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The Maya are people of southern Mexico and northern Central America (Guatemala, Belize, western Honduras, and El Salvador) with some 3,000 years of history.The Maya were noted as well for elaborate and highly decorated ceremonial architecture, including temple-pyramids, palaces and observatories, all built without metal tools. They were also skilled farmers, clearing large sections of tropical rain forest and, where groundwater was scarce, building sizeable underground reservoirs for the storage of rainwater.
Maya history can be characterized as cycles of rise and fall: city-states rose in prominence and fell into decline, only to be replaced by others. It could also be described as one of continuity and change, guided by a religion that remains the foundation of their culture. For those who follow the ancient Maya traditions, the belief in the influence of the cosmos on human lives and the necessity of paying homage to the gods through rituals continues to find expression in a modern hybrid Christian-Maya faith. The Maya were part of the Mesoamerican Pre-Columbian cultures. Contrary to popular myth, the Maya people never “disappeared.” Millions still live in the region, and many of them still speak one of the Maya family of languages.
Origins
Archaeological evidence shows the Maya started to build ceremonial architecture approximately 3000 years ago. There is some disagreement about the borders and difference between the early Maya and their neighboring Pre-Classic Mesoamerican civilization, the Olmec culture. The Olmec and early Maya seem to have influenced each other.
The earliest monuments consist of simple burial mounds, the precursors to pyramids erected in later times.
Eventually, the Olmec culture faded after spreading its influence into the Yucatan peninsula, present-day Guatemala, and other regions
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Many consider Maya art of their Classic Era (c. 200 to 900 a.d.) to be the most sophisticated and beautiful of the ancient New World. The carvings and stucco reliefs at Palenque and the statuary of Copán are especially fine, showing a grace and accurate observation of the human form that reminded early archaeologists of Classical civilization of the Old World, hence the name bestowed on this era. Today’s handicrafts are still produced using ancient techniques and retain their importance within the Maya culture. Weaving has now become one of the Maya’s best known features. Textiles made from cotton were used by the ancient Maya just as they are today. The Maya also make baskets, pottery and wood carvings of animals, saints and brightly-painted toys and chests. Ceremonial masks are yet another specialty.
We have only hints of the advanced painting of the classic Maya, mostly what has survived are funerary pottery and other Maya ceramics. Also a building at Bonampak holds ancient murals that survived by fortunate accident. With the decipherment of the Maya script it was discovered that the Maya were one of the few civilizations where artists attached their name to their work.
Architecture
As unique and spectacular as any Greek or Roman architecture, Maya architecture spans many thousands of years; yet, often the most dramatic and easily recognizable as Maya are the fantastic stepped pyramids from the Terminal Pre-classic period and beyond. These pyramids relied on intricate carved stone in order to create a stair stepped design. Each pyramid was dedicated to a deity whose shrine sat at its peak. During this “height” of Maya culture, the centers of their religious, commercial and bureaucratic power grew into incredible cities, including Chichen Itza, Tikal, and Uxmal. Through observation of the numerous consistent elements and stylistic distinctions, remnants of Maya architecture have become an important key to understanding the evolution of their ancient civilization.
Urban design
As Maya cities spread throughout the varied geography of Mesoamerica, the extent of site planning appears to be minimal; their cities being built somewhat haphazardly as dictated by the topography of each independent location, Maya architecture tends to integrate a great degree of natural features. For instance, some cities existing on the flat limestone plains of the northern Yucatan grew into great sprawling municipalities, while others built in the hills of Usumacinta utilized the natural loft of the topography to raise their towers and temples to impressive heights. However, some semblance of order, as required by any large city, still prevailed.
Building materials
A surprising aspect of the great Maya structures is their lack of many advanced technologies that would seem to be necessary for such constructions. Lacking metal tools, pulleys and perhaps even the wheel, Maya architecture required one thing in abundance: manpower. Yet, beyond this enormous requirement, the remaining materials seem to have been readily available. All stone for Maya structures appears to have been taken from local quarries; most often this was limestone which, while being quarried remained pliable enough to be worked with stone tools … only hardening once removed from its bed. In addition to the structural use of limestone, much of their mortar used crushed, burnt, and mixed limestone that mimicked the properties of cement and was used just as widely for stucco finishing as it was for mortar; however, later improvements in quarrying techniques reduced the necessity for this limestone-stucco as their stones began to fit quite perfectly, yet it remained a crucial element in some post and lintel roofs. In the case of the common homes, wooden poles, adobe, and thatch were the primary materials; however, instances of what appear to be common houses of limestone have been discovered as well. It should be noted that one instance, in the city of Comalcalco, fired-clay bricks have been found as a substitute for a lack of any substantial stone deposits.
Building process
All evidence seems to suggest that most stone buildings existed on top of a platform sub-structure that varied in height from less than a meter, in the case of terraces and smaller structures, to 45 meters in the case of great temples and pyramids.The huge ceremonial esplanade in Tikal contains three big platforms, and over them rest the pyramidal buildings so common in the ancient Maya cities.
