(ORDO NEWS) — The Maya excelled in agriculture, pottery, writing, calendars, and arithmetic, leaving behind an incredible amount of impressive architecture and symbolic artwork.
The ancient Maya, a diverse indigenous people who lived in what is now Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, were one of the most sophisticated and complex civilizations in the Western Hemisphere.
The Maya civilization lasted more than 2,000 years, but the period from 300 to 900 years. AD, known as the classical period, was its heyday.
During this period, the Maya acquired a deep knowledge of astronomy.
They also learned how to grow corn, beans, squash and cassava in sometimes inhospitable conditions; build complex cities without the use of modern machines; communicate with each other using one of the world‘s first written languages; measure time using not one, but two complex calendar systems.
The Classic Period, which began around 250 AD, was the golden age of the Maya empire.
The classical Maya civilization reached almost 40 cities with large populations, including Tikal, Huaxactun, Copan, Bonampak, Dos Pilas, Calakmul, Palenque and Rio Bec.
During excavations in Maya territory, squares, palaces, temples and pyramids were discovered.
Supported by large agricultural populations, Maya cities, while practicing primitive “cut and burn” agriculture, also showed evidence of more advanced agricultural practices such as irrigation and terracing.
Many of the temples and palaces built by the Classical Maya were stepped pyramidal in shape and were decorated with highly detailed reliefs and inscriptions. These structures earned the Maya a reputation as the great artists of Mesoamerica.
The use of zero and the creation of complex calendar systems such as the Round Calendar based on 365 days and later the Long Count Calendar of more than 5,000 years were among the many mathematical and astronomical innovations made by the Maya under the guidance of their religious ritual.
The Maya built their temples and other sacred buildings using their sophisticated knowledge of astronomy.
For example, the location of the pyramid at Chichen Itza in Mexico is determined by the position of the sun at the spring and autumn equinoxes.
On these two days, the shadow of the pyramid at dusk coincides with the sculpture of the head of the Mayan serpent god. The snake, as it were, crawls into the ground at sunset; the shadow serves as the snake’s body.
Surprisingly, the ancient Maya were able to build elaborate temples and huge cities without the use of metal and wheels, two things we consider essential building materials.
However, they used a number of other “new” inventions and technologies, especially in the decorative arts.
For example, they created intricate looms for weaving fabrics and created many brilliant dyes using mica, a material that is still used in technology today.
Until recently, it was believed that vulcanization – the process of mixing rubber with other materials to give it greater strength – was developed in the 19th century by an American (from Connecticut) Charles Goodyear.
Historians now believe that the Maya were making rubber products 3,000 years before Goodyear received his patent in 1843.
According to researchers, the Maya discovered this technology by accident during a sacred rite in which they mixed a rubber tree with a morning glory plant.
When the Maya discovered how durable and adaptable the new material was, they began to use it for a variety of purposes, including the production of waterproof fabric, glue, bookbinding, figurines, and giant rubber balls used in a ritual game called rolling.
Like many other great lost civilizations around the world, the Maya formalized their language into a codified script.
As in ancient Egypt, glyphs were used to represent words, sounds, and syllables through images and other symbols. Historians believe that the Maya used about 800 glyphs for this, and, surprisingly, 80% of their language is still understood by descendants.
The Maya also created a form of early book that described daily life, news, exploits of their gods, and more.
Like any other intelligent civilization, the Maya sought to record their history and achievements, even going so far as to record important events on pillars, walls and huge stone slabs, as did the ancient Egyptians and Romans. Their books were written on bark and folded into fan-shaped structures.
The Dresden Codex, the oldest surviving book written in the Americas, contains charts of Venus, Mars and the Moon. The Maya also calculated the frequency of lunar eclipses from observations and tracked the movements of Jupiter and Saturn.
Mayan medicine was more advanced than one might think, and like other cultures, medicine was a mixture of religion and science.
The Maya believed that imbalance and balance were the keys to good and bad health. Health and disease correlate with balance. They believed that a person’s diet, sex, and age are always determining factors.
They knew about sutures and often used human hair to stitch wounds together. They also regularly made casts to speed up the healing and repair of fractures and other bone breakdowns.
They were reputedly particularly skilled in dentistry and used iron pyrite as dental fillings. The Mayan “witch doctors” were also skilled at making prosthetic limbs from jade and turquoise, and used obsidian to make cuts.
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