Cary Academy 6th Grade Mayan Museum Catalog

Mayan Museum Catalog

Cary Academy 6th Grade Class of 2020 Š 2013

El Castillo

The image above is the most commonly known temple-pyramid El Castillo which was made and still is in Chechen Itza. El Castillo means castle in Spanish so they named this structure El Castillo because this temple-pyramid was bigger than the plaza therefore making it the biggest object in Chechen Itza. The temple-pyramid represented the feathered serpent because of how the shadow of the pyramid looks like a snake on the Equinoxes. Since El Castillo was the biggest and most commonly known temple the Mayans typically took more sacrifices in the temple. Other temples were built because the other cities needed somewhere to make their sacrifices other than El Castillo. El Castillo never got replaced by any of the other temples to make it seem grander because they want the big temple to be in a big city.

Mayan temple-pyramids are very grand and they would be exciting to see.

Stone mountains were also known as Mayan temples or pyramids. The mountains were used mostly for sacrifice. But why were they used for sacrifice? Why couldn’t they just use their house? The Mayan temple-pyramids were used for specific reasons like where they were built and how high they were built. First of all the kings of the Maya spent most of their time going into the temple-pyramids for a use to the portal to the underworld. They would have to make the sacrifices in the temple-pyramids because that was the only way for the sacrificed blood to get where it needs to go. If the gods of the underworld didn’t get their part of the sacrificed blood they would force the Maya to have a plentiful

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day of farming and harvesting. The temple-pyramids were built in forests because there was so much nature around the temple-pyramids. All of the gods controlled some type of nature so if the scent of the blood went through the forests the gods could possibly get it there. The temple-pyramids were often built high up in the sky so that the blood filled air could get where it needed to go. Being built so high aloud the gods from high up be able to get the sacrificed blood. When the kings died they were placed under the temple-pyramids because it was a Mayan belief that if you took something of nature it was sacrificing itself for you. Therefore you have to sacrifice back to the earth. This way since the kings were buried underground both the gods of the underworld and the gods of good day could share the king’s flesh. The kings always had control of the temple-pyramids so they took their sacrifices on the most important days of the year. The kings took their sacrifices on the day of the Equinoxes and the solstices although sacrifices weren’t taken very often. Overall sacrifices were taken in the temple-pyramids because they were a direct passage to gods both good and bad.

There were Mayan temple-pyramids built everywhere in a lot of cities. But why’d they build more than one in a city? One reason was they wanted to make the older temple-pyramids look bigger and more to want to make their sacrifices in. The Maya had made at least one temple per planet or god in which case they called the people who ruled the planets. All of the temple-pyramids had to be lined up correctly to the sun when the Equinoxes and solstices were intact this is why they built so many very often. The temple-pyramids were also a part of religion; the Mayans had to choose which temple to worship by the standards of what god the temple-pyramids represented. Rulers or kings were buried under every temple, and they didn’t know how long they would be civilized for. Therefore they built as many temples as they could.

Citations

Dr. Herman Smith Dig K http://ambergriscaye.com/museum/digit14.html Casado internet group

McKillop, Heather. The Ancient Maya: New Perspectives. New York: Norton, 2004.

Pasted from <http://latinamericanhistory.about.com/od/Maya/p/Ancient-Maya-Architecture.htm>

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Robert Nicholson The Maya. Two-Can Publishing Ltd 1993. Print.

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Bonampak Mural

The Bonampak Mural was found in the Chiapas, about 2 hours from Palenque. It was announced to the public in 1946, when a modern-day Lacandon Maya showed the temple to Giles Healey. Giles Healey was the first outsider to see the temple. There is a lot of research done of the temple. One of them was a reproduction of the mural, where only part of it took a long time. Diana Magaloni-Kerpel discovered that the Maya only had a few basic colors. She discovered that to get different colors, the Maya would paint layers and layers of paint on top of each other, to change the tone of the color. Stephen Houston is one of the many that translated the glyphs, in the background of the picture. Scientists also did connections with different things, like how Bonampak translates to painted walls.

The Bonampak Mural was painted in the Late Classical period (600-900 C.E.), and its exact date when it was painted is 800 C.E. It was painted in honor of the city Yaxchilan, and it was also painted to show the story of the last ruling family of the city of Bonampak, Lady Rabbit and King Chan Muwan. The Bonampak Mural is very informative to historians, because it shows a progression of instruments such as trumpets, drums, and rattles. They also know things like how trumpets were long and straight and were usually made of gourd or wood, with help from the mural.

The image on top is part of the Bonampak Mural. If you look closely you can see faded lines that represent stairs. The stairs were like a social class pyramid. If you look closely to the very top of the picture you will see the gods. Then you go down to the teal part, you will see some Mayans wearing headdresses and jaguar skin.

This indicates they were royals. Now look at the part under the royals. The men wearing loin cloths are the ones about to be sacrificed. We know that by the way they are sort of pleading to the king. Then, below that are the soldiers. You can tell that they are soldiers because of their weapons. The man on top, with the big headdress, was the king (in this case the King Chan Muwan, like stated on paragraph 2). This sacrifice was only

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for blood. Most of the information we know archeologists infer, and historians, like Stephen Houston, check it by translating the glyphs.

"Chiapas." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 23 Oct. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/middle/article/319480>.

"Bonampak." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 23 Oct. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/middle/article/487463>.

"Latin American music." Britannica School.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 23 Oct. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/middle/article/389218>.

Miller, Mary "Making an heir apparent" National Geographic 187: 62. February 1995.Print.

Gibson, Clare. The Hidden Life of the Ancient Maya. New York: Metro Books, 2010.Print.

Flaherty, Thomas H., Ed. The Mayan Ball Game. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1993. Print.

Miller, Marry "The Mayans Mural of Bonampak: Windows on an Ancient Culture" Yale, Date unknown. Web. October 24, 2013 "Bonampak, Mexico ".Map. Google Maps. Google, 25 October, 2013. Web. 25 October, 2013

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Bonampak Mural (whole)

Where was it located?

The Bonampak archaeological site has a huge forest area that is home to the representative rainforests of southeastern Mexico. It is part of one of the most important forest areas in the country. The small city of Bonampak flourished during the mid-8th century. Bonampak is a Mayan city located in the Mexican state of Chiapas, in the valley of the Lacanha River, about 20 miles south of Yaxchilan. The small site is best known for its murals depicting scenes of courtly life and battles. The ancient Maya site of Bonampak is home to the most complete and important mural program of the ancient Americas. The site and its murals became first known to non-Mayan people in 1946, when photographer Giles Healey, accompanied by two Maya Lacandones, reached Bonampak and the Temple of the Paintings during a deer hunt. The discovery of the paintings, especially the Mural of the Battle, caused a huge debate among Maya scholars, since at that time the most accepted view was that the ancient Maya were a peaceful people, more interested in mathematics and astronomic observations than warfare.

Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inside?

The Bonampak Mural is a famous mural in Maya. It has different rooms showing daily Mayan life and ritual sacrifices. The murals in the second and third rooms were especially important in dismantling the long-held (until the mid-20th century) and romanticized notion of the ancient Maya as serene and peace-loving people. The mural pictures scenes of events occurring between AD 790 and 792 showing loincloth-clad prisoners of war suffering torture and decapitation at the feet of Bonampak's finely dressed lords and ladies. Three rooms feature a series of murals painted in brilliant colors on plaster. The pictures cover even the sloped walls that rise up to the peaked ceiling. The people in the painting at one-half to two-thirds scale are detailed and lifelike. The first room shows lords in white cloaks in front of a royal family on a large throne with a servant holding up a royal child. Another wall shows lords preparing for a P2 AEH

dance-they wear jaguar pelts and huge feathered back frames with stuffed boa constrictors as part of their headdresses. Another mural shows the same lords fully dressed performing their dance while musicians play. The Bonampak murals have provided the best evidence to date of the value of infrared as a tool of archaeological recovery.

What does it picture?

The Bonampak Mural shows prisoners at an ancient Mayan tribe’s feet after a war. There are a lot of bright colors from nature like blue, red and green. Some of the prisoners look like they already have been sacrificed to the gods. These were part of the Scenes of Sacrifice. The people standing above the prisoners were the priests and the king. The headdresses that they wear indicate their high place in the Mayan social pyramid. The headdresses had quetzal feathers on it. Quetzal feathers were a symbol of power. They also wore jaguar skins that symbolized strength. Jaguars were hard to catch, so if you had a jaguar skin on, it would mean that you had the strength to kill a jaguar. The mural is drawn in a castle of the winning tribe’s village.

Citations Miller, Mary. “The Maya Murals of Bonampak: Windows on an Ancient Culture.” Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. Yale University, 2013. Web. 10/28/13.

"Bonampak." Britannica School. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

Flaherty, Thomas H. Ed. The Magnificent Maya. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1993 p. 92 Eboch, Chris. Life Among the Maya. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2005. Print.

“Zona Arqueológica de Bonampak.” Mundo Maya. Mexico, 2013. Web. 10/28/13 Maestri, Nicoletta. “Bonampak.” About.com, Archeology. About.com, 2013. Web. 10/29/13 Maestri, Nicoletta. “The Murals of Bonampak, Chiapas Mexico.” About.com, Archeology.

About.com, 2013. Web. 10/29/13

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Bonampak Mural Selection

A war lost, women, children and men held captive, and priests preparing for sacrifice and a ball game. The Mayanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s culture was focused around their sacred sacrifice rituals. The Mayans believed that sacrifice helped them keep the fragile balance between men and god existing for one more day. The idea of sacrifice originated from the Mayanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s creation story. The gods created humans because they wanted the humans to give them things. But the first humans were not satisfactory to the gods so the gods destroyed them. When the gods created new people, made of corn, they made sure the people knew to survive they needed to sacrifice things to the gods. Thus the Mayan began preforming and perfecting their sacred rituals. Since the Mayans believed that sacrifice was the only thing that kept them alive and prevented the gods from killing them, they were always very careful about what they sacrificed. Some things that were sacrificed other than humans were gold, Jade, and precious jewels. The Mayans were also very careful with their human sacrifices. If a person was born on the five unlucky days of the year they would not be sacrificed for fear of angering the gods with a bad sacrifice. If the leader of a longtime rival was captured a great celebration would be held! The leader would have a large sacrifice, be painted blue (the color of sacrifice) and the entire community was invited to come to the decapitation of the leader. But the game of sacrifice was a risky one; an entire city could be completely erased if they went to war and lost. They would lose everything and be completely off the mapâ&#x20AC;Ś Sacrifice served many purposes in the ancient Mayan world. It was thought to bring good times to the land. If a great time of famine or drought came the king would perform blood sacrifice to please the gods and try to convince the gods to make things better. This would practically be required of the king because the other people in the city believed that the king kept the connection between men and god. They also believed that the king could receive messages and guidance from the gods. However, according to the ancient Mayan beliefs, the kings were not the only people who could receive messages from the gods Commoners could P2 BHS

also receive messages, but this process often ended with the death of a person. If things were looking pretty bad a person, normally a child, was selected to be thrown into the city or village’s main cenote (a large whole lined with limestone and full of water). If the child survived the impact with the water he/she would swim around until the priests came back the next afternoon to see if they had survived. They would then (if the child was still alive) throw down a rope, pull the child up, and then ask the child for guidance and answers from the gods.

The beautiful Bonampak Mural with its bright colors is like a snapshot out of the ancient Mayan world. It shows the King and possibly a high priest surrounded by prisoners who are being sacrificed or being prepared to be sacrificed. The King and high priest are adorned with beautiful feathers, headdresses, and beautiful jewelry to show their importance. The priest has several attendants to help him preform the sacrifice ritual. The war victims are suffering from decapitation and torture. Bright blues and vibrant colors are used in this mural. You can see from the way the king standing with his staff he is the center at the moment. He seems to have an aura of power surrounding him as he and the priest prepare to kill the prisoners. Through the many sacrifice rituals the Maya believed they could keep themselves alive for one more day in their ancient world.

Work Cited: Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.Maya." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

Day, Nancy. Your Travel Guide to Ancient Mayan Civilization. Minneapolis: Runestone Press, 2001. Print Laughton, Timothy. The Maya Life, Myth, and Art. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1998.

Print. "pre-Columbian civilizations." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

Smith, Herman. "Mayan Human Sacrifice… Say it isn't True."ambergriscaye. Casado Internet Group, Web. Friday October twenty fifth, 2013

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Cacao Beans

The Maya traded for necessary items as well as items that were for sacrifice and rituals. They realized that everything they needed was not found nearby. This led them to be inter-dependent with nearby people. Two of the things the Maya traded for were thorny Oysters and Conch shells. These items were important because they are extremely sharp and often used for blood sacrifice. Blood sacrifice was very important to the Maya because they believed that it was one of the best ways to please the gods. The shells would most likely have been used for blood sacrifice rituals such as piercing your tongue or cutting your hand. They also traded for green jade which represented power and wealth. The kings were often buried with this important stone to show the power and wealth of the ruler. Green jade also used as a type of currency. Along with shells and green jade they traded for quetzal feathers. The quetzal bird was considered sacred to the Maya because of their god Quetzal Coatl. They believed that he was the serpent of the sky. To the Maya, the sky represented the heavens. The good gods were associated with the heavens. This led them to the idea that if their rulers had the feathers, they would be associated with the good gods. It was very important for the Maya to trade for both necessary and religious items.

One of the major merchant gods was Ek Chuah. He is depicted as a god carrying a bundle of goods on his back like an everyday merchant. He is sometimes shown with the head of the god Xaman Ek. Xaman Ek is the god of the North Star. To the Maya the North Star was the merchants guide thus making it fitting that Ek Chuah would often be shown with the head of this god. His hieroglyph is an eye with a black ring. This is fitting because Ek means star and Chuah means black. Ek Chuah was also the patron of coco. Farmers who grew coco would have a ceremony for him at the beginning of the month Muรกn. Mayan merchants who were away from home would bring incense with them. Incense was a product that when it was burned would let off a sweet smell. Before they went to bed the merchants who were traveling would lay out a sacrifice to Ek Chuah asking him to bring them home safely. First they would lay out three flat rocks and cover them in incense. Then they would lay out another three flat rocks and put incense on top of those. Overall Ek Chuah was a very important god to the Maya culture especially to the merchants.

In the picture above you can see the cacao pods growing at the bottom of a tree. In order to grow they must be in very high temperatures and a humid environment. They also need to have plenty of rainfall throughout the year and grow well in shade. Because the cacao needed very certain conditions they were very valuable. One of the purposes for cacao was to make chocolate. The chocolate they made is not like what we would think of as chocolate but richer and usually mixed some sort of spice like cinnamon or ginger. They would use the cacao to make a very P6.JRD

expensive drink that would only be used at very important ceremonies. Aside from chocolate cacao was also one of the Mayas main sources of currency. Almost there entire economic system revolved around this plant. For 100 cacao beans you could buy a good turkey, a hare or forest rabbit or one adult male slave. For 30 cacao beans you beans you could get a small rabbit, for four you could get a pumpkin and for one you could get chopped firewood.

As you can see cacao was a large part of the Maya world both economically and ritually.

Citations: Arthur J. O. Anderson, Frances Berdan and James Lockhart, trans. and eds., Beyond the Codices: The Nahua View of Colonial Mexico (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 211.

Day, Nancy, and Tim Parlin. Your travel guide to ancient Mayan civilization. Minneapolis: Runestone, 2001. Print. " Maya Religion Ek Chuah: God of commence" The Maya Explorer. TQ Team. Web. October 24,2013.

Moore,K. and Ripely-Moffitt, M. "class notes: Maya unit", Cary Academy. 2013.

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Cacao Beans

Overtime, the Mayan people found that hunting and gathering wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t effective enough to sustain large population overtime. There soon became farming; however there was not always enough that the Mayan people had. With the new expansion of territory, the people dispersed into different lands where they could develop new cities and towns. Depending on the terrain, some towns had different items that were ideal for living in Mayan times. Trading soon sprouted as a great way to communicate with other Mayan cultures and to acquire different items for one culture that they didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t originally have. Trading developed paths around Mesoamerica to make traveling easier, and even the growth of Tikal, a major commerce hub for traders.

The Mayans had a variety of items that they traded across lands. The trade of items desired by the royalty increased the bond between two Mayan nations. Because of this, often the trader who set out on the journey through the vast landscapes, the trader never got recognition. These items included jade, quetzal feathers, cacao, seashells, elaborate polychrome pottery, amber, and turquoise. Not only did commerce involve luxury items, but it also gave supplies that the Mayan people needed to live. Salt, cacao beans, and other agriculture products allowed Mayans to prosper as a nation.

The picture above shows a type of bean that is grown on trees during Mayan times. This was bartered because it was the starting ingredient for chocolate. After the bean sprouts on the trees, it creates these green pods that later contain the cacao beans. When harvested, the pods will produce cacao beans that will eventually be made into cocoa beans. To do this, farmers dried and fermented the beans. The beans came out as a variety of white and brown when the pod was ready to be opened. These were especially important with Mayan trading since it formed a very popular food throughout the Mayan nations.

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Ardren, Traci, and Justin Lowry. "The Travels of Maya Merchants in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries Ad: Investigations at Xuenkal and the Greater Cupul Province, Yucatan, Mexico."

World Archaeology 43.3 (2011): 428-443. Art Source. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.

Andrews, A. P. and Mock, S. 2002. New perspectives on the Pre-Hispanic salt trade. In Ancient Maya Political Economies (eds M. Masson and D. Freidel). Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, pp. 307â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 34.

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City Layouts

You will most likely find caves and cenotes in many Mayan centers. The central areas of the city were for religious and public buildings. Some were for the houses of rulers and the elite. Palaces for the lesser nobility and houses for common people were built farther out of these areas, with sacbe connecting them. City defensive structures were surrounded by farms and forests. From the center outward these various areas were connected by sacbe. From the center outward, the buildings built have less importance when the building is farther away.

Royal palaces, ball courts, and less important government buildings were adjacent or close by. Most important government and religious buildings surrounded the city plaza. The Mayans built more than 3,000 buildings in the center of the city. Sacbe connected ceremonial center to the outlying parts of city. Large-scale Mayan cities were made up of ceremonial center, in the middle, residential suburbs, near the center, then smaller outlying towns, forests, and jungles farther out.