Decoration in relief, molded in stucco, reached a high degree of perfection in Palenque. Stucco was a very fine paste made of lime with a bit of sand in it, which was in turn applied over stone supports anchored to the walls, ceilings or crests. In many cases, the interior side of the walls were covered with stucco and later painted. A flight of often steep stone steps split the large stepped platforms on at least one side, contributing to the common bi-symmetrical appearance of Maya architecture. Depending on the prevalent stylistic tendencies of an area, these platforms most often were built of a cut and stucco stone exterior filled with densely packed gravel. As is the case with many other Maya relief, those on the platforms often were related to the intended purpose of the residing structure.
Thus, as the sub-structural platforms were completed, the grand residences and temples of the Maya were constructed on the solid foundations of the platforms. As all structures were built, little attention seems to have been given to their utilitarian functionality and much to their external aesthetics; however, a certain repeated aspect, the corbeled arch, was often utilized to mimic the appearance and feel of the simple Maya hut. Though not an effective tool to increase interior space, as it required thick stone walls to support the high ceiling, some temples utilized repeated arches, or a corbeled vault, to construct what the Maya referred to as pibnal, or sweatbath, such as those in the Temple of the Cross at Palenque. As structures were completed, typically extensive relief work was added … often simply to the covering of stucco used to smooth any imperfections; however, many lintel carvings have been discovered, as well as actual stone carvings used as a facade. Commonly, these would continue uninterrupted around an entire structure and contain a variety of artwork pertaining to the inhabitants or purpose of a building. Though not the case in all Maya locations, broad use of painted stucco has been discovered as well.
Notable constructions
Ceremonial platforms
These were commonly limestone platforms of typically less than four meters in height where public ceremonies and religious rites were performed. Constructed in the fashion of a typical foundation platform, these were often accented by carved figures, altars and perhaps tzompantli, a stake used to display the heads of victims or defeated Mesoamerican ball game opponents.
Palaces
Large and often highly decorated, the palaces usually sat close to the center of a city and housed the population’s elite. Any exceedingly large royal palace, or one consisting of many chambers on different levels might be referred to as an acropolis. However, often these were one-story and consisted of many small chambers and often at least one interior courtyard; these structures appear to take into account the needed functionality required of a residence, as well as the decoration required for their inhabitants stature. Archaeologists seem to agree that many palaces are home to various tombs. At Copán, beneath over four-hundred years of later remodeling, a tomb for one of the ancient rulers has been discovered and the North Acropolis at Tikal appears to have been the site of numerous burials during the Terminal Pre-classic and Early Classic periods.
Maya hieroglyphics
The Maya writing system (often called hieroglyphics from a vague superficial resemblance to the Ancient Egyptian writing, to which it is not related) was a combination of phonetic symbols and logograms. It is the only known writing system of the Pre-Columbian New World which can completely represent spoken language to the same degree as the written language of the old world.
The decipherment of the Maya writings has been a long laborous process. Bits of it were first deciphered in the late 19th and early 20th century (mostly the parts having to do with numbers, the calendar, and astronomy), but major breakthroughs came starting in the 1960s and 1970s and accelerated rapidly thereafter, so that now the majority of Maya texts can be read nearly completely in their original languages.
Unfortunately, shortly after the conquest, zealous Spanish priests, notably Bishop Diego de Landa, ordered the burning of all the Maya books. While many stone inscriptions survive, only 3 books (including the Madrid Codex) and a few pages of a fourth survive from the ancient libraries. Rectangular lumps of plaster and paint chips are a frequent discovery in Maya archaeology; they are the tantalzing remains of what had been books after all the organic material has decayed.
Mathematics
The Maya (or their Olmec predecessors) independently developed the concept of zero, and used a base 20 numbering system (see Maya numerals). Inscriptions show them on occasion working with sums up to the hundreds of millions. The Maya counting system required only three symbols: a dot representing a value of one, a bar representing five, and a shell representing zero. These three symbols were used in various combinations, to keep track of calendar events both past and future, and so that even uneducated people could do the simple arithmetic needed for trade and commerce. That the Maya understood the value of zero is remarkable - most of the world’s civilizations had no concept of zero at that time. They produced extremely accurate astronomical observations; their charts of the movements of the moon and planets are equal or superior to any other civilization working from naked eye observation. The Maya calculation of the length of the solar year was somewhat superior to that used in the Gregorian Calendar.
The Maya considered some numbers more sacred than others. One of these special numbers was 20, as it represented the number of fingers and toes a human being could count on. Another special number was five, as this represented the number of digits on a hand or foot. Thirteen was sacred as the number of original Maya gods. Another sacred number was 52, representing the number of years in a “bundle", a unit similar in concept to our century. Another number, 400, had sacred meaning as the number of Maya gods of the night.
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