, made up the high civilizations of the American Indians at the time of the Spanish conquest. Both the Aztecs and the Incas were late civilizations, between 1300-1533 AD, but the Maya of the Yucatan and Guatemala exhibited a cultural continuity spanning more than 2,000 years, 1000 BC-AD 1542. Many aspects of this culture continue yet today. The Ancient Maya in their time had actually refined writing. They had an extensive written language, which was both phonetic as well as ideographic. One of only five independently created writing systems in human history. Maya words were in hieroglyphs, each picture with its own meaning. Unlike other ancient Central American civilizations, the Maya could write in words, sentences, and even stories. Arranging several pictures together in a logical form would create a story. The Maya covered their cities and buildings with hieroglyphs carved into the stone. Most of the Maya could read some hieroglyphs, but the priests and nobles were the only people who actually had knowledge of the entire language. The Maya would also use quills made of turkey feathers to write in books made of soft bark taken from a type of fig tree. Religion was the center of the Mayan life. Mayans believed that there were two levels of the world. The first level was the physical world and the second was the spiritual world, which consisted of the old dead ancestors, gods, and other supernatural creatures. The Mayan kings and spiritual leaders would tell the lower levels of the society what would please the gods. The gods were modeled after animals for sacrificial purposes and religious ceremonies. The ancient Maya had many beliefs. They had possessed an in depth understanding of astronomy, engineering, and mathematics. The Maya believed that the Sun, Moon, and other planets, had been journeys of th... Please login to view comments from other users.
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