This picture, (above) is of a map of Mayan city centers in modern day Chichen Itza and Uxmal. As you can see, the city in Chichen Itza has a pyramid, the Castillo de Kukulcan (El Castillo), an observatory, the Caracol Observatorio, which is fascinating because it is round, and you can still visit it today. There are also some temples and platforms scattered around the center. There are two cenotes, the larger one, called Cenote Sagrado, The Sacred Cenote. The smaller cenote is called Cenote Xtoloc. The long “L” shaped part to the down left, next to El Castillo is called the Hall of a Thousand Columns. On the other side of El Castillo there are a series of temples, dedicated to the Jaguar God, and in front of that, (going up) there is a massive ball court. If you go right and down of the ball court, you will find the platform of the eagle, a”T” shaped blob on here. (Unlabeled.) If you go north of this, (on this map, up) you will find the Platform of The Cones, a temple dedicated to Venus, (the planet, not the god.) Uxmal is laid out similarly like Chichen Itza, with the platforms, temples, and pyramids in the center, and less important buildings farther out.

Citations Baquedano, Elizabeth. Aztec, Inca & Maya. New York: Knopf, 1993. Print.

Day, Nancy, and Tim Parlin. Your travel guide to ancient Mayan civilization. Minneapolis: Runestone, 2001. Print.

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City Layouts

The Mayans had vast open spaces to prepare for buildings. Most of the buildings were made of stone and limestone but, on the outskirts of town the villages were made of wood.

Mayan cites had many beautiful temples in the open air plaza that could hold the entire cities population for ceremonies and sacrifices. The Mayans built their cities in layers. Near the second layer to the middle held ballgame courts. Inside the temple were glyphs of the kings, kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s family, and gods. Each city was its own independent state.

The Mayans built their cities off blunt symmetry. They also used tools for the buildings.

The tools were mostly wood and stone. After a while the Mayans started using basalt and obsidian tools, the material from volcanoes. It took the Mayans 2-3 months for one hundred people to build a high temple. A king would have been supervising the operation or his second highest man in command.

In this picture (left) Chechen Itza and (right) Uxmal are both Mayan cites. The base plan of the two cities is to have layers. In the middle were the high temples and the plaza. Around the second layer are the ball court and the higher housing. The third layer is most of the merchants lived. The fourth layer was home to the farming villages. If you were one who lived in the villages you didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t come to the city for any ceremony in the plaza.

Lowe, Lindsey,ed. Ancient Aztec and Maya .Redding: Brown Bear Books, 2009.

Mayan Architecture https://www.courses.psu.edu/anth/anth008_cmg149/mayan.html psu,edu, 10/24/13.web.

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Uxmal." Britannica School. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 25 Oct. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/middle/article/339247>.

Pasted from <http://school.eb.com/levels/middle/article/339247> "Yucatรกn peninsula." Britannica School. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 25 Oct. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/middle/article/277863>.

Pasted from <http://school.eb.com/levels/middle/article/277863> Gibson, Clare. The Hidden Life of the Ancient Maya. New York: METRO BOOKS, 2010.print.

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Clay Figure of Ixchel

A lot of people in Mesoamerica wove. Weaving had all sorts of purposes like ritual sacrifices where the weaving was given to the gods. Weavings were also used as wrappings for the dead, decorating for chambers, and payment. Women were the ones that would weave and they kept their looms in place by a belt they wore around their hips. They also used a batten which is a wooden tool used when weaving. The weavings had symbols that told Mayan myths and stories. There were many symbols that the weavers wove like symbols for the Mayan calendar, ancestors and the universe. Each weaver had their own symbol that they would weave into the weaving like a signature. The Mayan also used a lot of interesting things for dyes. They used brazilwood, shellfish, indigo and even cochineal (bugs). They also used plants for fibers in their weavings like cotton, yucca plants and agave plants. The Mayans did many interesting things when they wove and used what they created for a variety of purposes.

Weaving was very important to the Mayans. They had weaving gods and symbols in their weaving. The Mayans clothes were a significant part of their life. The clothes showed power and their rank in the social structure. Women wore clothes that had signs that showed that they were Mayan. They also wore clothing that ranked them in the power they held in Mayan society. Mayans who were poor wore clothes that were shabby while people like priests, deities and rulers were draped with woven garments that symbolized power. The Mayans had many weaving gods. They believed that the gods had spun the sky and that the Moon goddess had taught women to weave sacred designs. They had more than just one weaving goddess; they had the Moon Goddess, Ixchel, Chak Chel and many more. Their weavings told Mayan mythology, history and chronology. Weaving had always been central to the Mayansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; world, maybe even as important as their gods and goddesses.

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This image is a clay figure of one of the goddesses the Mayans believed in. They called the goddess Ixchel, who was the goddess of weaving and the patroness of women. The goddess seems to be weaving at her loom. The loom is attached to the goddess’ waist to keep it in place.

Weaving was probably very important to the Mayans because Ixchel is only one of many weaving goddesses. Some of the other weaving goddesses are the Moon Goddess and Chak Chel. This figure of Ixchel is one of many things the Mayans made that represents the art of weaving that the Mayans did.

Sources Cited Baquedano, Elizabeth. Eyewitness Books: Aztec, Inca, and Maya. P. 42. Dorling Kindereslyd.

1993. “Mesoamerica Textiles Art History”. Print.

http://www.saratogausd.org/redwood/index.php/forms-and-flyers/doc_view/174-mesoamerica-textile-art-history-and-pictures?tmpl=component&format=raw. Web. “Images of the Maya”. Florida Museum of Natural History. Florida Museum of Natural History.

Web. Schele, Linda. "Foreword". The Maya Textile Tradition. Margot Blum Schevill, ed.

New York; Harry N. Abrams, 1997. Print.

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Clay Figure of Ix Chel (Goddess) Weaving

The Maya were very intricate weavers and they used some very interesting technology in their weaving.

Most of the weaving was woven with cotton (for the upper class) or maguey fiber Most looms were back strap looms and the looms were called this because they had a strap that went around the weavers back and the weaver could a just the tightness of the weaving by changing how much pressure they put on the strap. The loom hung from a pole or tree branch. The string was died before it was woven and the dies were made out of plants, flowers, fruit, berries, bark, shellfish, and cochineal (an insect that lives in cactus plants. They used needles made out of cactus spines or copper. The women wove in groups so they had someone to talk to while they weaved and so they could share resources with each other. You could a just the pattern of the weaving by adding and subtracting heddles (loops of thread that went around a stick attached to the bar that smoothed out the weaving.

The Maya were very intricate weavers who used interesting patterns that had significant meanings. One of the patterns that was in the weaving was a diamond pattern which represented the universe and the path of the sun, there is a big diamond with a smaller diamond inside it was in the center, 2 small diamonds on little sticks coming from the top and bottom of the largest center diamond (one on the top and one on the bottom) , a vulture with 2 spirals coming off each side of the diamond and it has 2 really big spiral wings spiraling down the body and in between the places where the wings meet the body a little bit above there is a diamond shaped head with a smaller diamond in the head there is a large triangular shaped tail with some lines going down the tail there is a very skinny body with 2 legs around the same with as the body coming from the place where the wings meet the body, the vulture represents the legend of Noah and the great flood that destroyed the previous world. Noah sent a dove to seek dry land, when the dove who had not eaten for 40 days came across land and saw all the dead bodies it swooped down and began to eat them, at that moment the dove was turned into a vulture, another pattern the tail of a scorpion is a zigzag line with a spiral coming of each point of the zigzag line, a toad whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s body is a diamond with three smaller diamonds inside the big diamond, the head is a diamond that looks the same as the diamond in the body and is attached to the body with a thin neck, there are 4 legs coming of the body and each leg has three toes, The earth lord has a diamond body and two legs and a tail that hangs from in between the legs and the tail splits into two ends at the end, he has two arms that end in spirals and a head that has four horns sticking up on the top of his head.

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The figurine of Ix Chel shown above is made of clay. In the figure, she is wearing a headdress, earrings, and a necklace. She is most likely wearing a huipĂ­l (it is the Mayan version of a shirt) and a shawl on her upper body. Ix Chel was the goddess of weaving for the Maya. Ix Chel was sometimes called the Goddess of the Moon who taught women to weave sacred designs. The Ix Chel figure is weaving with a back strap loom hanging from a post. Unlike most Mayan women Ix Chel is weaving alone and not in a group of weavers. This image shows the importance of weaving to the Maya.

Citations: Baquedano, Elizabeth. Aztec Inca and the Maya. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1993. Print "Symbols in Mayan Textiles". Images of the Maya. Florida Museum of Natural History.

"The process of weaving". Images of the Maya. Florida Museum of Natural History.

"Natural dyes". Images of the Maya. Florida Museum of Natural History.

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Clay figure of Mayan ruler

The types of clothes the Mayans wore To the Mayans, the clothing you wore depended about your level on the social structure. If you were a commoner than you wore simple clothing that was made out of a rough fiber material. Common women wore a simple blouse and skirt. Common men wore a breechcloth covered by and cloak. The men also had a headband around their forehead with a bird in the center. The men wore sandals that were made from the neck of a lama. The upper classes wore more brightly colored clothing. Priests and nobles were high up on the social pyramid and wore jewelry and headdresses on special occasions. The childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s clothing was made from wool and had bright colors. The Mayans wore different types of clothing depending on their social status. But all the clothing was sensible and was a part of their culture.

Common hair styles: The womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hair styles tended to be simple and easy to create. The women might wear their hair in a simple ponytail with a string or a braid or decorate their hair to make it a bit fancier. Both men and women wore their hair fancy and high to draw the attention of others. The men sometimes burnt their hair in the middle to make a bald spot in the middle of their heads to attract the attention of others. The men and women also might use string to tie their hair into ponytails. Even if you are poor, you still might wear your hair in a braid,

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or wear it neatly down. Now, here, we might also wear our hair down or in a braid or even a ponytail. But there are still some hairstyles that are specific to the Mayans and always will be.

The clay figure of a Mayan ruler: This is a figure of a Mayan ruler. What you see here is a powerful Mayan man wearing earplugs, an ornate necklace, and he is also walking barefoot. This sculpture is made of clay as you can see by the brown body. This kind of art was very informational to the Maya. This would show that this man was a powerful ruler, and wore traditional royal clothing. Now we could paint a picture and people understand what it is or what it represents, this kind of art was the self- explanatory kind of art.

Bibliography: "Beauty ~ Mayan Kids." Beauty ~ Mayan Kids. N.p., 2008. Web. 28 Oct. 2013.

"Middle American Indian." Britannica School. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 28 Oct. 2013.

Schevill, Margot Blum, ed. The Maya Textile Tradition. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997. Print.

Day, Nancy. Your Travel Guide To Ancient Mayan Civilization. Minneapolis: Runestone Press, 2001.Print.

Baquedano, Elizabeth. Eyewitness Books The Aztec, Inca, and Maya. Dorling Kindersley Limited, London, 1993. Print.

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Clay Figure of Mayan Ruler The Maya modified their appearance in many ways.

One of the ways they modified their appearance was when they tattooed themselves. In the Mayan society tattooing was a sign of bravery. When getting a tattoo the Mayans would use a sharp rock to cut into their skin, then they would paint on top of the scar to leave a tattoo in the skin. Another way the Mayans would modify their appearance would be when they reshaped their head. The Mayans thought that having a head shaped like maize (corn) was fashionable. They would put a wooden frame on babyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heads to reshape it because they are malleable. One thing that the Mayans absolutely loved was jewelry. The Mayans loved jewelry so much that even the peasants would wear it.

The peasants would wear jewelry made of mostly wood, bone, and cheap shells. Upper classes would wear jade, obsidian, coral, or even jaguar teeth. As you can see here, the Mayans had many ways of modifying their appearance to show bravery or their status in society.

The clothing the Maya wore on special occasions is very famous and you may have heard of it. One thing you may not have heard about is what they would wear on a normal day. A Mayan man would normally wear a loincloth or sometimes a cloak when it was needed. A Mayan woman would normally wear a blouse and a skirt, or sometimes a loose dress. While our clothes are generally made of cotton, Mayan clothes are made of tapa, a cloth that was made from tree bark. Cotton clothes for the Mayans were reserved for upper classes because making cotton was a very long process without a loom. You can see here that what a Mayan would normally wear was very basic compared to what we wear.

The image you see above is a clay figurine of a powerful man. As you can see, he is wearing an ornate necklace, which could be made of jade. People who wore jade tended to be high up in society. You may also see that the man has a large nose; this nose was made out of clay, and it could show that you were high up in society as well. He is also short and robust like many of the Mayans. As you have seen here, a Mayans outfit was largely determined by their status in society, so we can learn how high some people were in society.

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Citations: Baquedano, Elizabeth. Aztec Inca & Maya.

New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Print. "dress." Britannica School. EncyclopĂŚdia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 23 Oct. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/middle/article/274065>.

Eboch, Chris. Life Among The Maya.

Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2005. Print.

Nicholson, Robert. The Maya.

New York: Chelsea Juniors, 1994. Print.

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Clay figure of warrior

The Maya would decorate their weapons to look more fierce and strong while they were at war. Their weapons were covered with vibrant colors of paint. The most common colors on the weapons would be red, yellow, green, and blue. The colors of paint could sometimes tell you where the weapons were made because of what resources were available when they made the paint to put on the weapons. (Berries, dirt, clay) Mayans also decorated their weapons with feathers. They used feathers for headdresses while they were fighting at war. When the Maya decorated their weapons they thought that it could bring them luck, and it was an important part of their religion.

The Maya used a variety of weapons. They had wooden weapons, stone weapons, and many other weapons that were made of many different materials. They would carve the wood and attach pieces of stone that were mostly obsidian. The bow and arrow wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t introduced to the Maya until the 9th century. To make the bow and arrow they would have to collect sticks and they would use hemp cord for the string. They used reed arrows and attached sharp fish teeth to the end of the arrow for the point. They would make weapons because they would have to hunt with them, fight with them, and they would have to do sacrifice with the tools. It would be hard to live without weapons.

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In the picture you should see a clay sculpture of a warrior holding a shield. If you look at the warrior you should also see that the warrior is wearing a type of equipment. The equipment is what Mayans would wear at war. If you look at the shield you can see that it is decorated with some designs that they would use as a symbol and also as a decorative design. The helmet type piece on their head has feathers on it. This is also a type of decorating as you know from the paragraph from above. The Maya had to have weapons to stay alive and they were highly needed in their culture.

Citations:   

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Eboch, Chris. Life Among the Maya. Lucent Books, 2005. Print, pages 64-67 Students by students. Maya weapons and warfare. Projects by students for students.

October 21, 2013.

Foster, Lynn. Handbook to life in the Ancient Maya World. Pages 145-146. October 25, 2013. Print

Clay Figure of Warrior

The Mesoamericans used many different types of weapons. A few of these weapons were bow and arrow, spears, shields, etc. This was mainly in the Classic Maya, and people used the weapons in battle. Weaponry was crafted out of stone, the Maya did not use metals for tools, if they used things like silver and gold, the tools would break very easily. They made sure the weaponry was beautifully crafted, like a bow and arrow decorated with many colorful feathers. Mayan warfare was made based upon gods, so if you see their weapons, it might portray a jaguar or some kind of death god. Some weapons were built for long distance, and some were built for hand to hand combat. Overall, the most common weapons were bows and arrows, spears, and armor.

Mayan weapons were not made out of the same material that weapons today are made of. The Mayans did, however, use metals for ceremonies and decoration. Most weapons were made out of stone, but had some kind of flint or obsidian tip. Aztecs used bows and cotton slings for their long range attacks. They also used the javelin, a type of spear, and a two handed sword called a macana. If you had arrows to be used with bows, your arrow was usually made out of reed, and pointed with flint or sharp fish teeth. For hand to hand combat, many times, they used razor sharp obsidian spiked clubs. Spears and knives were also made with flint or obsidian tips. Obsidian is a type of volcanic rock with very sharp edges. Sometimes, the Mesoamericans even used wood to make wood spears, but still had obsidian tips. Axes were also a popular weapon, but of course, tipped with flint or obsidian. As you can see, obsidian and flint were very common resources for weapons.

In the image shown, a clay figure made by the Maya shows a warrior during battle and the weapons mainly used. In the picture, the warrior looks like he is ready for a hand to hand combat battle. He holds a shield, most likely made of stone, and looks like he is holding a knife or a small spear. He protects himself with armor, such as a helmet, and a vest. These are most P2 HEM

Clay Figure of Warrior

likely made out wood, flint, or obsidian. Some armor was even made out leather, which they got from deer, a popular food. Armor and weaponry was decorated with bright colors, and you can see in the image, there are pieces of some kind of metal on the armor. Warriors always wore a variety of artillery when in battle or preparing for battle.

Eboch, Chris. Life Among the Maya. Farmington Hills: Thompson Gale, 2005. Print.

Foster, Lynn V. Handbook to Life in the Ancient Maya World. New York: Facts On File, 2002.

Print.

“Maya Warfare.” Authentic Maya. Authentic Maya, 2005. Web. 10/24/2013 “Maya Weapons and Warfare.” ThinkQuest. Oracle. Web. 10/24/2013 Staeger, Rob. “Tools and Weapons of Central and South America”10. 2003. Pg46. EBSCO. Web. 10/24/13

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Clay Incense Burner

Some of the things that the Mayans used for healing are things that we use today. Most of their medicine was made from medicinal plants that were found in the forest. A lot of medicinal plants that the Maya used are the basis of modern medicine. In addition to medicinal plants, they also used bats, toads, blood, woodpecker’s beaks, and things like that. When the Mayans were performing surgery, some metal instruments were used. We know that some of their surgical instruments were made from bone and swordfishes jawbone because of carvings that were found on monuments. Dental surgery and extraction didn’t happen very often. The Mayans didn’t perform a lot of different surgeries like we do now. The Mayans called physicians “ah-men” and you had to be inherited to be a physician. The education needed to be a physician covered reading, writing, and arithmetic. The Mayans had a translucent stone, which a physician could use to determine the source of an illness. To get a stone, the Mayan gods and a healer could wait years for a stone to come. When the Mayans were praying for treatment, they prayed to the Nine Benevolent Mayan gods, especially Ixchal. The Mayans were very smart, and that shows in their medicine.

