Maya Inca Aztec

The Maya spread south along a finger of land, which is surrounded by the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea and takes up presend-day southern Mexico, Guatemala and northern Belize. It took up 125,000 square miles, and contained both highlands, which spread through a mountain range in the south part that included active volcanoes, and lowlands, which were located in the central and northern part of the region.

The Maya started farming in the lowland in about 1800 B.C. Then, between 1800 B.C and 500 B.C, the Maya created small farming villages.

Between A.D. 250 and 900 there were about 3 million people living in the Mayan villages. The cities were built around religious centers and in the heart of the city; they built tall limestone pyramids surrounded by large open plazas. And on top of the pyramids they build temples. When it was time to perform religious ceremonies, the priests or kings climbed the stairs to the temple.

When the Mayan population started to increase, the farmers started to farm in the hillsides, since the people needed more food. When they were getting good at growing crops almost anywhere on their land, they started trading the excess food and becoming other goods instead. They traded salt, honey, nicely decorated cotton, and jaguar pelts for jade, bright bird feathers, and cacao beans.

The Maya believed in many gods. They were always trying to please the gods, because they believed that in return, the gods would give them better weather, good crops and so on. The bad thing about that was they sacrificed food, animals and even PEOPLE. The Mayan people also believed that heaven had 13 layers, one god on each. On the highest was supposed to be muan bird, a kind of screech owl. They believed too that the underworld had 9 layers, each of which belonged to a different Lord of the Night. The Mayan also carved beautiful pictures on the tombs of their rulers, some which sacrificed their own blood because they thought that this would bless the society.

The Maya developed quite a complicating writing system, which was basically made of pictographs and symbol, ogherwise called Hyroglyphics. This was also a very special privilege, to be able to write, usually only the elite classes were able to read the symbols. Usually, text was written on stone, but also in books, whose paper was made from bark paper.

The Mayan number system:

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

http://www.michielb.nl/maya/astro.html



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