The Maya civilization developed in an area that encompasses southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. The Maya developed a highly complex series of interlocking ritual calendars, employed mathematics, and employed one of the earliest instances of the explicit zero in the world. The Mayans recorded their history and ritual in screenfold books, of which only three examples remain.
About Maya civilization in brief
The Maya civilization developed in an area that encompasses southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and Belize, and the western portions of Honduras and El Salvador. Today, the Maya peoples number well over 6 million people, speaking over twenty-eight surviving Mayan languages and residing in nearly the same area as their ancestors. The Maya developed a highly complex series of interlocking ritual calendars, employed mathematics, and employed one of the earliest instances of the explicit zero in the world. As a part of their religion, the Mayans practised human sacrifice. The Mayans recorded their history and ritual in screenfold books, of which only three examples remain. There are also a great many examples of Maya stelae and ceramics found on stela and stucco, but these have been destroyed by the Spanish. The Mesoamerican cultural area, which covers a region from northern Mexico southwards into Central America, was one of six cradles of the cradle of the Mesoamorcan civilization. It includes the Yucatán Peninsula, the highlands of the Sierra Madre, the Petén Basin and the Pacific littoral plain. The Archaic period, prior to 2000 BC, saw the first developments in agriculture and the earliest villages. The Preclassic period saw the establishment of the first complex societies in the Maya region. The Classic period is largely defined as when the Maya were raising sculpted monuments with Long Count dates. The Postclassic period saw the rise of Chichen Itza in the north and the expansion of the aggressive Kʼicheʼ kingdom in the Guatemalan Highlands.
In the 16th century, the Spanish Empire colonised the MesOamerican region, and a lengthy series of campaigns saw the fall of Nojpetén, the last Maya city, in 1697. The Maya were literate and developed a complex system of hieroglyphic writing that was the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in pre-Columbian Americas. They also created art using both perishable and non-perishable materials, including wood, jade, obsidian, ceramic, sculpted stone monuments, stuccos, and finely painted murals. The first Maya cities developed around 750 BC, and by 500 BC these cities possessed monumental architecture, including large temples with elaborate stucca façades. Maya politics was dominated by a closed system of patronage, although the exact political make-up of a kingdom varied from city-state to city- state. In the Maya Lowlands two great rivals, the cities of Tikal and Calakmul, became powerful. By the Late Classic, the aristocracy had greatly increased, resulting in the corresponding reduction in the exclusive power of the divine king. There was a widespread political collapse in the central Maya region, resulting in internecine warfare, the abandonment of cities, and a northward shift of population. This period saw the Maya civilization develop many city-states linked by a complex trade network.
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This page is based on the article Maya civilization published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 03, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