The Mayans had a lot of different medicinal plants, which were used to make different medicines. All of the locals thought that tobacco was a cure- all. They also used cocoa as a primary remedy for most things. A lot of different parts of plants and trees are used for medicine. The euphorbia plant, guavas, and sap from the rubber tree helped cure diseases like dysentery. The Mayans would gather wild plants to help with diabetes and also to speed up childbirth. Most of the time men would apply treatment for 13 days and women would apply treatment for 9 days. The Mayans concept of drugs was the same as the Greeks. The Mayans had 150 different vocabulary terms for medicine. Some of the names of some organs are: brain, comel; heart, puczikal; stomach, ichputzikal; lung, zacol; bile, kah; spleen, pek; liver, tamnel; intestines, hobnel; bladder, tem ix; pericardium, natam. The Mayan’s mixed different medicinal plants to make one medicine. Medicinal plants are the basis of modern medicine.

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The image above is of a Clay Incense Burner, which is made to hold incense. This image shows a warrior, holding a skull in his hands. A Clay Incense Burner would have been sold in markets. The burners were shaped by hand or made with two moist clay halves pressed together.

They were usually 4-10 inches tall and would be painted. The Clay Incense Burner would have held incense, which was used by priests. Priests and shamans (medicine men) would burn incense to determine who or what was responsible for the illness. Incense helped the Mayans a lot. This was because the Mayans thought that if you were sick, then you had done something to displease the gods. Since they had incense, shamans could figure out what you had done wrong. The Clay Incense Burners helped Mayans a lot with their health.

Citations: Websites  

Barrgia P. "Food of the Gods: cure for humanity? A cultural history of the medicinal and ritual use of chocolate." Chocolate. J Nutr, 2000. Web. 10/24/2013.

Guerra, Francisco. "Maya Medicine." Med Hist. 1964. Web. 10/24/2013

Books  

Eboch, Chris. Life Among the Maya. Farmington Mills: Lucent Books, 2005. Print.

Gibson, Clare. The Hidden Life of the Ancient Maya: Revelations from a Mysterious World. New York: Metro Books, 2010. Print.



Day, Nancy. Your Travel Guide to Ancient Mayan Civilization. Minneapolis: Runestone Press, 2001. Print.

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Clay Incense burner

The Mayans were very intelligent when it came to medical science. They had surgery, ways to treat and close wounds in tissue, and many other things that other cultures might not have had. For surgery they used blades made of obsidian. Obsidian blades are still used today in some hospitals in the United States for heart bypass surgery. Literature on medicine and the effects of certain plants on certain illnesses was found written in Yucatan. About 1,500 plants were used for prescriptions with herbs involved. One very important plant that was used for ritual and medicinal healing was tobacco. There were many different medicines and people that contributed to healing and health in the Mayan culture.

There were many different people that were important when it came to medicine. The sorcerers and medicine men were called hmen. They were helpful when it came to prophets and healing diseases. Medicine and techniques for healing were a mixture of both science and religion. The medicine itself was made of all types of herbs, but there were also potions, chants, and prayers that were believed to help with someoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sickness, along with the actual medicine. The Maya were oblivious with many things, such as science, art, philosophy, health, government, and many others. More often than not people like midwives, healers, and physicians were women.

The image at the top of the page is a censer. This censer is made of pottery. The cylinder shaped hole in on the top of his head is where the things they fired in there would be entered.

Censers are sometimes in the shape of humans and other things that could be seen on a daily bases. Other times the censers are in the shape of bowls. The censer is a red orange color, which was a common color for the ancient Maya. In the image you can see that the person the bowl is modifying, a person. There are many details that make this person in the picture different from people that we would see today. Things like the unusually thick and long eyelashes, the large heavy looking earrings, and the detailed patters on his jewelry and other parts of his outfit all make this person different than the people we see today.

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Sources cited: Day, Nancy, and Tim Parlin. Your travel guide to ancient Mayan civilization. Minneapolis: Runestone, 2001. Print.

Maya medicine. "Authentic Maya." Authentic Maya.2005. Web. 10/23/2013 Odijk, Pamela. The Mayas. Englewood Cliffs: Silver Burdett, 1989. Print.

Schuste, Angela. "On the healers path"54. 2001. 34. Ebsco. Web. 10/24/2013.

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Codex with Numbers

Even as far back as the Mayan times, they still had mathematical systems. The Mayan culture had one number system with dots and bars called The Vigesimal System and another with Mayan godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heads. Some artisans used numbers in Mayan glyphs to represent an age of something or a year. The Mayans also used addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

Mayans made their unique number systems to help them with their daily life.

The Mayans created a way to add, subtract, divide, and multiply with their Mayan number systems. The main Mayan number system they used was very similar to the way our number system works. A similarity between the Mayans math and our math is that the Mayans used place values in the same sort of way that we do. They worked out the place value so that there is a chart that has room for a zero on the bottom and bars on the top. One bar on top meant one and a zero at the bottom meant 0 so that would be 10 in a Mayan chart. The main difference between the Mayan number system and ours is that they used a base 20 number system and we used a base 10 system. In the same way that we do today the Mayans carried their numbers and took away from numbers when needed in subtraction. It is amazing to think that way back centuries ago there could be similarities in the number system with the Mayans back then to our number system now.

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Using Mayan glyphs, the Mayanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s were able to record and describe life during their time in history. The picture above is a Mayan glyph with the usual colors of orange, tan and black. In this Mayan glyph the numbers were meant to show that it was going to be a picture about Mayan math. If there was only one number it might have represented the age of someone or something. There are many numbers from the vigesimal system on this glyph representing one of the number systems the Mayanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s used in their culture. In this picture, the completely black Mayan is a Mayan God that is teaching the other Mayans how to do Math. It is very interesting and fun to be able to translate what this glyph written many years ago actually represented.

Citations http://web.ebscohost.com/src/detail?vid=6&sid=bcd5a71f-cb32-4303-be19f53ea45ee3bf%40sessionmgr10&hid=19&bdata=JnNpdGU9c3JjLWxpdmU%3d#db=khh&AN=17 892065&anchor=toc http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/braingames/mathandmaya/ The World of the Ancient Maya, John S. Henderson, 1997, New York

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Codex with Numbers.

The Mayan’s math and counting system was related to their calendar. The symbols they would use for counting that you would see in their calendar would be a shell, dot, or bar. They counted by base twenty’s, otherwise known as the vigesimal system. This system is good for writing large numbers because it was easy to write and it took up much less space. Therefore it was easy to carve the numbers into the calendar or other mathematical inscriptions. The bigger the number the more exponents of 20 they would add. The Mayan’s math was amazing, especially when it came to their calendars.

The Mayans were great mathematicians but their gods interfered with their mathematical predictions constantly. The Mayans looked at the constellations of their gods. Depending on where the gods were in the sky in relation to each other, the Mayan’s predictions changed. Mathematicians were also astrologers and priests.

The Mayan’s thought that if you had to plant seeds that some days were better than other days in which a god might be happy instead of mad depending on the position in the sky. They tracked the movements of the moon and planets centuries before the invention of the telescope. Not just Mayans had math relating to gods. The Aztecs had carvings that had math along with gods in the middle. The Mayans were smart but also believed in fanaticized gods as well.

The late postclassical Madrid codex contains this portrayal of the merchant god. In one hand he holds glyphs represented maize, and in other what may be the head of the death god. Behind him sits the maize god. It is a picture of the harvest of whose fate lies in the hands of the merchant god. You can see the numbers and heads of the days of the calendar that say what days that the merchant god is happy and which of those days are good for planting or harvesting maize(corn). Mathematicians would be the primary source for farmers to ask for the day for planting or harvesting.

Citations: Laughton, Timothy. Exploring the life, myth, and art of the Maya. New York: Rosen Pub., 2012. Print.

Anastasia, Laura. Scholastic News -- Edition 5/6. 10/7/2013, Vol. 82 Issue 5, p6-6. 1p.

Benson, Sonia ''Bar and dot number system’’ Detroit. Thomas Gale corporation.2005.Print.

John S. Henderson ''The world of the ancient Maya'' Ithaca. Cornell university press.1997.Print Clare Gibson'' The Hidden Life of the ancient Maya Revelations from a mysterious world." New York.

Metro Books. 2010. Print.

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Depiction of battle predicted by a priest

The priests in the Maya made predictions by observing the movements of the sun, the moon, the planets, and the stars because they were the sky gods. They also made the days of events based on their predictions, but the priests did more than just make predictions. The Ah Kin priests were the high class priests and they were very important and respected. The Ahmen priests made sure that the higher priests’ directions were followed in the villages and on the farms. They also led some ceremonies, treated illnesses and could be hired to pray on behalf of non-priests. The Ahkinob priests, who were the regular priests, presided over a lot of public ceremonies, like human sacrifices. An official called a Nacom would help the priests when they were sacrificing. The Chacs weren’t priests but they respected the elderly men and they also helped in sacrifices and puberty ceremonies. The Chilan priests predicted the future by studying the Mayan calendar, interpreting omens, and communing with the gods. They contacted the gods by fasting and might have used narcotics to invoke a trance. They would throw their selves face down on the floor of a special hut and the gods would speak to them through the rafters of the hut. The priests were in charge of making sure that the spiritual world and the material world ran smoothly. The Mayan priests also told farmers when to plant their crops and were asked many small problems that people had. Priests were a popular source for people to get help from and were very important in the Maya.

In the Maya, priests have a power in the Mayan civilization that can’t be easily broken. They used reading and writing, mathematics, astronomy, and they interpreted the calendar. Only priests understood the sciences and they kept their power. In the Mayan social classes, the priests are at the top of the divided classes behind royalty and in front of the crafts people and the wealthy merchants. The rulers, as well as the priests, lived in grand temples inside of the Mayan cities. Anyone in the Mayan social structure who wasn’t a nobleman, a priest, or a ruler was expected to respect the higher classes. The Ahua Kan Mai was the highest priest in the priest social structure that the priests could reach. They led ceremonies and taught the royal

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children of the Maya. There were also the Chilan priests who lead the daily ceremonies and communicated with the gods who also worked as doctors. The priests were considered very important in the Mayan daily life and they were at the top of the social structure and highly respected. They led many ceremonies and were a very big source for information in the Maya.

There were many different types of priests that you could be and different duties that they had.

The image is from a vase painting that was painted in the 8th century CE which is showing the outcome of a battle led in unity with the location of the planet Venus. A captive is shown who is being taken to the winnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s city. The leader of the winning army is walking behind him holding a blood tarnished club in one hand, a shield and sword in the other, and wearing a jaguar skin with its head hanging from his waist.

Baguedano, Elizabeth Eyewitness Books Aztec, Inca, and Maya. Dorling Kindersley Limited, London, 1993. Print.

Eboch, Chris. Life Among the Maya. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2005. Print.

"Maya Government"http://www.kidsnewsroom.org/elmer/infocentral/frameset/civilizations/maya/go v/ Web. October 24, 2013 "Mayan Astronomy" Crystallinks.http://www.crystalinks.com/mayan.html 24, 2013

Web. October

Nicholson, Robert. Journey Into Civilization The Maya. New York: Chelsea Juniors, 1994. Print.

Williams, Colleen Madonna Flood. "The Maya." People Of Mexico (2003): 18-27. Book Collection: Nonfiction. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.

ZORICH, ZACH. "The Maya Sense Of Time. (Cover Story)." Archaeology 65.6 (2012): 25-29.

Art Source. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.

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El Castillo at Chichen Itza

El Castillo at Chichen Itza

El Castillo was one of the most important buildings in Mayan Civilization. In the 900s, Chichen Itza was taken over by Mayan invaders. The invaders built El Castillo, this pyramid, and they designed it very carefully with each side facing a cardinal direction. Each side has 91 steps, and with the step on top, they add to a perfect 365 steps, which was the number of days in the Haab, or the everyday calendar. It was used as a temple for some gods, but it was mainly built for astronomy. Priests would go to the top of El Castillo to observe constellations and star patterns. These patterns were used to predict weather, harvest and many other things.

On the summer and winter equinoxes, it shows a feathered serpent slowly climbing up the side of it.

El Castillo was also a religious place for priests and kings to worship and collaborate with many different gods.

It was originally called the pyramid of Kukulkan, but it was altered by the Europeans that came to Maya.

Kukulkan was one of the creator gods, and they worshipped him there. The feathered serpent climbing up the side of El Castillo is said to be a descendant of Kukulkan, and the two serpent heads at the bottom of the stairs also suggest this. There was also a Red Jaguar throne inside, the sun god. Chac, the rain god, was very important to Mayan society and also represented with a statue. El Castillo has 9 layers, just like the levels of the underworld.

This is a picture of El Castillo. It is 90 feet tall and sometimes tourists are allowed to climb it. However, in this picture, tourists are only at the bottom. As you can see, there are nine layers of pyramid, with 365 steps.

There are doorways at the top, but they were only for priests and kings to enter, sometimes to connect with the gods or sometimes to observe constellations. The pyramid is in a giant open plain of what used to be Chichen Itza.

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El Castillo at Chichen Itza

Citations Coe, Michael D. The MAYA seventh edition. New York: Thames and Hudson inc, 2005.Print.

El Castillo." Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica Online Academic Edition. Encyclopedia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 23 Oct. 2013. <http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/98611/ElCastillo "El Castillo." Exploratorium. Exploratorium, 2013. October 28, 2013. Web. Gibson, Claire. The Hidden Life of the Ancient Maya. New York: Metro Books, 2010. Print.

Laughton, Timothy. The Maya Life, Myth, and Art. New York, Barnes and Noble books, 2004. Print.

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El Castillo

The buildings in Mesoamerica were made in many different and interesting ways. Chichen Itza had beautiful building with intricate designs. Most pyramids in Chichen Itza had the same style. They looked like what seemed to be a staircase going up the middle of ridged or bumpy stair like walls. They made their cities really complex along with their buildings so they needed a lot of people to make them. The king and the priests would supervise the labor and they had specialized architects. The Mayans worked harder to make the outsides of their buildings prettier than they did on the inside. They used a lot of stone and mortar for building. They burnt limestone to make the mortar. On stone they used tools such as flint, obsidian, granite, limestone, and quartzite, and on wood they used fire and basalt axes. The Mayan temples were similar to those of the Aztec. Some pyramids were built to be climbed on by priests. At the top there would be a platform that priests would perform their rituals on. The sacred pyramids that were not built for climbing had stairs too steep to climb and doors leading nowhere. So as you can see Mayans really did go above and beyond to make their buildings stand out.

They used buildings for many purposes. Some buildings were used as calendars and others for sacrificial rituals. The sacred pyramids were not meant to be touched. There are other pyramids that were meant to be climbed. Those that were able to be climbed were usually just climbed by priests. They would climb up the staircase and perform rituals. The staircases that they went up were really high because they believed that it would bring them closer to the gods. The Maya also made the buildings tall because if they were out in the jungle you would be able to see them through the jungle so they were used as landmarks. They even placed their buildings so that they faced a certain constellation.

There was a strong astrological and religious connection with their buildings. They also used some pyramids for burial chambers for high ranking officials. The Mesoamericans had many uses for buildings.

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The image above is a building in Chichen Itza called El Castillo. El Castillo is the Spanish word for the castle. Just like most other buildings built in Chichen Itza it has the stair case going up the middle with rigded walls on either side of it. This building is an example of a step pyramid. The Mayans built this pyramid with certain parts on it so that at a certain time when the light hits the pyramid it creates a shadow of a serpent. This building relates to how they constructed things in Mesoamerica because it is a typical Mayan building. It is a very large stone building that rises up and goes from a wide bottom to a smaller and narrower top. At the top there is a square looking room with balconies. It is a very outstanding and beautiful Mayan pyramid.

Moore, Christina. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Mayan Architecture.â&#x20AC;? https://www.courses.psu.edu/anth/anth008_cmg149/mbm.html. PSU. Web. 10/28/2013 Gibson, Clare. The Hidden Life of the Ancient Maya: Revelations from a Mysterious World. New York: Metro Books, 2010. Print.

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Jaguar and Other Zodiac Animals

The Ancient Maya interacted with many animals. The Maya hunted a lot of wild animals, and did not domesticate many. The animals that they did domesticate were dogs, which were companions and helped with hunting, turkeys, which were domesticated for food, and Muscovy ducks, which were also used as food for the Maya. Jaguars were hunted for their fur, and quetzals, along with many other birds, were hunted for their feathers. Jaguar skins were used for fancy clothing and book covers, and the feathers from quetzals and other birds were used for decoration, clothing, and in some cases, sacrifice. Only leaders were allowed to wear quetzal feathers. Most other animals were used for food. These animals included deer, peccary, rabbits, squirrels, monkeys, and wild pigs. The Maya killed mammals and birds with nets, blowguns, spears and snares.

The Maya interacted with many animals in only a few ways, but all with a single purpose involved: the survival of the Maya.

Animals were also very important in Mayan mythology. Some myths detailed why animals were the way they were, and other myths detailed on the relationship between the Maya and animals. The Maya believed that the Earth flowed off the back of a giant turtle, and many Mayan creation myths state that the world was created by Quetzalcoatl, a feathered serpent. The jaguar was also extremely important. He was one of the death gods, and his spots were the stars in the night sky. The jaguar was generally a symbol of great power and confidence, and he was one of the zodiac animals. The Maya also believed that each person had an animal spirit inside of them, and were called “Way’ob”. The Maya believed that they could change into their designated animal. Gods, however, could change into any animal they wanted. Many Mayan myths have animals in them, and animals were very important in Mayan mythology.

The picture shown above is of a jaguar that was painted by the Maya. Notice that he does not look much like a jaguar: he is sitting rather like a human, and his paws resemble human hands. The Maya believed animals to be more humanlike than we believe of them today. Notice how intricate the designs on the jaguar are, and how different they look from real life. Some of the spots almost look like stars, and the Maya believed that those spots were the stars in the night sky. His eyes are cast downwards and his mouth is in a slight frown. His tail points straight up, and he looks noble and strong in his position, relating to the Mayan’s beliefs about the jaguar. He is detailed in the natural color of the jaguar. The Mayans believed the jaguar as a symbol of power, and this painting represents that strength. p6. CJP

Citations Nicholson, Robert. "The Revenge of the Hero Twins". The Maya. New York, Philadelphia: Chelsea Juniors Pub., 1994. Print.

Phillips, Charles. "Divine Creatures". The Complete Illustrated History: Aztec and Maya. New York: Metro Books, 2010. Print.

Smith, Herman. "Ancient Maya subsistence... or how they got their groceries, Part two: Animals". Dig It. Casado Internet Group, Belize. Web. 23 October 2013.

