The Mayan Civilization

The Mayan Civilization was an advanced group of Mesoamerican Indians that impacted our lives to this day. They created unigene technology and farmer astronomy religious practice, they made calendars and they had religions and harmful rituals.

The technology used in farming made corn, beans and squash. They made this so they can stay alive. They did slash and burn agriculture but, they used advanced techniques of irrigation and terracing and they created temples, pyramids, palaces and the courts for playing ball. They also used this technology to create paper, and with that they wrote hieroglyphics to make books. They also used their engineering skills to build pyramids and temples. They built these buildings with stone. The source I used to get this information came from “Maya” Encyclopaedia Britannica.

They made a calendar so they can keep track of the date and they had 18 months and 20 days on the calendar. A year for them was 260 days then there 13 cycles and 20 named after that. It predicted solar eclipses according to the moon and venus and that’s how they used the calendar to tell them what day and when the solar eclipse is and it marks the day 0 date 3113. The elites are the mayan largely agricultural civilization that depends when you are born and they tell that if you are living with a royalty family or with the poor family. And the artisans are in charge of making art, furniture, decorative arts, sculptures, clothing, jewellery and food. In other words, one was born a noble. Commoners could work in any number of different trades. As we have already indicated, many commoners were farmers or agricultural workers. But there were also artisans and merchants. Some of these artisans and merchants grew to be quite wealthy and powerful. This wealth and power gained them influence certainly, but it did not make them noble. In fact, the nobles guarded their elite status by forbidding commoners from wearing the cloths of a noble. The sources “Representation of Mayan Hieroglyphics on a Stele, from 'Narrative and Critical History of America,' Published in 1889”.

The religion/rituals killed people to make their god happy and if they didn’t kill anyone it was thought that something bad would happen. They would kill someone and draw their human blood to show the god they sacrificed their people for him. The Mayan religion was involved with several astronomy and followed many rituals of most gods. The Mayans are known for their calendars and astronomical buildings after that, they used this during their religious rituals.

All in all, the Mayans impacted our modern lives because they built pyramids, made food created calendars, used hieroglyphic writing, made paper, and created books. The Mayans are nice people and they were people that kept track of the calendar. The Mayan civilization fell apart because it was overgrown with jungle vegetation and there were armed conflict with other empires. Also the river they depended on was disrupted so they had trouble with their trade routes. The Spaniards conquered the area in the early 16th century and when they took over their whole land from them after they started falling apart. That was the best time to take over and they used very fertilized soil to help the crops grow.