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Jaguar and Other Zodiac Animals

Animals played an important role in Mayan society. They were domesticated, hunted, and used to hunt. A great portion of the creatures were found in the forests of the Lowland Maya. Mammals included deer, peccary, wild pigs, agouti, sloth, rabbits, foxes, monkeys and jaguars. Reptiles included boas, rattlesnakes, coral snakes, and many species of lizards, toads, and frogs. As for birds, there were plenty of parrots, wild turkeys, curassows, toucans, and redbreasted trogons. To hunt animals like deer and peccary, hunters used bows and arrows, traps, spears, and netting. Clay pellets shot from blow guns may have been used to kill small birds as well. Along the coast, fish, shellfish, and turtles were caught and collected. Also, in some places, bees were kept for honey and wax. Proper rituals had to be performed for a successful hunt (probably included prayers and offerings of food). When a deer was killed, the hunter would kneel beside it and apologize for his action. He offered the spirit of the animal to compensate for the killing - he needed the meat for food. Some animals were domesticated, like the dog and the turkey. Dogs were trained to accompany their masters and to help in the hunt. Turkeys were domesticated for hunting and food. Most often, the women were the ones who bred and took care of the animals, because the men had to work in the fields and the woods. Without animals, the Maya would be a very dull culture - who wouldn't?

The ancient Maya highly respected their animals. They believed in a jaguar sun god who was in control of the sun, and also a protector god in the form of a jaguar, named Balaam.

Jaguars were a symbol of power in the Mayan society. Kings, rulers, and other nobles wore jaguar fur capes to show their power. The Maya revered jaguars, even as they hunted and sacrificed them. Jaguars were even associated with the Creator as his helpers in forming the world. Another animal that was highly respected was the quetzal, a beautiful green bird with an extremely long tail that lived in the region of the Highland Maya. A very important god was named after this bird, called Quetzalcoatl. He was pictured as a flying snake, because the quetzal had such a long tail compared to its body that it looked like a snake when in flight.

Quetzal feathers were used in fancy headdresses as a symbol of power, as well as just for P2 JJZ

decoration. Also, many Mayan glyphs were pictures of animals, such as fish, birds, and beetles.

This shows how much the Maya respected animals - they even found a way to squeeze them into their writing! Although certain animals were considered more sacred than others, all beasts have their own special place in the Mayan world!

The jaguar was a very important animal to the Maya. The Maya did many paintings and murals of the great beasts on walls, caves, and vases to show how important they were. This is a naturalistic picture, with the jaguar shown in its real colors, black and orange. He is shown sitting in a prowling position, about to strike. Also, the art is meant to look real, which is why the artist painted the spots in great detail. In paintings, jaguars were shown as black or golden, the two natural color phases of the jaguar. Black represented the Jaguar God of the Underworld, and light represented the Jaguar God of the Upper World. These jaguar gods were associated with being the Creator's helpers in forming the world. Jaguars symbolized gods and nature, virility and power, royalty and magic, healing and destruction. People high on the social pyramid, like kings, wore clothing items made from jaguar fur and skin to symbolize their power. Also, many gods were depicted as a jaguar. The jaguar must have been very important for the Maya to believe it was a god!

Works Cited -

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"Ancient Secrets of the Maya". http://www.angelfire.com/folk/sunflowerfarm/ajaguar.html. Web. October 24, 2013 Coe, Michael. Atlas of ancient America. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1980. Print.

Laughton, Timothy. Exploring the life, myth, and art of the Maya. New York: Rosen Pub., 2012. Print.

Marian Blue. "Jaguar Rising". http://www.oneworldjourneys.com/jaguar/jag_myth/body.html. 2001-2002. Web. October 24, 2013 Odijk, Pamela 1. The Mayas. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Silver Burdett Press, 1990. Print.

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Madrid Codex

The Codices The Madrid Codex (the picture above) is one of the four surviving Mayan codices.

The other codices are in Dresden, Paris, and Grolier. All the codices were made of bark pages and are made in the late Mayan History. The Madrid Codex was drawn poorly and was partly burnt. It is 56 pages front and back and talked a bit about people dancing in high stilts. The Dresden Codex talks about astronomical calculations. It talks about the eclipse predictions, the syndical period of Saturn, and other things and their calculations were very accurate. The Paris Codex talks mostly about the Mayan history from long ago, before the book was made. The Grolier codex is a bit special becomes it seems to be a hybrid. It is Mayan but also seems Aztec like too. This makes it unique. All four of these codices had survived a fire because someone took them out. The Spanish used to burn the Mayan books to destroy its culture when they came to the land of Maya. These four codices are the only ancient Mayan books in the world.

The Monkey Twins The best writers in Mayan history were believed to be at their time, the Monkey Twins. The Mayans believed that the Monkey Twins used to be really good at everything including writing. But when they learned about the Mayan ball game, they practiced that all instead of everything else. They became really good at the ball game. Then their father, the maize god, went to the underworld. He didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t come out but he made the Hero Twins.

The Hero Twins were also good at everything so naturally the Monkey Twins hated them.

They played tricks on the Hero Twins when playing the ball game with them and so the Hero Twins decided to do some revenge. They lured the Monkey Twins to go up a tree that was very high using tasty fruits. The Monkey Twins couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t get down and they cried to the Hero Twins to help them get down. The Hero Twins said to loosen their belts and slide down. But when the Monkey Twins did that, the Hero Twins used some magic and they made the loose belts in to tails therefore making them monkeys. The Monkey Twins realized this when they reached the ground. Now they were bad at many things because they hadnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t practiced them for such a long time and were only good at the Mayan ball game and climbing trees. Because of this story, the scribes were represented as part monkey.

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The photo above is the Madrid Codex. The Madrid Codex was made rather messier than the other surviving codices. It has 56 bark pages front and back though it is not folded like a normal book. It uses a bold black and has written number and drawings of royalty and gods. The numbers and a lot of the glyphs have lots of information on astronomy. It also has written things about religious practices. If you look closely at the pages, you’ll see drawings of supernatural beings, these were Mayan gods. It shows many Mayan gods including the corn god and the rain god. It also shows rites used in the new times.

Citations 1. Allen, Peter and Saunders Chas. "Monkey Twins." godchecker. Godchecker, 2013. Web.

October 23rd.

2. Baquedano, Elizabeth. "Eyewitness Books" Aztecs, Inca, & Maya. London: Dorling

Kindersley Limited, 1993. Print.

3. "Dresden Codex." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Oct.

2013.

4. "Grolier Codex." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Oct.

2013.

5. Incredibleart. "Ancient Mayan Civilization." incredibleart. 1994. web.

October 23rd.

6. Laughton, Timothy. Exploring the Life, Myth, and Art of the Maya. New York: Rosen Publishing Inc. 2012. Print 7. "Paris Codex." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

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Madrid Codex Chac Chac the rain, thunder and lightning god.

The Maya believed that Chac, a god, was responsible for thunder, lightning, and rain.

Chac was often painted blue and has a nose like an elephant. Chac also had fangs and his hair was tied up. The cause of rain, thunder, and lightning was an axe that Chac carried around with him. They believed that lightning happened when he slashed things with his axe and thunder was the loud bang that the axe made when it hit something. One of the ceremonies that they did for Chac was the making of blue paint. Chac was a big part of how the Maya believed the world worked. They used his constellation to track the weather that he produced.

Unlike we do the Maya believed that there was 5 directions, there was our north, south, east, and west but they also believed that center was a 5th direction. They believed north was up; it was where all the nice gods lived. South is down and is where the underworld and all the bad gods were. East and west is where they lived; it also was the path of the sun which was the jaguar god. Center is like a magical portal that they could meet with the gods and make transactions with the gods. Most ceremonies happened in the center of their town so that they were with the gods.

This is a picture of Chac, the rain god. Chac is blue with an elephant trunk; he has a shell on his ear and in his hand. Chac is sitting in front of an alter and is getting either rain or pom resin (rubber). In other pictures of Chac he can be seen wielding flaming torches, this represented thunderstorms. He has a lot of shells because they used shells as cups to get water and he is the gods that makes water as rain. There are many glyphs around Chac that are describing what Chac is doing.

Citations Bunson, Margaret and Stephen Bunson. Ancient Mesoamerica. Facts on File: New York, 1996. Print.

"Chac." Britannica School. EncyclopĂŚdia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.

Chriscenzo, Jeeni. "A Unique View of the Universe" jaguar-son.com 1997. Web. 10/24/2013 Laughton, Timothy. The Maya Life, Myth, and Art. Barnes & Noble: New York, 2004. Print.

Patel, Samir S. "Sacred Maya Blue." Archaeology 62.1 (2009): 21. History Reference Center. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.

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Madrid Codex Chac

The Mayansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; lives revolved around religion, and they believed that the world was literally connected. They thought that the cardinal points of the Mayan world were held up by four beings, known as the Bacabs, whom they considered gods. The East and Westâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Bacabs were the gods Hobnil and Zac Cimi, respectively. The god Hozanek was the Bacab of the South, and the god Can-Tzicnal was the Bacab of the North. The different points of the Mayan world also had different colors. Red was the color for the East, black was the color for the West, yellow was the color for the South, and white was the color for the North. In addition to these areas of the Mayan World, the center of the Earth was associated with the color green. The North of the Mayan world represented the sky, heavens, and ancestors, the South represented the underworld and Xibalba, and the east and the west represented the path the sun took throughout the day. The center of the Mayan world was a sacred portal where the humans could communicate with the gods. This is how the Mayan world was believed to be connected.

The Mayans had an interesting and unique view of the world. They believed that the universe was a single entity, with the physical or material world only composing a part of the whole. They saw many of their gods as forces of nature. The Mayans envisioned a duality in all existence (they believed that there are good and bad things in life), which was the constant war between the good and evil. The outcome of this war was believed to affect humankind and its eventual destiny. The supernatural and spiritual activities conducted by the Mayans were considered part of their daily lives. Finally, the Mayans believed that various worlds had been created and destroyed in the past. These are some things that the Mayans believed about the universe.

In the picture above, Chac, the god of rain, thunder, and lightning, is shown wielding flaming torches, which represent thunder storms. He is a blue being, with an awkward, elephant-like head, and a distinctively curved nose. Chac is usually associated with the serpent, which is a symbol of lightning. He is shown multiple times in this picture. The black symbols on the image are glyphs that are describing him. Chac was one of the many gods that was seen as a force of nature. Also, Chac was an example of how the Mayans envisioned a duality in all of p6. RG

existence. This is because the rain that he brought was necessary for plant growth, while it could still harmfully destroy the plants. Also, Chac’s storms and bolts of lightning often spelt disaster. All of these things caused him to be both adored and feared, as well as pictured in many Mayan art pieces.

Citations: “Bacabs.”Godchecker.com. Compelling Books, 2013. Web. 10/30/13.

Bunson, Margaret R. and Bunson, Stephen M. Encyclopedia of Ancient Mesoamerica. New York: Facts on File, 1996. Print.

Laughton, Timothy. Exploring the life, myth, and art of the Maya. New York: Rosen Pub., 2012. Print.

"Mayan Religion."Thinkquest. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.

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Moon Goddess Rattle

Mayan gods and goddesses played a big role in Ancient Maya. The Maya thought that following the moves of Mayan gods and goddesses would predict the future. The gods can also control the nature, such as rain, sun, and good harvest. The Gods can also help the Maya win wars. To please and to gain favor of the gods, the Maya would have a lot of human sacrifice at ceremonies and important events.

Many other times, at the Mayan traditional ball game (Pok-a-tok), there would also be many scenes of sacrifice. The reason why sacrifice was a belief in Maya was because of the Popol- Vuh creation. The Heart-of-Sky wanted things to please him. He created earth, and made animals. The Heart-of-Sky told the animals to speak to him, but they could only squawk and howl. They couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t speak and praise the gods, so they served the Heart-of-Sky. Then the Heart-of-Sky tried again, and made people out of wood.

The wood dolls would have no blood and sweat, and have nothing on their minds; no respect for the Heart-of-Sky. He made hurricanes destroy these people. Then, the Heart-of-Sky made people out of corn. The people knew to stay alive, they had to please the gods, and give the gods something to show that they really appreciate them. Sacrifice and blood was what they gave.

There were more than 150 different gods in the Maya. Many of the gods were worshipped in a specific region, and each location would have its special patron god. Local gods were gods of war, childbirth, sleep, dance and even hunger. The most important god was the Maize God. He was most important because Maya depended on corn (maize) as their main food. It was also important because in the Popul Vuh creation story, human beings were made of corn. Hunab Ku was the chief of all the gods, because he was the creator god. Another chief god was Lizard House who invented writing. The death god was Cizin. The gods could look old, young, or even in forms of animals. Every day, month, and year, there would be a specific god who carried the burden on its back. When the time period ended, the burden would be placed on another godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s back. If the fragile balance between humans and gods broke, than the Maya would be in jeopardy.

The picture at the top was the Moon Goddess. The moon goddess was associated with bodies of water, lakes, streams, rivers, creeks and oceans. She is the goddess of fertility, motherhood, medicine P2 EMH

and the moon. She is also called the Moon Goddess Rattle because she has a braided rattle snake skirt.

Moon Goddess actually means Lady Rainbow, and she is also known as the Ix Chel. In the picture, she is wearing a full length cloak, and the holes that can be seen above the Moon Goddess’s arms is a feature of the rattle snake’s construction. The round object on the handle figure represents a fancy fan. The crescent moon shape as her belt represents her as being the moon god. Her headdress and hairstyle was purposely modeled like that. The Moon Goddess played an important role in Ancient Maya.

CITATIONS "About Ixchel." Ix Chel Center. Holisticnp.com. Web. 31 October 2013.

"American Indians, or Native Americans." Britannica School.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

"Chac." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

Criscenzo Jeeni. "Popol Vuh." Jaguar Sun. Criscenzo.com. 1997-2000. Web. 29 October 2013.

Criscenzo Jeeni. "The Maya in Time." Jaguar Sun. jaguar-sun.com. 1997-2000. Web. 29 October 2013.

Day Nancy. "Ancient Mayan Civilzation." Minneapolis; Lerner Publications Company. 2001. Print. 29 October 2013.

Gibson Clare. "The Hidden Life of the Ancient Maya." New York; Metro Books. 2010. Print. 31 October 2013.

Laughton Timothy. "Exploring the Life, Myth and Art of the Maya." New York; The Rosen Publishing Group, inc. 2013. Print. 29 September 2013.

"Maya." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

"Maya Gods." Courtly Art of the Ancient Maya. National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. 2013. Print.

29 October 2013.

"Mayan Human Sacrifice." Maya Inca Aztec. Mayaincaaztec.com. 2009. Web. 29 October 2013.

Smith Herman. "Maya Human Sacrifice… Say it isn't so." Dig It. Casado internet Group, Belize. Web. 29 October 2013.

"The Goddess and the Rabbit." Mayan Kids. Mayan Kids. com. 2008. 31 October 2013.

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Moon Goddess Rattle

The Maya had a series of gods that they believed in. This includes Hun Hunahpu, who was the Maize god. It also includes Ik, the rain and hurricane god. Some of these gods had different forms in which they would appear. For example, Kukulcan was a version of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent god and Kinich Ahau, the sun god and also a younger version of Itzamna. Some gods like the Maize god were more important to the Maya then other less important gods. As you can see, the Mayans had a civilized culture in which they depended on in daily life.

Depending on places, different regions of Maya believed in different gods. Each place had a god that they thought was stronger depending on the landforms. Almost all places had a patron god who they thought was a little more important than the others or more beneficial. The only god that had a very high place in authority to the all the Mayas was the Maize god. There are many different myths of why the Maya should have thought that the Maize god was really important. One myth says that in the olden days, when the gods were creating the world, the Maize god was one of the creators and so that is why humans are created out of Maize in the Mayaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s point of view.

Here in this picture as you can see, the molded figure is of a Mayan moon goddess. This was one of the figures found that was buried with a person in a grave. Figures like these were most likely buried with an important person or a person of high authority. This figure is a hollow rattle. The Maya moon goddess is often P6.SL

shone while sitting on a cresent moon and holding a rabbit. The Maya believed that she was a young and beautiful woman. Lots of figures look like this and it is believed that the Maya used these at special rituals. All in all, the Mayan culture is a wonderful topic to do research on since they had such a grand belief system.

Coming up are my sources.

Citations: Gibson, Clare. The Hidden Life of the Ancient Maya: Revelations from a Mysterious World. New York: Metro Books, 2010. Print.

Jeeni Criscenzo del Rio."Welcome to Jaguar Sun!".http://www.jaguar-sun.com/gods.html.

Lenora F. Watson, Bonnie Meyer and Richard Perry.1997 - 2009.Web.10/23/2013 Odijk, Pamela."Religion and rituals of the Maya" The Mayas. Silver burdett press.print National gallery of art."Maya Gods".http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2004/maya/gods.htm.national gallery of art.2013.web.10/23/2013

Keivin L. Callahan."Principal beliefs and major gods".http://www.angelfire.com/ca/humanorigins/religion.html#maya. Articles c.1997.web.10/23/2013

Mayan kids."The Moon godess and the rabbit".http://www.mayankids.com/mmkbeliefs/moongoddess.htm.visa.2008.web.10/23/13

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Moon Goddess Rattle

The image above is a sculpture of the Mayan Moon Goddess Rattle. It was discovered in the burial grounds of Jaina, an island off the Western coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, where a number of bodies and burial goods were discovered. This sculpture, like many other sculptures found in the burial grounds, along with bodies, was hollow and used as a rattle. The object was filled with clay pellets that made the rattling sound. These rattles were intended for use during afterlife. The Moon Goddess was often depicted in Mayan art as a beautiful young woman sitting in the curve of a crescent moon holding a rabbit. The rabbit’s face is what the Mayans thought they saw in a full moon and hence the picture of the Goddess with the rabbit. There is confusion among the modern Maya about whether the Moon God is one of the Hero Twins or the Mayan Moon Goddess, Lady Ix Chel. As written earlier, the Mayans believed in many different gods, Lady Ix Chel being one of the prominent ones. As the Mayan Moon Goddess, Lady Ix Chel is portrayed in two different ways, either as an old lady or a young woman. The old Lady Ix Chel is connected to the full moon and its waning aspect. The young Lady Ix Chel is connected with the crescent moon. Lady Ix Chel is considered to be the god of fertility and praying for having a child and during childbirth.

The Gods played an extremely vital role for the Maya. The Mayan’s believed that God created the world, man, and all the celestial bodies in the world like the sun and the moon. Their sacred book “Popol Vuh” gives a glimpse into their beliefs of creation. They believed that the two Gods Gucumatz and Tepeu created the Earth. Once the Earth was created they wanted to create worshippers. They first started by creating animals, however since animals were not able to speak they set out to create humans. After two initial failed attempts in creating them out of mud and wood, they were successful in creating humans from corn kernels. The Popol –Vuh also talked about two heroic ball playing twins named Hunahpu and Xbalanque. They were the children of one of the first humans, Hun Hunahpu and underworld Goddess Xquic. These twins defeated the Underworld Gods who had killed their father and uncle. The twins then got placed in the sky as the Sun and the Moon, and their father Hun Hunahpu became the Maize god. The modern Maya are confused about whether the Moon God is the one of the Hero Twins or the Mayan Moon Goddess, Lady Ix Chel. The Mayans worshipped different Gods each of whom had a different purpose. They would classify the Gods based on how important they were. The importance of each god was determined based on how important their service was to the Mayans.

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Some of the main gods they worshipped included the Maize God who gave them their regular supply of corn, Chaak the rain god who provided them with enough water, the Sun God who made sure they didn’t have a harsh climate and the Moon Goddess Lady Ix Chel who was considered the fertility Goddess. The Mayans truly believed that they needed to please the gods with their actions, so that the Gods would provide them with all that they needed to survive. The Mayans not only had a story about the creation of man, they also had strong beliefs about what happened to people after death. Mayans believed in afterlife. They thought that people would be compensated during their afterlife. If they had a rough life, it would be made up to them in their afterlife.

Pleasing the Gods was a core belief of the Mayans. The Mayans thought that the Gods gave them what they needed to survive, and that they had to constantly make them happy in order for this to happen. One of the most common ways they did this was through sacrifice – sacrifice of animals, human blood, and even the whole human self. Animal sacrifice was much more common than those of humans. The sacrifice of an animal was mainly done during a festival. The Mayans would kill the animal and squeeze the blood out and spread it onto the steps of a temple. The temples were built on large stone pyramids. Sometimes rulers made a sacrifice of “bloodletting” (giving their blood) as their blood was considered the most valuable and sacred. This ritual was considered extremely sacred and all the citizens of that kingdom came to watch the event. A common practice during the sacrifice of both animals and humans, was the removal of the heart and laying it for the Gods in the temple. Another time a sacrifice was made, was after a ball game. The ball game was played for both gambling purposes and to reenact the beginning of the world. In this game the losing team’s captain would be sacrificed. He was usually beheaded after the game. The Mayans also sacrificed the warriors from the losing kingdom, who were captured after a war. Overall, we find that the Mayans were a deeply religious culture who were heavily into their rituals and had developed highly sophisticated beliefs on Gods and after-life.

Citations

Berger, Adam. Earl Americas: "Overview of Religion & Mythology in Medieval Mayan Empire."

Early Americas: Overview of Religion & Mythology of the Mayan, 2011,p1 Laughton, Timothy. The Maya: Life, Myth, and Art. New York: U.S. Media Holdings, Inc., 1998 Maya Gods http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2004/maya/gods.htm[Accessed 25 Oct 2013 ]

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City Layouts

The image above is a picture of city layouts. Even though we live in a time period thousands of years after the Maya, their pyramids and buildings still stand. The only thing that is changed about the two cities is that the modern day Mayans built roads, hotels, parking places, and an airplane runway. The map also shows the different pathways that you can take. The map depicts that the temples and pyramids are much larger than the other buildings. This is probably because their religious life was more important than their daily, basic life. The buildings are all the same color in the map, so that may mean that the buildings are all made out of the same thing. In the map, it has a temple with the title, Temple of the Jaguar. This probably relates to the Jaguar Sun God.

They Mayans designed their buildings for the pleasure of the people and the gods. The Mayans built two types of pyramids. One was meant to be climbed, and the other was not meant to be touched. The one that was meant to be climbed had steps on the outside that the nobles could climb up. The other type of pyramid, was much more sacred than the other, and had steps on the outside, but they were too steep to climb up. Only the high-up priests and the king could enter the sacred pyramids. When the priests had to perform a ritual on the sacred pyramids, they would

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have to go up the stairs that were located inside the pyramid, and when they were at the right height, they would go on a platform, that was connected to the outside of the pyramid. All of the Mayan pyramids were truncated (cut off at the top), because on the top of all the pyramids, was a temple, and in order for the temple to be stable at such a height, it would have to be positioned on a flat surface. If the pyramids weren’t truncated, the temples wouldn’t be there, and so there would be no place to pray and sacrifice to the gods. Some of the pyramids were so tall, that they stretched out of the jungle ceiling. These temples were used as markers of the Mayan cities, but also served as a reminder that the gods were omnipresent. The earlier Mayan buildings had sculptures of the god’s heads that were 20 feet tall! The heads were gigantic, to represent the power of the gods. Some of the architectural projects had huge sculptures of gods, nobles, or warriors on them. This supposedly brought them closer to the gods. These are all examples of how the Mayans changed their architectural design, so that the gods would be pleased with their creation.

The Mayans used their natural resources to make the temples, palaces, pyramids, etc. that they built. The Mayans used obsidian axes, obsidian chisels, wooden mallets, and wedges. They used these tools to cut out the stone that they used to build with. Limestone was the most commonly used stone, because it was soft when it was still in its bed making it easy to cut out, and when it got cut out, it hardened pretty quickly. Limestone could be changed into many different building substances. You can burn Limestone, and it would turn into plaster or cement.

Limestone cement was used as mortar. Wood was used for making beams and poles. Adobe was used on the walls of villager’s huts. Adobe was made up of mud mixed with other building materials. Clay-Fired bricks were used as well. Different places used different building materials.

In Quirigua, sandstone, marble, and schist were available and used. In Copan the builders used trachyte, which is great for carving and building. To get all this stone back to their building area, they would have to use an invention or technique to help them do it, because the stone was so heavy. These inventions and techniques consisted of stone rollers, floating the stone down rivers, and rolling them on logs.

Citations: Eboch, Chris. Life among the Maya. Detroit: Lucent, 2005. Print.

Foster, Lynn V. Handbook to Life in the Ancient Maya World. New York. Facts On File, Inc. 2002. Print.

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Millhouser, Frances E. "Mario's Mayan Journey". School Library Journal. November 1997. 92. ProQuest Platinum. Cary Academy Library. Cary, NC. [Oct. 25, 2013] <http://search.proquest.com/socialsciences/docview/211689923/abstract/14169BAF16172DFA18D/16?ac countid=9916>

Moore, Christina. Project One: Mayan Architecture. Jan. 2001.https://www.courses.psu.edu/anth/anth008_cmg149/mayan.html. [Accesed Oct. 29 2013]

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Codex with numbers

The above image is a Mayan codex showing glyphs and numbers. The numbers shown are the Mayan bars, dots, and also shells. On the codex there are also pictures of people. Those people are the Mayan mathematicians. This is a very important piece of the Mayan history of numbers. The Mayan numbers were made by mathematicians. The Mayan mathematicians wrote vertical instead of horizontal. The Mayan mathematicians would use a base twenty number system. The Mayans would use the numbers 1-19 until they switched to a different place value. The Mayans used their number system to locate the planets which were considered the gods. The reason they used the number system was to find out if that day was a good day or a bad day for the Mayans. If that day was a good day then the Mayans would want to do lots of things so the gods would be in their favor. If that day was a bad day then the Mayans would want to do limited things because the bad gods would be in their favor.

The Mayan mathematicians needed to be able to find out if that day was a good or a bad day so the Mayans would know what to do on that day. The history of the numbers was very important concept to the Mayans and people relied on it every day.

The Mayan number system was different than our number system. The Mayans used a base twenty number system that consists of bars, dots and shells. A base twenty number system is using the numbers 1-20 in each place value until the number becomes 20 or over, then the place value switches.

Bars were worth 5, dots were worth 1 and shells were worth zero. Shells were just used to hold the numbers in place so they didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t fall off of the carving. The Mayans would combine dots, bars, and shells to make up numbers. Each time the number came over twenty the place value would switch. The Mayan number system was written vertically instead of horizontally. The reason they came up with these numbers was for the Mayan calendar. The calendar was used to tell the Mayans if that day was a good day or a bad day for doing things like planting and harvesting corn. The mathematicianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s number system was used for the inner circle in the Mayan calendar. The Mayan number system was a very different concept then ours and it required very skilled Mathematicians to be able to interpret it.

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The Mayan mathematics was very important in Mayan life. The Mayan number system influenced the stars and planets. The numbers were related to the number system which predicted if that day the gods would be in your favor or if they would not be in your favor. If the gods were not in your favor then you would want to do very limited things so the gods wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be mad at you. If you were born on a bad day your life would be considered to be cursed. If the gods were in your favor then that would be the time to do all the things that you need to do. The numbers would also help predict when eclipses would happen. In order for the Mayans to calculate the movements of the stars and planets they would have to use their mathematical number system. The Mayans had to use very large numbers when predicting whether it was going to be a good day or a bad day. Priest and nobles used their knowledge of calendars so they could predict astronomy. Their astronomy predictions would allow them to be able to predict eclipses and phases of the moon and the position of the planets. The Mayan mathematics was a big part of the astronomy of Mayan life.

Citations: Books: Eboch, Chris Life among the Maya Mississippi: Lucent books Laughton, Timothy The Maya New York: Duncan Baird Publishers McKillop, Heather I. The Ancient Maya New York: Norton and Company Inc. Nicholson, Robert The Maya Pennsylvania: Chelsea House Publishers Websites:

http://historylink101.com/1/mayan/ancient_mayan.htm http://historylink101.com/1/mayan/mayan_daily_life.htm http://www.incredibleart.org/lessons/middle/maya.htm http://mayankids.com/mkintro.htm

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Databases: http://school.eb.com/failedlogin?target=%2F http://streaming.discoveryeducation.com/student_index.cfm

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Mayan Hoops

In the painting above, two Mesoamerican kings that are playing the Mesoamerican ballgame in full uniform. Nobody exactly knows how the game was played, but we know the basics. The object of game is to earn the most points. To earn a point you have to make the ball go through a hoop. The uniforms include a Yoke, a Manopa, a palma, Yuguitos, Shoes, a Hacha, and a Headdress. The ball the ball was made by taking a skull and wrapping it with hot, melted rubber stripes. The ball was very hard ball and it can break bones. The court was shaped in an "I" shape. There are 2 end zones, 2 Benches, 2 walls, two hoops, and a playing alley. The end zones make the “I” shape in court because they are on the top and the bottom. The playing alley was in between the two end zones, where game was played. The floor of the playing alley was often plastered or tiled with stone. The hoops were where goals were scored or passed through in exchange of a point. The walls were steep and allowed players to bank the ball in order to keep it in play. The bench was a two foot stone “bench” decorated with glyphs of sacrifice.

While the Mayans where playing the ball game, they were also reenacting Mayan creation. One day, two brother Maize Gods were enjoying playing the Mesoamerican Ball Game.

The lords of Xibalba (the underworld) were very angry because the noise of the ball game was disturbing them. Soon, they reached a point when the Lords of Xibalba were too aggravated. The Lords of Xibalba killed the Maize Gods and pulled them into the underworld. One of the Maize God’s head was hung from a tree. To avenge the death of their father and uncle, the sons of one of the Maize Gods resurrected the Maize Gods on the ball court. They did this to survive the pains of the underworld. This happened while the reborn of the Maize Gods continued on the ball court. The Maize gods were saved by the Hero Twins. Therefore the Mayans believed that playing the ball game was needed for their own survival. They played the game as a reenactment of Mayan creation.

The Mesoamerican ball game was an important part of Mayan society because it was a form of sacrifice. Sacrifice was important to Mayan society because the Mayans wanted to pay the gods back for what they have done for them. They would do this by sacrificing their blood.

At the end of the ball game, the losing king was executed by getting his head cut off. That is another form of sacrifice from the winning king. The winning king will hold the head of the loser while the blood drips on the field. The loser will be buried under the court to be eaten by the lords of Xibalba (the underworld). It is more like sacrifice from the losing king because he was risking his life for the gods. He was performing human sacrifice.

Citations:  Gibson, Clare. The hidden Life of The Ancient Maya. New York: Metro Books, 2010  Palmer, William.

Maya;http://library.umaine.edu/hudson/palmer/Maya/ballgame.asp.[accessed 23 Oct 2013].web.  Schele, Linda and Mary Ellen Miller. The Blood of Kings. New York: Gorge Braziller Inc, 1986. Print.

Plate with deer hunting scene

The image above is a painting on a plate. It is painted with bright vivid colors. This plate is meant to symbolize the hunters hunting deer. The person in the center of the plate had already caught a deer; the deer is hanging over his shoulder. The hunters around him are in a deer disguise and mask to distract the animals. The hunters are holding spears and weapons. The plate symbolized farming and hunting. The Mayans mainly get their food from farming, but occasionally they get lucky and can eat meat. They planted Maize, beans, squash and chili peppers. Though is plate shows hunting, it also means that they produce their food by gathering and collecting. The painted plate also showed that they have lots of food and wealth, showing how often they can eat deer and meat; this also means that they are wealthy with corn, and bean plants. Sometimes they fish, because fish was too part of the Mayan diet, this hunting painting represented not only the hunting and fishing, but the Mayan ways of producing their food. This plate showed their hunting and farming.

Look and discover the amazing food from Maya culture. You will learn about what they ate and how they farmed it! There are many amazing things that the Mayan ate. In this article you will learn about all the different types of food that they ate what they cooked it with, and some foods they produced. The Mayans main food was maize. They used maize in almost every food they ate. Sometimes they create simple mixture with meat and vegetables for porridge. An average Mayan would eat morning porridge out of corn and chili peppers. Rarely, they get meat, mostly from turkeys, rabbit, and deer. The Mayans created tortillas with meat and vegetables. The average drink for a Mayan was water, but occasionally, they had honey collected from a type of tree to create a scared drink, called Balche.

The honey came from the same type of tree that they get their fruits from; the tree was called the cacao tree. The cacao tree provided them papaya, avocado, and custard apples. One thing in particular was the beans they grew; you could turn the beans into chocolate drinks and food for the elite. But because of its many types of fruits and resources, it only grew in the tropical areas. So hunters and gatherers have to go collect them. If not, they go and collect the Corn, the peppers, the squash and beans from the fields. So they ate pretty interesting things, donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you think?

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Producing food the Mayan way! If you know what the Mayan ate, shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t you know how they produced or cooked it? Well, to start off, most Mayans farmed their crops of beans, chili peppers, squash and corn. They grew all their plants on a piece of land called a milpa. They used the slash and burn strategy to prepare the soil. They slashed the hard soil with a hoe, them they burn the soil to make it better to plant with. The soil lasts up to 2-3 years. Sometimes they used animals to help them plant and harvest. To grow the ancient foursome, they came up with a really good strategy. The Mayans planted the maize, and then they planted the beans on the side of the corn so that the beans would be able to grow on it. They planted the chili peppers underneath the corn so it can collect shade from the leaves. The squash is then planted on the ground underneath to prevent lots of bugs and weeds. When they go to hunt animals, they only hunted the semi- domestic animals, like turkey, commonly used in soup. The Mayans sent hunters to hunt animals and they send gatherers to collect the fruits and herbs from the cacao tree. The hunters hunted deer, rabbit, and usually turkey. They cook stuff such as tortillas, stew, and corn dough. And since most food was made from maize, they also had saka, a kind of porridge, and tamales, which were like dumpling with meat or vegetables wrapped in corn dough.

Sometimes they cooked with sweet potatoes. Interesting is it? Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s how the Mayans cooked and harvested their food.

Citations:

i.e. Encyclopedia Britannica

Pamela, Odijk The Ancient World: The Mayas. The Macmillan company of Australia PTY ITD. Library of congress Cataloging in publication data. 1989 print.

Robert Nicholson journey into civilization The Maya a division of Chelsea house publishers. New York Philadelphia. 1914 print.

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Bonampak Mural:

The photo above shows prisoners of war in the Bonampak Murals suffering torture from the priests. The prisoners are getting their shoulders dislocated and their finger nails pulled off. Some of the prisoners are even begging the priests to not hurt them. While watching the other prisoners get tortured. In this picture the prisoners are at a ritual place, prisoners are waiting for their turn, and watching the others get tortured. This is an example of human sacrifice. They are not getting sacrificed because they did something bad. They are because they want to give back to their gods. Theses Mayans in the picture are probably getting sacrificed on a ritual day. Mayans do everything basically around religion.

The Mayans sacrifice to their gods in both human and non-human ways. The Mayans sacrifice as a way of giving back to their gods. They believe that if they are sacrificing to their gods, the gods will get them all their needs to survive. The most common sacrifice done was taking blood. They would pierce their tongue, the skin between their fingers, or their ears. There are other ways of sacrifice besides taking blood. The Mayans would sometimes even take the locals and take their clothes off and paint them blue, the color of sacrifice. The priest would take the local to a very ritual place a cut their chest open and take the persons still beating heart out. They would even sometimes sacrifice children, they would put the kid in a connote for one day. If the child swam the whole night and stayed alive the Mayans thought it was supposed to be alive. If the child died though they thought the child was supposed to die. Another way of sacrifice is called incense which is a non-human way of sacrifice. Nonhuman ways of sacrifice is when they sacrifice something they have like bread and corn. The Mayans would burn the thing they wanted to sacrifice and the smoke coming up will take the thing to the gods.

This is an essential part of Mayan religious ceremonies. There all different ways off sacrifice in the Mayan culture.

In a sacrificial ritual there were a lot of components to make one happen. For a sacrificial ritual people would go to a very ritual place like a temple. Mayans would gather around watching them sacrifice. They would sacrifice to their gods on ritual days as well, like the birth of the heir to the throne or the end of Katun. There were all different ways of sacrifice. The most common however is blood-

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letting. Mayans would take a little blood and put it on a stone. They would burn the stone and the smoke going to the air would take the blood to the gods. The Mayans would also do other ways of sacrifice that were worse then taking blood. The prisoners would get their finger nails pulled off and their shoulders dislocated. They did this because it was a way of giving back to their gods. The gods keep them alive and know the future of a Mayan.

Citations: Archeology. Ancient Mayan Blood-letting Rituals. 2013. Oct. 25, 2013.

Day, Nancy. Ancient Mayan Civilization. Minneapolis: Runestone Press. 2001 Mayan Overview. Blood Sacrifice and Religion. http://web.archive.org/web/20011004170341/http://www.mc.maricopa.edu/academic/cult_sci/anthro /lost_tribes/mayan_stuff.html . Oct.25,2013

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Madrid 6Chac

The image above is of Choc, the rain god, with many symbols of his power. To the Mayans, blue represented rain, so Choc is usually portrayed in this color. In his hand, Choc holds an axe, which he uses to strike objects in the universe. The resulting sparks are lighting and the sound becomes thunder. This deity has elaborate decorations in his mouth, and has all his hair gathered on the top of his head.

According to the Mayans, Choc also has water instead of blood. Therefore, the coming of rain was believed to be Choc sacrificing his blood for the sake of the Mayan people. There are four Chocs, one at each corner of the world where the Mayans live. They hold up the Otherworld, the world above. Based on this belief, farmers place shrines to Choc in the four corners of their milpas (fields) for good luck and lots of rain. The Mayans believed that without Choc, they would not be able to survive.

For the Maya, the Uayeb is a short, unlucky month of five days that stood apart from all the other months in the year. The Uayeb was controlled by an unlucky god. It was a time of fear and hiding, a time to be silent and still. All boundaries between the world of the living and the world of the dead vanished, making it possible for living souls to be dragged to the Underworld. Gods of Xibalba (the Underworld) could easily travel to the living world and wreak havoc, causing death, disease, and distress. Mayans were either solitary or in the company of others, but no one interacted. No one spoke.

People drank corn water or ate nothing at all, and for five days they stayed in their houses or in empty caves. The Maya made sacrifices to the gods during this dark time, but tried to stay as quiet as possible and not disturb the deities. Since the Maya believed that a personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fate was decided at birth, someone born during the Uayeb would be destined to an unfortunate future. The Mayans were also certain never to crown kings during this short month, for the sake of the city. An inauguration on one of the five unlucky days would bring hard times to the civilization and to the royal dynasty. Mayans were very careful to accurately calculate the occurrence of the Uayeb. This short month was part of the Haab calendar, five unnamed days before the new year. It was significant to the Mayan culture and sparked fear in the hearts of society.

The Maya based many aspects of their culture on the movements of the solar system. They believed that the celestial bodies in the solar system represented the gods. These bodies included the sun, moon, stars, and planets. For each, Mayans measured the change of position and believed that analyzing the calculations could help the people predict what would occur in the future. They discovered patterns in the movement of the universe. When these patterns repeated, the events that had

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happened during the previous cycle would reoccur. The Maya also used their measurements to find the sacredly correct time to conduct certain events. By using the calculations of star movement, Mayans knew when to plan significant ceremonies, marriages, and war. The position of Jupiter was found and used to schedule ball games, inaugurations, and blood sacrifices. Besides tracking the position of objects in the solar system, Mayans also had the ability to predict eclipses. However, the prophecy containing news of an incoming eclipse would cause fear. In Mayan beliefs, eclipses occurred when the sky serpent took a bite out of the sun or moon. Priests performed rituals to form a shield of safety around the city to thwart incoming evil. The Mayans that made all of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s astronomical calculations were skilled scholars, even though they used little more than notched sticks to make their measurements. These astronomers stood at the top of tall buildings to study the sky and even designed buildings that were based on the movement of the sun, moon, stars, and planets. For example, a Chichen Itza temple has openings that reveal certain parts of the universe on significant days of the year. The Mayans relied on the movements of the solar system to help guide them through life, religion, and sacrifice.

Citations Aveni, Anthony. Stairway To The Stars. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1997. Print.

Eboch, Chris. Life Among the Maya. Detroit: Lucent Books, 2005. Print.

Eco-Adventure Latin America. "Calendars and the Long Count System." Tikal Park. Ecotourism & Adventure Specialists and the Association for the Development of the Maya World. [Accessed: 10.25.13]. Web. Foster, Lynn V. Handbook to Life in the Ancient Maya World. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2002. Print.

Laughton, Timothy. The Maya: Life, Myth, and Art. New York: Stewart, Tabori, and Chang, 1998. Print.

"Mayan Calendar." Britannica School. EncyclopĂŚdia Britannica, Inc., 2013. [Accessed: 10.25.13]. Web. Sadtler, BJ. "The Wayeb - Meaning of the Mayan New Year, February 17-22, 2012" Mayan Cross.

2.18.2012. [Accessed:10.24.2013]. Web. "The Maya Calendar." The Maya Astronomy Page. [Accessed: 10.24.13]. Web.

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Clay Figure of Ix Chel (goddess) Weaving

The image above is a clay figure of the Ix Chebel Yax weaving on a backstrap loom. Lady Ix Chel is the goddess of weaving. Ix Chel taught a woman how to weave by showing the woman a spider weaving a web. The backstrap loomâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s roots started in the pre- conquest era which was before 1500 B.C. Mesoamericans started using the backstrap loom in 1500 B.C. If a woman was using a backstrap loom to weave, they could weave anywhere. Women weaved because they had to weave clothing for their family, families from rural villages, and the empire. If young slave girls excelled at weaving, they would not be considered as sacrifice. Only women weaved because the men would work in the fields or army all day. While weaving, woman would pick colors, styles, and designs based on their generation or personal taste. Lady Ix Chel taught how to weave and through each generation, weaving has stayed alive.

Mayan weavers had their own kind of weaving techniques. The materials Mayan weavers mostly used were cotton, sisal, wool, and synthetics. Cotton and sisal were used to make simple clothing. In Maya, weavers were only woman. Mayan weaving starts with raw wool or cotton that had to be washed before. The raw wool or cotton had to be combed and spun before actual weaving. The weavers would stretch the long threads along a warping board. Then the weaver would firmly attach the desired length of the strings to her loom. She could then adjust the tension of the loom by leaning forward or backward. To help set the color of the cloth, weavers gathered and used flowers, plants, berries, or bark.

Brocade is where yarns are woven into cloth to create the designs. A brocaded garment could take many months to complete. Another technique Mayans used was the ikat technique. The ikat technique used threads arranged in bundles. The threads would be knotted at various points before dipping into the dye so only the exposed sections were dyed.

The goddess of weaving is Ix Chebel Yax. Ix Chebel Yax taught a woman how to weave by showing the woman her spider weaving a web. Woven cloth was the most widely traded article in the empire. When the emperor wanted to honor one of his subjects, he would give him or her cloth that a woman had woven with gold thread. In Santiago Atitlόn the process of weaving is metaphorically related to the process of giving birth. Young Mayan girls became weavers by watching their mothers. If young slave girls excelled at weaving, they were not considered for sacrifice. Women had to weave for men, children and other women who lived in the rural villages. In the pre- conquest period, weavings provided clothing and also served as means of exchange, tribute payment, and honorary gifts. During the Colonial period, the use of agave fiber stopped as cotton spread among the Mayan backstrap loom weavers. A backstrap loom is a loom bar that is attached to a post. Long threads connect it to the base

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bar. The backstrap loom has been used in Mesoamerica since around 1500 B.C. The roots of the backstrap loom started in the pre-conquest era. With the backstrap loom, women can weave anywhere.

When using a treadle loom, the price is equivalent of the wages earned for anywhere between 35 and 170 days of work. To collect cash needed to make a down payment from a treadle loom, weavers must save for quite some time, borrow money form a relative, or sell some of their own foods such as chicken or pig. Designs or combinations were based on mythology and symbolism. Preferences in colors, styles, and designs vary according to generation and personal taste. Mayan weavers rarely used a design more than twice.

Citations: Braman, Arlette N. The Maya. Wiley: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2003. Print.

Fash, William and Mary E. Lyons. The Ancient American World. Oxford University Press: Oxford, New York, 2005. Print.

Florida Museum of Natural History. Images of the Maya. (The Process of Weaving). http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/maya/maya8.htm 10/23/13. Web. Mack, Stevie. "A Rainbow Of Threads." Schoolarts: The Art Education Magazine For Teachers 111.1 (2011): 42. ERIC. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

Mayan Culture. "Mayanculture.com" Maya Weavers. http://www.mayanculture.com/maya_intro.html 10/23/13. Web. Odijk, Pamela. The Mayas. Silver Burdett Press: Englewood Cliffs, 1990. Print.

Schevill, Margot B. The Maya Textile Tradition. Harry N. Abrams Inc.: New York, 1997. Print

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Clay Figure of Warrior

The image above is a seated picture of a Mayan warrior who looks ready to strike an attacking foe. The warrior was originally upon an urn lid, and the seated position was better suited for the lid. The warrior’s passive and defensive nature is contradicted by the raised weapon in his right hand. The warrior would have represented the fierce spirit of the Maya. The image represents my two topics by also showing how the Mayan warrior’s first job was to disable or disarm their opponent, for they needed human sacrifices.

That is why the Mayans used obsidian and flint for their lethal weapons, not silver or copper. Do not get me wrong, the Mayan warriors were still able to kill very easily. The warriors carried bows and arrows (which may have really been short-stabbing spears), as well as clubs and maces, which were graced with iron in the sixteenth century. Here, the warrior is carrying what appears to be a club or short spear, along with the many decorations that have already been discussed. This really shows how much the Mayan culture revolved around religion, even going off to fight a war. The Mayan headdress is adorned with disembodied head figure of a patron deity. The patron deity on the helmet could be the God L, the merchant god who was sometimes linked with war by the Classic Time Period Mayans. So, the Mayan thoughts on war were not exactly what you think of when you think of a war. Their philosophy was to take as many prisoners as possible and sacrifice them later. The Mayans are a fascinating culture, and I sincerely hope that you enjoy our special exhibit.

Mayans were able to hold their own on the field of battle, but war was not their best subject. Some Mayan warriors were probably farmers who went off to war and took part in raids only when their king needed them to. Even so, they came well prepared to war. They brought obsidian-tipped spears, clubs, maces, and flint knives, along with heavily decorated armor and rectangular shields. The decorative patterns on the shield may have been used as a means of identification between Mayan soldiers in the heat of battle and may have had sacred signifance. The impressive headgear was adorned with a patron deity or a ferocious creature, notably jaguars and birds of prey like eagles. The Mayans probably hoped that their power would be transferred to the warrior. The warriors most likely wore beads around their calves and ankles so the warrior’s social standing could be shown. The chest protection was decorated with several trios of circles that could have been purely for decoration but could also have been symbolizing the three hearth stones of the Mayan creation myth. Soldiers sometimes made their own shield and danced around with their shield up to prepare them for battle. The Mayan clubs and maces were always embossed with especially intricate pictures, sometimes even ones of the vision serpents. Mayan warriors were very ferocious and dedicated, but were no Aztecs or Spartans. Mayan religious beliefs still really dictated the way the Mayan military was run.

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The Mayans were a usually peaceful people who avoided war as much as they could. But when they did have to march off to fight, they came prepared. Women and slaves came along with the army to carry and prepare food. Women actually did sometimes fight, but it was almost always men. The women were good fighters, however, and were respected among the men. For major wars, commoners and peasants had to come along as well, and used their hunting weapons in the fighting. For major wars and raids, the soldiers were led by their king, or the ahau. This did not happen very often for the Mayans tried to stay out of conflict as much as possible. When a big war sprung up, farmers were able to leave their fields to fight if it was the dry season. However, if the rainy season started while they were in combat, they would leave the field of battle to return to their crops. This could happen even when the Mayans were on the verge of winning. Winning meant nothing to the Mayans if they had no food or great cities to return home to.

Citations Books Eboch, Chris. Life among the Maya. Lucent Books. Print.

Gibson, Clare. The Hidden Life of the Ancient Maya: Revelations from a Mysterious World.

Odjik, Pamela. The Mayas. Silver Burdett Press, 1942. Print.

Websites http://www.authenticmaya.com/maya_warfare.htm. October 24, 2013. Website.

http://mayas.mrdonn.org/warriors.html. October 24, 2013. Website.

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Cacao Beans:

The above picture shows green cocoa bean pods that will be ready to be harvested, dried, and bartered or traded. Cocoa beans were saved for special occasions. About four of them ground up would make one chocolaty drink. Such drinks were saved for ceremonies to the gods. If there was also another important ceremony they also may have drank it. They were traded at a high price. 10 cocoa beans were worth one rabbit. Four of them would get you a pumpkin. 100 of the cocoa beans would get you one male slave. 100 cocoa beans would also make 25 chocolaty drinks. They traded regular farm crops for the cocoa beans. The cocoa beans were grown in the gardens of the people of the Lowland Mayan’s. They would only grow in certain places because of their needs.

The Mayans traded many goods with other cities and cultures. About a little less than half of what they traded was food.

The Ancient Foursome (beans, maize, chilies, and squash) was only four of the 12 food items. They also traded cocoa beans that were homegrown. Some of the other meat items traded were turkey, oysters, and fish. There was also fruit, salt, and honey. A fourth of the things traded were made for beautiful decoration. An example would be the Mayan pottery with vivid colors. Some items that were more common included colorful shells, pottery, and feathers. They also traded jade and other green gems, gold and other riches, and furniture. Around one eighth of the traded items were clothing and other items worn on the body. Jewelry was often traded, and clothing was also popular. Feathers of macaw and quetzal birds were often worn and were traded. The rest of the traded items were items that don’t fit into any of the other categories. These items include copper, copper tools, limestone, marble, wood, paper, books, carvings, and weapons. Almost everything was vivid with color.

A long time ago not only did the Olmecs have stone statues but so did the Mayans. How did they have the same things?

Even though they lived in around the same area they were from time periods that were far apart. Did they look at cave drawings? Were there stone tablets with the words on them that survived? Did the Olmecs pass it on to cultures nearby and it kept getting passed on till the Mayans received it? Only one of these different theories is correct. Researchers believe that there were cave drawings showed what the Olmecs made. They also believe that the drawings are near the Teotihuacán area and they passed it on to the Mayans when they traded items. There were also pictures of pottery. The Mayans just changed it to make it more vivid by adding color. They showed how they planted their crops with the slash and burn style of farming. They changed methods and made them better to fit the different culture’s needs.

Citations:    

Packet - Benson, Sonia. "Maya Economy and Daily Life." Early Civilizations in the Americas: Almanac. Volume 2. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2005. Print.

Book - Coe, Michael D. The Maya. Sixth Edition. United Kingdom: Thames & Hudson, 1996. Print.

Book - Eboch, Chris. Life Among the Maya. USA: Thomson Gale, 2005. Print.

Website - "Trade in Mayan Civilization" Wikipedia; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_in_Maya_civilization. [Accessed 25 October, 2013].

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Seated female scribe clay figure

The image above is a sculpture of a Mayan woman reading a book resting on her right knee. She is one of the few people in the Mayan society that could read and write. This woman is a scribe. She knows how to write in the Mayan language and also knows how to read it. Being one of the elite people that can read and write, she wrote important documents for the king. Being a scribe really became a more important job after the Mayans expanded their territory. The Mayans write in a glyph form, which means that they draw pictographs to represent words and ideas. For example, a shield and a club pictograph resembled the idea of war. Besides from writing important legal documents for the king, scribes recorded Mayan history. All this information and writing has been kept in books called codices.

These codices were painted on walls and pottery. Mayans also carved their glyphs into things such as monuments and small pieces of jade. Although very few people could read it, the Mayan glyph language was very complicated and powerful.

The Mayan society had many jobs that people had to do in order to stay alive. Many people believe that the earliest Mayan people crossed the Bering Strait about 20,000 years ago. They settled into Mexico after they crossed the strait. In and around modern day Mexico, the Mayans had a small community called the Mam. In the Mam, the Mayan people were mostly hunters and gatherers. They then expanded their territory into modern day Guatemala and had to adapt to the new environments.

As the Mayans adapted to their new land, they had to make tools and other necessities such as pots to cook with in order to survive. They now had many different jobs such as scribes, astronomers, architects, mathematicians, artists and traders. Craftsmen and artisans made things that people wanted to have or wanted to trade for such as rubber. Astronomers, architects and mathematicians used the Mayan mathematical system and became very precise in predictions. Although many Mayan people had the responsibility of one of these jobs the normal jobs for men and woman in the Mayan society were that the woman stayed at home and cared for animals and the men farmed in the fields. Most Mayan workers traced the social status of ancestors and became close to what they did for a living. For example, if a Mayan manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s grandfather was a farmer then the man would probably become a farmer as well. The Mayan people had things to make in order to stay alive and the Mayans had jobs to assist those needs.

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In Mayan Society, there are many titles of political power and leadership. The main ruler was a king who had royal blood and was in line to become a king. Kings had their foreheads flattened at birth in order to shape their head like a maize piece. Maize is corn, and it was a very important part in Mayan culture. Although many of the Mayan rulers were kings, they did not have to be. The top Mayan leader could also be a high priest. Priests were called Ahkin which means He of The Sun. The very important priests were adorned with jewels and feathers and were often depicted in sculptures. Many priests also taught in priesthood schools. These priests and kings often ruled major cities and smaller noble governors ruled the smaller cities. To break down the ruling of cities even more, small aristocratic families ruled parts of the cities. Rulers also had political helpers too. Each leader had their own administrator who was called a Batabob. Kings and priests also had a batab who was a judge and a tax collector. The Mayan society was always led by great and powerful rulers.

Citations 

Bunson, Margaret, and Stephen Bunson. "Maya."

Encyclopedia of Ancient Mesoamerica. New York: Facts on File, 1996. 111-14. Print. 

Eboch, Chris. "Government Officials."

Life among the Maya. Detroit: Lucent, 2005. 50-51. Print. 

Mayan History - Crystalinks."

Mayan History - Crystalinks. Crystalinks, n.d. Web. 24 Oct. 2013. <http://www.crystalinks.com/mayanhistory.html>. 

Mayan Society - Crystalinks."

Mayan Society - Crystalinks. Crystalinks, n.d. Web. 24 Oct. 2013. <http://www.crystalinks.com/mayansociety.html>.



pre-Columbian civilizations." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 25 Oct. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/109431#69371.toc>.

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Deception of Battle Predicated By a Priest

The image above is a detailed painted vase in 8th century showing the outcomes of a war. The battle was conducted in accordance of Venus. A naked captive is being marched back to the winnerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s city. Behind the captive are army men and leaders dressed in jaguar pelt. The leader is holding in one hand a club and in the other a shield and spear. The priest would have predicted the outcome of this battle before it ended. The priest probably used the sun, moon, and stars to predict. The priest was right about his predictions most of the time, but if the priest made a mistake he would have been sacrificed. The priest could find out the outcome by contacting the gods and seeing which side the gods were in favor of.

Priests are very important when it comes to predicting because they have such an extensive knowledge.

Priests are amazing Mayan people who excellent knowledge about the world.

The Mayan priest was one of the most important people in the Mayan world. The Mayan priest did simple everyday life jobs for the civilians. One of the jobs priests did was to tell Mayan farmers when to plant the crops. Priests were also high in the social tree. The Ah Kin or the high priest was the most important. Priests were very good at predicting the future through the knowledge of astromny and mathematics. Their knowledge on literacy and moral leadership was very extensive. They also contacted the spirits to predict the future. Priest also did important ceremonies in temples for the kings. They also decided which people to sacrifice. One of the most important jobs of the priest was to make sure that the calendar was perfect. They had to understood and control the calendars. Priests were also known also calendar keepers. Being very cautious with their work, priests were killed if anything bad happened.

For example if there was a drought the priest would be killed. The Mayan priests were amazing predictors with their extensive knowledge and they kept the calendar correct.

Mayan priests are amazing and important people, but how do you become one? Mostly to become a Mayan priest your father has to hand down the priest position to you. A Mayan priest has to go through a special school. You would have to have an extensive knowledge on literacy and math. A lot of the time the father or a close relative teaches the son. This happens because the father or close relative already knows what you have to do to become a Mayan priest. It would take years for you to have the knowledge you are supposed to have. The reason why a Mayan priest has to learn so much is because the Mayan priests need that knowledge to do its job. Mayan priests also need to have a broad knowledge because if something terrible happened to the Mayans the priest was blamed. A lot of the time the Mayan priest was sacrificed. Mayan priests had to have lots of knowledge about the gods and calendar. Mayan priests had to have lots of knowledge about the calendar, sky, gods, math, and literacy.

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Citations: "Maya." Britannica School. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

"Maya priesthood."http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_priesthood.7 May 2013.25 October, 2013 Phillips, Charles. Aztec and Maya. New York: Joanna Lorenz, 2008. Print

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Clay Figure of Mayan Ruler

The image shown to the left is a clay figure of a powerful Mayan Lord. On the head of this figure is a headdress worn at ceremonies. The statue is wearing ear plugs. This statue is also wearing a necklace made out of beads and shells. The statue has his head shaped in a straight line from his nose to the top of his head. Also this statue is wearing a loincloth. This person in this statue probably filed their teeth into a sharp point. The person would have painted its body too. The Mayans were like us when we wear jewelry because they wear a lot but they are also very different which makes them unique.

Think of what you wear on special occasions, the Mayans wore something that was totally different.

The Mayans painted their bodies and wore magnificent headdresses at ceremonies. Priests and nobles wore finer material clothing covered in shells or beads. Mayan women wore sack like dresses and the Mayan men wore ex which was a loincloth that covers a small swimsuit area on their body. Mayans also did something extreme which was filing their teeth into a sharp point. They drilled a little hole into their teeth and placed bits of jade or gold in the holes. These were the things that the higher class Mayans did for special occasions.

Mayans wore jewelry that was similar to the jewelry we wear today. They had many different types of jewelry. Some of the types were ear plugs, lip plugs, nose rings, arm bands, necklaces, and headbands.

Most Mayan jewelry was made out of jade or gold. Headbands and necklaces were often made out of: onyx, rock crystal, and dark red porphyry, mother of pearl, copper, or silver. Beauty didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t only have to do with jewelry. Babies bones do not hardened until they are older, so the higher class babies had their heads placed between two boards and pressed together to make their heads in the shape of corn to represent the maize (corn) god. Also as babies the Mayans would place a bead in the babyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hair and hang it in front of their eyes to make the eyes slightly crossed because they considered it slightly beautiful, but this was only for females. Mayan jewelry is similar to what we have today

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Citations: 1. "Beauty: its all in the head" Mayan Kids, 2008. http://www.mayankids.com/mmkpeople/mkbeauty.htm. 2008 2. Eyewitness Books: Aztec, Inca, and Maya. P. 6

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Clay Incense Burner

The image above is of a clay incense burner. The burner you see above is made out of clay; it was very common for the burners to be made out of pottery. All burners had two holes; the first hole is where the hot charcoal and incense stick were placed. The second holeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s purpose is to let this thick smoke rise.

The most standard incense was the Pom which was obtained from the Copal tree or the tree of life.

Mayans believed this smoke rose all the way to the gods and warded away evil spirits. This smoke was very crucial because of the prayers and intentions it carried. Incense was a very popular technique used in Mayan medicine.

Mentally and religiously, the Mayans had their own thoughts and beliefs regarding sickness. Health to the Mayans was seen as balance while illness and disease was seen as imbalance. The Mayans looked for signs in their environment from the gods and tried to interpret what the gods were telling them. They associated sickness as punishment for them misbehaving or sinning. If you were Mayan, sickness was not just being ill but having supernatural beings or evil spirits possess your soul. Their views of evil spirits originated from their religious beliefs of sacrifice. When sickness arose, they knew there were extra sacrifices they needed to make. For these sacrifices, there were ceremonies where people would gather, pray, and give offerings to the gods. Another way Mayans would avoid sickness was to leave food outside to placate the dwarf demons who inflicted disease on the unsuspecting. To the

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Mayans, it was impossible to change the godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s minds entirely but they tried to influence them in their best interest. Before a cure could be attempted, the healer must first cleanse the soul.

To do so, they must identify the particular spirit the patient neglected or abandoned. It was then determined what actions were required to reverse the patientâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ill luck. After these actions were performed, there would be a ceremony to specifically recognize this god and hope for their forgiveness. Once these series of events were completed and the soul was cleansed, it was time for the patient to receive medical treatment. Illness was certainly a very important part of Mayan culture.

The Mayans were excellent healers and used specific and interesting techniques.

Mayan doctors, also known as Hmen, were ancient healers who used potions, prayers and traditional herbal medicine. To the Mayans, the art of medicine and healing was a blend of science and religion. Chocolate was a resource they used a lot because it cured so many things.

It was used not only as a medicine itself but it was also used to help deliver other medicines.

Once chocolate was added to bark, oil, flowers, and leaves it could be used to treat burns. It was used for patients who needed to gain weight and were feeble, those who were experiencing kidney stones, and even woman who had poor breast milk production. An assortment of herbs was used to treat different medical issues. Examples include using maize and a herb called Calliandra Anomala to alleviate fever or using the Chaya plant as a source of iron and calcium. In addition, there were not only common medicines but common techniques used to treat certain maladies. When a person was sneezing you would take a handful of orange leafs and, after boiling them, rub down the body. If a person were to have a toothache, it was understood that you must grate the tooth of a crocodile and apply it to the tooth that was sore. Insanity was easily treated by taking the private parts of a rooster and dissolving them in water. The water was then given to the patient to drink every day before dawn.

Although all of these techniques were effective, the most popular treatment used to rid the body of supernatural beings was incense. The natural substance Pom was burned and was believed to both ward away evil spirits and carry intentions and prayers to the gods. This was done by placing the Pom on hot charcoal and letting it produce smoke. Pom was a special type of incense because it was retrieved from the copal tree, also known as the tree of life. The tree of life is sacred to the Mayans therefore making Pom sacred too. Over time, the Mayans developed many forms of medical treatment that seemed to be suitable for them.

Citations: Authentic Maya "Mayan Medicine""". http://authenticmaya.com/maya_medicine.htm. [October 24, 2013] Day, Nancy. Ancient Mayan Civilization. Minneapolis: Lerner Publications Company P1.MLE

Ergil, Kevin V. Ancient Healing. Lincolnwood: Publications International LTD, 1997.

Holistic Guide "Mayan herbal medicine" "'. http://holistic-guide.com/mayan-herbal-medicine. [October 24, 2013] Hughes, Candice. "Science Taking Lessons From Mayan Medicine Men, Shamans `Who Speak to Gods'". Los Angeles Times (pre-1997 Fulltext) [Los Angeles, Calif] 12 Feb 1989: 11.

Proquest. Web. 24 Oct, 2013

Odijk, Pamela. The Mayas. Englewood Cliffs: Silver Burdett Press, 1990

Uncle Mango's Imports "Ceremonial Pom Incense""". http://www.unclemangoimports.com/Copal_Pom_Incense.html [October 24, 2013]

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The Bonampak Mural

The image above is one of the three Bonampak Murals and in this mural it shows prisoners of war at the feet of Bonampak’s finest lords and ladies suffering torture and decapitation. The mural tested scholar’s views on Mayan being peaceful people. The mural shown here indicates significant events that took place between 790 and 792 AD. Above the prisoners, the luxuriously dressed lords and ladies are shown wearing animal costumes. This mural was painted in the third room of the temple located in Bonampak. The Mayans showed scenes of sacrifice in this mural because it was an important piece in their religion. They thought it was the only way to keep the sun shining, crops growing, and people healthy. Although this Bonampak Mural represents human sacrifice, the Mayans only sacrificed human beings on rare occasions. The Mayans mostly took pride in sacrificing blood. The Bonampak Mural showed researchers what Mayan life was like.

Like most murals and paintings in today’s time period, the murals of Bonampak were also painted for a reason. The three Bonampak Murals were commissioned by the splendid and powerful king, Chan Muan. The Bonampak Mural was painted with great detail and vivid colors to celebrate King Chan Muan's heir. The scenes in the mural show events that happened during King Chan Muan’s ruling time period as well as his sons. Bonampak means painted wall. The colors used in the Bonampak Murals symbolize a wide-ranging variety of color and an absurd amount of skill the artists had to be able to create the beautiful murals. When the Bonampak Mural was being painted the people of the Maya celebrated in costumes. Together with this, a calendar inscription dates the Bonampak Mural to be painted between 790 and 792 CE. In addition, the Bonampak Murals were painted on the walls and ceilings of three rooms in a Mayan temple. This temple was located in Bonampak. The Murals were never finished because the Mayans abandoned their city. The detailed paintings were laid to rest in peace for 600 years until the Spanish invaded The Mayan’s city.

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Mayan beliefs are reflected in the planning of their city, which means all the murals in the city represent something including the Bonampak Mural. Since there are three rooms in the temple, there are three murals and each one represents something different. In the first room it epitomizes the appearance of the crown prince and royal children, preparation of dance, and the dance of gods. The Bonampak Mural located in the second room shows the arrangement of prisoners. In the last room the ceiling and walls were painted to represent sacrifice, the sacrificial dance, and prisoners of war suffering torture and decapitation. This Bonampak Mural also illustrates the significant events and major battles of Mayan history. In addition, the Bonampak Mural also displays other events such as court rituals or human sacrifice. The people that are shown throughout the murals are prisoners, royal children, or noblemen. Rattles, drums, turtle-shells, and trumpets are musical instruments that are illustrated with great detail. Along with the instruments, the artists that painted the Bonampak Murals decorated the murals with costumes and weapons of war. The colors and designs of the mural show the story of the last ruling family as well as kingly accession and celebration, warfare, and acts of self- sacrifice. The mural also has a scene that celebrates King Chan Muan heir. In the celebration scene the Bonampak Mural shows a parade of musicians. Overall the Bonampak Mural represents many different events and does so with amazing detail and vivacious color.

Citations Flaherty, Thomas H., Ed. The Magnificent Maya. Alexandria, VA: Time- Life Books, 1993. Print http://maya.nmai.si.edu/gallery/bonampak. [ 10-23-2013]. Web. http://peabody.yale.edu/exhibits/maya-murals-bonampak.[ 10-23-2013]. Web. Laughton, Timothy. The Maya. New York, Duncan Baird Publishers, 1998. Print Lynch, B. James Jr. "The Bonampak Murals"(1964): 24. jstor. Web. 24 October 2013.

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Mayan Codex With Numbers

Above is a Mayan codex with numbers about a merchant using the Mayan number system. In his right hand is maize (corn). His left hand might be holding the head of a lord of death. The dots and bars are numbers from the Mayan system. The merchant is supposedly counting money from a purchase.

This shows how merchants used math in everyday life. The Mayans need math to calculate change. They also need math for calendars with which they predict godly actions. The Mayans also observed the sky.

The objects in the sky are far away from us. The Mayans needed a system that could count up high. They could do that with their vigesimal system.

The Mayan number system might be alien to us, but it was common for the classic Mayan time period. They were accurate in math. They were within seconds of orbits and planet phases. The Mayans used their number sense to make grand calendars. The Mayans used a vigesimal system. A vigesimal system is base twenty. That meant that they didn’t have 1, 10, 100, and 1000 place values. They had 1, 20, 400, and 8000 place values. The Mayans had dots, bars, and shells representing numbers. A dot was 1 and a bar was 5. Shells in the Mayan number system represented 0. Most number systems in that time did not have a zero. Since their system had zeros, they could count up to the millions.

The Mayan system of counting was different from ours. Instead of symbols for 1 – 9 they had symbols for 1, 5, and 0. Unlike our way, which are side to side numbers, the Mayans used up and down place values. The smaller places were at the bottom. The larger are at the top. This system was appropriate and simple. Merchants used it to calculate change they owned. The Mayan system derived from the human body. A dot stood for a fingertip. A bar stood for the hand at a side view. Five dots equal a bar is how five fingers equal a hand. They also had a number system made from glyphs. This system was less commonly used. There were specific glyphs for 1 – 12. Numbers 13 – 19 were combinations of specific glyphs for 1 – 12. This system was harder to use.

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Foster, Lynn V. Handbook to life in the Ancient Maya World New York: Facts on File, 2002 Mayan Mathematics http://www.michielb.nl/maya/math.html [accessed October 25 2013]

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Madrid Codex

The image above shows the Madrid Codex. The writing show examples of Mayan numbers, glyphs, and gods. This particular codex is about predicting the future and was made from cloth or animal skin and was written with black and brown-red â&#x20AC;&#x153;paintâ&#x20AC;?. The people who wrote these codices were scribes and were very close to the top of the social structure. There are only 4 codices left in existence left after the Spanish conquers. The study of the language started in 1827 and by 1950 names of important people have been decoded and by 1960 to now the language is almost fully decoded. It was written and read in 2 columns, left to right, then down. The language was mostly used for history giving information about births, deaths, kings, queens, wars, gods, and time from creation.

To us, the Mayan had a complete different style of writing. We currently know the Mayans have over 800 glyphs and some to still be discovered, some were just shapes with shapes inside them and other were a picture representing the word. The glyphs that the Mayan wrote with were not all words but syllable like ba and ka but never a syllable that started with a vowel and were combined together to make a word or several words. The Mayan wrote in 2 columns at a time reading them left to right then up and down. If we read the Mayan sentence all translated but still in the same order it would make no sentence to us, they wrote with a different "sentence" structure. Mayans' wrote with structure being verb then subject and sometimes verb-object-subject then we wrote it as subject to the verb. Not all Mayans knew how to read all the glyphs some only knew a few but the scribes and the priest knew all of the glyphs. The books were made of folded bark and cover with jaguar skin; sadly only 4 of the books are left know to us the Dresden Codex, Madrid Codex, Paris Codex, and the Grolier Codex. After the arrival of the Spanish destroying most of the books but there is still a lot more writing because of all the writing on the monuments and buildings to keep the knowledge of the writing alive.

Mayan writing related to gods in a lot of ways. Some of the ways was that the Mayan writing did not always have to glyphs. Instead of the glyphs they could turn the glyphs into a picture of an animal or god, high priest and/or king. An example is if they wrote jaguar in the glyphs it could also become a picture of a jaguar and the same could happen with the god instead of animals. Some of the reasons Mayan wrote, was to write their names to tell who they are and all their good deeds. They also wrote to connect them to the gods and their oldest ancestors. They also wrote to tell the beginning of time or the creation of the Mayan civilization. The people who wrote the language were close to the top of society and being men as far as we know.

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Citations Foster, Lynn. Handbook to Life in the Ancient Maya World. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2002. Print.

Martin, Philips. Maya Empire for Kids A System of Writing. Oct 25, 2013 http://mayas.mrdonn.org/hieroglyphics.html "Mayan hieroglyphic writing." Britannica School. EncyclopĂŚdia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 23 Oct. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/51579>.

Nicholson, Robert. The Maya. New York: A Division of Chelsea House of Publishers, 1994. Print.

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The Stone Mountain

The image above is the right corner of the Kukulkan which is also known as the “Stone Mountain” and “The Chirping Pyramid”. Although now it is partly ruined, the caracol shape is still very noticeable. The large steps on the sides and corners are what make the Quetzal bird echo call after you clap in front of the pyramid. This reaction comes from the bouncing of the sound going off of the walls and behind the steps until it goes down the stairs. Another fact about this picture is that it shows some of the stucco beside the stairs, which is a substance like mud but a bit stickier. You cannot see the stucco very well but if you look right on the outside of the small sets of stairs you might be able to see a small glisten which is the stucco which they used to stick the blocks together. Learning about the Kukulkan was very fun and I hope you enjoyed reading about it!

One of the greatest pyramids in Chichen Itza is the Chirping Pyramid, also known as the Kukulkan, and the Stone Mountain. This pyramid was used by the Ancient Mayans for reasons such as religion and funerals. The Stone Mountain was built with large stones and was constructed to make the shadow of a snake slithering down the side of the worship and sacrificial building. The pyramid was made with a substance like mud called stucco. The pyramid was polished with stones that had limestone that showed a beautiful color in the sun. These stones were hoisted up by long ropes to form an oblique angle. This pyramid was not straight but it had large step structures going up to the top. On each side of the pyramid, there were steps that were the appropriate size for people to walk. This pyramid was built from different rocks stacked on top of each other from white earth. By stabilizing each layer they did not have to worry about wasting a lot of mud in between each layer of limestone. The platform of the monument was built on top of pavement and was very stable because of the solid foundation. One of the reasons they built it with limestone was to make it look better and it was more stable than the other materials that most others used.

Write Paragraph 2 here: The Stone Mountain has many different unnatural features that make this pyramid very unique and special. One of the features is called the chirp. This feature is made by clapping in front of the pyramid which makes a sound that comes back from an echo. This echo sounds exactly like a tropical bird the Ancient Mayans researched which was the Quetzal bird. The Quetzal bird was very important to

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the Mayans and that is how the pyramid got its name “The Chirping Pyramid”. Another extraordinary feature is that the stones were cut so precisely that during the spring equinox each year there is a shadow of a snake slithering down the side of the steps. Another feature of this pyramid is its large snake head at the bottom of the pyramid which has no purpose until the spring equinox, when the shadow of the snake slithers down the building. They made this snake head at the bottom of the pyramid to resemble “Choc” the rain god. One last unusual feature is the marvelous steps on the building. These are steps that are human size but which are on a small narrow path in the middle of each side of the pyramid. The other steps that were around the human size steps were very large and thought of as steps for the gods. These steps were also extraordinary because they took more work than any other part of the pyramid and were made of different material because there were too many steps to be made from the limited limestone. Some of the features that are on this pyramid that you might see on other pyramid it being made with limestone.

Citations Freidel, David. MayaCosmos. July2013.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kukulkan.(October23,2013. )Web

Lubman, David. "An archaeological study of chirped echo from the Mayan pyramid of Kukulkan at Chichen Itza." Acoustical society of America (1998):n.pag.The Chirping Pyramid. Database. 27 Oct 2013.

McKillop, Heather. The Ancient Maya. New York City: Norton & Company, 2006. Print.

Moore, Christina. "Mayan Architecture." Pyramids eight. (2008): n.pag. Anthropology008. Web. 1 Nov 2013.

Nicholson, Robert. ChelseaJuniors. CITY: PUBLISHER,1994.Print

MaryBeth, Weaver. "World-Mysteries." World-Mysteries.com. Lunar pages, 26 Mar 2002. Web. 1 Nov 2013.

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Madrid codex Chac

The image above is a picture from a Mayan book showing Chac the rain god. Often pictures of Chac in the Mayan books he is blue, with a curvy nose and his hair tied up on the top of his head. The Mayans thought that rain was Chacâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s blood. Chac controlled all the rain, thunder and lightning. Chac was both praised and feared by the Mayan people. The Mayans believed that Chac would carry an ax. They also believed Chac would walk around on the celestial realm, which is the sky above. Sometimes Chac would strike something with his ax. The strike would make sparks and then the sparks would come down to earth in the form of lightning. The Mayan thought that the thunder is the ax hitting the hard object. Chac was one of the many important gods in the Mayan culture.

Warfare and wars were very important to the Maya. Historians first thought that the Maya were very peaceful because they saw their strong interest in astronomy. Later they found out that the Maya were obsessed with war when they discovered carvings on stone that showed sacrifice and battle scenes. The Historians also found obsidian and stone weapons. Warfare was important to them for a lot of reasons. One reason for war was to get more land. They would also go to war to capture prisoners. The Maya would sacrifice some of their prisoners and keep others as slaves.

They would keep their prisoners healthy for a better sacrifice to the Gods. For the Maya the key for success would be to capture lots of prisoners or to gain land. Late in the classic time period, warfare became very frequent. Many cities were attacked and destroyed at this time. All this warfare added to the decline and disappearance of the Maya civilization.

Trade was very important to the Maya civilization. The Maya civilization was known for its advanced trade network. The Maya traded long, medium and short distances. They did not have a national currency so they would trade goods with one another. They traded on the value of the goods. There were two kinds of goods that the Maya traded. There were prestige items and subsistence items. The prestige items were things like jade, gold, copper, obsidian, decorated pottery and ceremonial items. The subsistence items were things they would use every day such as food, clothing, tools and simple pottery. Obsidian was one of the most valuable items to trade.

Obsidian was used for weapon spear points, adornments and rituals. Obsidian was only found in a few places in the Maya region. Obsidian from a distinct site had a distinct color and a distinct

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chemical element. Obsidian was one of the few items that could be traced back to its source.

Researchers learned about the Maya trade routes by the places where they found the same kind of obsidian.

Citations: Bunson Margaret and Bunson Stephen, Encyclopedia of Ancient Mesomerica. New York: Penn Plaza, 1996. Print. http://latinamericanhistory.about.com http://authenticmaya.com/maya_warfare.htm

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Codex with numbers

The image above is of a Mayan merchant using mathematics. The merchant is holding in his hand a small object representing maize. He is holding in his other head another object representing the head of a death god. The image means that the merchant has someoneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s fate in his hands. This is related to my paragraphs because merchants use money to trade and barter. They check whether they are getting their fair share or are they paying the right amount. They use math because they have to take stock on the supplies they have in their store and if they have enough to sell to the amount of costumers that wanted the merchandise. Merchants use math in everyday life for their jobs. Mayan culture did something different; they took something old and made it into something new. They didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t just stand for a complicated system that the Romans made for them they decided to make one they understood better. They are people who changed the perspective of the math world.

The Mayans had a different way of writing numbers, because they used shells, dots, and bars. The shells were zero, the dots were one, and the bars were five. It was not normal to have zero in a number system, but it made things a whole lot easier for them to write. Also the Mayans had no fractions or negative numbers. When they write numbers it is almost like writing in expanded notation, but not writing out the words. An example is in our system we say ten and thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all but they say ten and zero ones. They had no other symbols and there was only one way to represent one number, while using the shells, dots, and bars system. They wrote the number 1,234,598,367 by only using three symbols, which were the shells, dots, and bars. Although all together they had three ways of writing a number, which was made after the idea of the shells, dots, and bars system. Soon after they started to write numbers in glyphs and they had more than one way of writing one number. They also had names for the numbers.

For writing they wrote pin-yin for the numbers, except it was Mayan and not Chinese or any other languages it was just Mayan.

There was a reason why their number system was different. The Romans prior had made a math system, which was way too complicated than it needed to be. To make a math system that was less complicated they decided to make a system they understood better. This system was not as easy as it looks though, if you put one number in the wrong place value then it would be all wrong. Also the P 2. MIM

numbers were sometimes very tricky to figure out because they wrote horizontally rather than vertical.

Although the difference that stood out the most was that most people used the Western Civilization Mathematical System. The Western Civilization Mathematical System was the system we still use in present-day America. Instead the Mayan’s number system was a base 20’s number system, unlike ours which is a based 10 number system. It was like ours but it was a 20’s number system and it required no more than the number 19 Even though people were confused and didn’t know why they would do this, it made sense to the Mayans. They all had some differences in their math systems but all together it is still the same concept.

Citations: Mckillop, Heather. The Ancient Maya New Perspectives. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006.Print.

Fought, Steven. The Math Forum http://mathforum.org/k12/mayan.math/[ Accessed October 24, 2013.]

Nicholson, Robert. Journey Into Civilization The Maya. New York: Chelsea Juniors, 1994.Print.

Strom, Karen M. Thanksgiving In The Yucatan."Mayan Math http://www.hanksville.org/yucatan/mayamath.html"[Accessed October 24, 2013] Dubay, Bob Dr. Study Abroad In Mexico Mayan Math October 10-16, 2005;http://fsweb.bainbridge.edu/bdubay/mexico/index.html[Accessed October 24, 2013.]

“Mayan Math.”Good morning and Welcome to the Yucatan’s Mayan Calendar.Centro de Estudios del Mundo Mayan, Tuesday October 29, 2009.http://www.mayacalendar.com/Home.html.October 29, 2013

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Madrid Codex

The image above is the Madrid Codex, this was a Mayan book that consisted of math and writing. The writing in the book had the Mayan math and had pictures of hieroglyphs and writing. The codex was read from top to bottom.

When the codex was written it was painted on a fine layer of gesso (a paint mixture that basically is paper). The Mayan codices (books) had different signs. These signs could be put together or blended together to create more hieroglyphs.

As you can see above some of the hieroglyphs are represented with animals, people, and objects. One from the bottom all the way to the right are gods (these were also whole human/god hieroglyphs). There are only four books left from the Mayan history. Mayan writing history was used from the time period of 250 BC to about the 1700’s, we may know a lot but the rest is still a mystery.

Writing is shown all around the world, every culture has a different way of writing, and some cultures could write using words or even pictures. In the Mayan life they used pictures to write what happened daily. In Mayan writing the hieroglyphs represented phrases of words for their names. There were over 700 Mayan glyphs which were all represented with animal heads or body’s, people, and objects. The Mayan writing was written by scribes, these were upper class Mayan citizens. Scribes recorded what happened daily and all over the stone buildings. Scribes went to school from age 6 till they were 18, in order to be able to leave school they needed to write essays to show they were worthy of becoming a scribe. When scribes were in school they learned 700 hieroglyph signs. Glyphs were very hard to understand when first seen, the glyphs represented different phrases that could be understood, until scientist went more in depth with this study. The Mayan glyphs are different for each phrase but were made out of pictures and lines and shapes.

Mayan writing is different from other writings but when it unfolds you will see it is just like any language.

Mayan writing can be found today on ancient buildings, homes, pyramids, and temples. The writing also could be found on pots, pans, sculptures, or Mayan books called codices. Their writing was used until the 17th century about 200 years after the Spanish conquest. There are only 4 codices left but they were from the time period of the Spanish conquest (1519 – 1521) so they are not the oldest ones. 20 of the glyphs represented day names, from the Mayan 260 day calendar. In Mayan life they also used a math system that had dots, bars, and shells. The dots were represented as 1’s, the bars as 5’s, and the shells represented 0’s. The Mayan math system was base 20. In order to create the glyphs they needed stone, clay, and metal. Mayan writing system has been active since 250 BC but is not used often but it is being discovered and letting the secrets unfold.

Citations – Geography Department. Scrawl! Writing in Ancient Times. Minneapolis: Runestone Press, 1994. Print.

Gibbson, Clare. The Hidden Life Of Ancient Maya. Metro Books 122 Fifth Avenue New York, NY 10011. Print.

"Mayan hieroglyphic writing." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/51579>.

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Copán’s Ballcourt

The above image is Copán’s ball court and has a distinct I-shaped playing area with 3 ball hoops to the left. You can see the ground is covered in grass from the overgrowth but originally it was made out of limestone. The walls are slanted so the players could get the ball in the hoop. Many courts had paintings of human sacrifice on the slanted walls, this one did not or the paint has faded away so much you cannot see it anymore. This is one of the many small ball courts left and we hope for it to stay that way.

The Mayan ballgame was very much like modern sports except for a few minor details I`m going to tell how it was played. To play, a team had to keep a large rubber ball in the air without touching it with their hands. They had to get the ball into any of the 3 stone hoops to win the game. Usually if a player got the ball in the hoop the game ended because it was so hard to get the ball in the hoop. If nobody could get the ball in the hoop the game could end by the ball hitting the ground. The 7 winners were usually given a feast and were given jewelry and other expensive items while the 7 losers would be decapitated on the spot as a form of sacrifice. Also a fun fact: many people gambled on who would win and watched much like today!

The game players used many pieces of equipment to protect them from the up to 20 pound balls and these are the main pieces they used: The Manopla, a hard hand stone used to hit the ball with extra force and is believed to have been used to start the ball in play. The Yoke was used to protect the player`s ribs and torso and was made out of leather, wood, or stone. Hachas were worn on their Yokes for ceremonial purposes and sometimes good luck charms. They wore stylized animal headdresses and

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arm and knee pads for more protection. The size of the ball varied from each location so they had different types of equipment from each location but itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the same idea.

Citations: http://library.umaine.edu/hudson/palmer/Maya/ballgame.asp http://private.finalsite.com/CF40/cary/personal/87/Maya_Recources/mayan_museum.pdf?v=102913103712&fsauth=1383312594 _384df0b66c946b009ec0262dde64fdeb&ext=.pdf http://www.socialstudiesforkids.com/articles/worldhistory/mayanballgame.htm

The Hidden Life Of the Ancient Maya By: Clare Gibson

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Bonampak Mural

The image above is of the mural in the third room in Bonampak, a Maya city in Chiapas, Mexico. In this mural prisoners of war are kneeling before the king. Some have had their finger nails cut off. Some of the others have already been decapitated or killed. The leader is kneeling in front of the king begging not to be sacrificed to the gods. These captives were most likely killed in commemoration of the king´s presentation of his son as heir to the throne. They might have been captured in a war fought also for the presentation. This mural is in stelae 1, on the first level of the acropolis. The outside of stelae 1 was once decorated with statues, but they have deconstructed or were stolen before the ruins were discovered.

The Maya might have had some more gruesome practices, but they were indeed an interesting people.

The murals at Bonampak help us to better understand Maya life. Bonampak is best known for the colorful floor-to-ceiling murals that cover the inside walls of a small three room building on the first level of the acropolis. These murals tell of many of events that occurred in 790–792 AD, during the reign of Chan Muán. The images in the first room illustrate Chan Muán’s presentation of his son as heir to the throne among white-robed upper class wearing elaborate headdresses. Sacrifice, war, and bloodletting are all performed in commemoration of the king's presentation of his son to the people as the heir to the throne. In the second room the murals show a raid on a neighboring community, with both the warriors and their weapons dressed in jaguar pelts. Scenes of events occurring between 790 and 792 AD in the third room show nearly naked prisoners of war suffering torture and decapitation at the feet of Bonampak´s finely dressed lords and ladies. The murals in the second and third rooms were especially important in undoing the long-held and exaggerated idea of the ancient Maya as a calm and peaceful people. Scholars at the time were shocked, having little prior knowledge of such practices among the Maya. They were starting to think of the Maya as a cruel and bloodthirsty people. Painted around 800 A.D., these three rooms of paintings reveal, in shocking detail, the ancient Maya at the end of their glory. The murals show Maya people engaging in court rituals and human sacrifice, wearing elegant costumes, stripping the clothing from fallen captives, acknowledging foreign nobles, and receiving plentiful tribute. No other surviving work features so many Maya engaged in the life of the court, whether second-tier warriors offering captives to the king or the king’s mother pushed to the side by her stuck-up daughter-in-law. Costumes, musical instruments, and the weapons of war are all rendered with great detail. This made Bonampak an unmatched resource for understanding this ancient culture.

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The ancient Maya site of Bonampak is home to the most complete and important mural program of the ancient Americas. Bonampak is located within the deep tropical rainforest of Chiapas, Mexico. The three murals at Bonampak were discovered in 1946. This was when some Langdon Maya who lived in the region showed photographer Giles Healey what they had not shown to anyone else. It was a small temple whose three rooms house paintings that cover all surfaces. The architectural core of Bonampak is composed of a massive acropolis, built on a natural ridge that overlooks a large plaza lined by smaller platforms and buildings. Stelae (stone monuments) 1 and 4 were set in the plaza, and stelae 2 and 3 were set bordering the acropolis stairway. Three of these stelae relate to Chan Muรกn, the ruler identified as the hero in the murals. The murals are in stelae 1, a three-roomed building on the first level of the acropolis. The exterior of stelae 1 was decorated with figures and reliefs, these now mostly gone. Beams carved with texts and scenes of captive talking are set in each of the three doorways.

Many museums have reconstructions of these murals. One is the Yale Peabody Museum. An artist made hand-painted reconstructions of the murals. She completed the reconstructions in about two years.

They were half original size, which says much about the actual size of the murals.

Citations: <http://peabody.yale.edu/exhibits/maya-murals-bonampak> <http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/487463> Sharer, Robert J. The Ancient Maya. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994. Print.

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El Castillo

The image above is a square sided, stone pyramid in Chichen Itza named El Castillo. El Castillo got its name from the Spanish. They gave it the name El Castillo because of its imposing “look.” El Castillo means “The Castle” in Spanish. The stone temple that rests on top of the pyramid was used for religious and sacrificial rituals as well as a place where the people of the city could pay homage to their gods. On one of the walls of the temple, there is a painting that represents the city’s god. In front of the painting, there would be a sacrificial altar. The altar was where the sacrifices would be made. The pyramid had a flat top so that it could safely hold up the temple. The pyramids would be over 200 feet. They made the pyramids over 200 feet so that the gods could reach the sacrifices easier. At the same time, the city people could also see the religious sacrifices and rituals from the plaza.

When you think of a temple, you think of a largish monument with a couple of stairs leading up to it. But not the Mayan temples; come and learn about what the Mayan temples were, and what they were used for. The Mayan temples were relatively small stone buildings that were placed on top of the pyramids.

The capacity of the temples would only be big enough to hold a few people at a time. One of the purposes of placing the temples on the top of the pyramids was so that the people could watch the religious rituals and sacrifices. Another reason was so that the gods could reach the sacrifice easier. The temples were constructed as monuments to leaders or gods. They usually housed altars or stone platforms on which the priests would make their sacrificial rituals to the gods. Each city had its own separate god. The way the cities would represent their gods, was by painting a picture that represented that god. The painting was usually painted on the wall behind the stone platform. The people of the city would use the temple to pay homage to their god. That is what the Mayan temples were and how they were used in the Mayans daily life.

If I asked you to think of a pyramid, you would most likely think of a triangular prism. However, the Mayan pyramids were not straight like the Egyptians pyramids at all. Instead of having straight sides, they had sides that looked like ginormous flights of stairs. In addition, instead of having pointed tops like the Egyptian pyramids; the top of the pyramids were flat so that the temple could sit stably on top.

Some pyramids were designed to be climbed and some were not. The pyramids would usually be covered in white Stucco and they would be polished so that they would gleam under the sun. The stucco

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would also make the pyramid a creamy white. The pyramids were also sometimes painted red or blue.

The pyramids would be very tall and their stair cases would normally go from the top to the bottom of the pyramid. The pyramids usually had 2 or 4 stair cases. The pyramids would be over 200 feet and would sometimes have multiple layers. These layers would form when a new pyramid was built around an older one. The Temple of the Magician was built 5 times so that it could comply with the century styles that changed every 52 years according to the rounds of the solar and lunar calendars. El Castillo's themes of art and architecture duplicate that of Tulaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s, which was the Mayans original capital. Greatly detailed and emphasized images of the Quetzalcoatl and its symbols are also displayed in the art and architecture of El Castillo.

Citations: Day, Nancy. Your Travel Guide to Ancient Mayan Civilization. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Lerner Publications, 2001. Print.

"Mayan Architecture." https://www.courses.psu.edu/anth/anth008_cmg149/mayan.html. Web. 23 Oct. 2013.

"Maya." Britannica School. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/middle/article/275746>

Nicholson, Robert. The Maya. New York: Chelsea House, 1994. Print.

Odijk, Pamela. The Mayas. United States: Sliver Burdett, 1990. Print.

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Clay Figure of Warrior

The image above is a clay figure of a Mayan warrior in Mesoamerica holding a knife and a shield. This clay modeling is supposed to show that the warrior is about to attack his foe. This might seem unusual since his posture is him being seated. The warrior is clutching his shield with his left hand while counterbalanced by his other hand being raised in the air with a knife in it. His shield was probably made out of wood. He also was most likely wearing a padded, cotton, and quilted tunic and copper armor. His knife might have been for throwing although the Mayan warriors usually use it for sneaking up behind their foe and stabbing them. Most of the warriors have spears to charge in a pack but he does not. His shield should have many feathers of different colors. This Mayan warrior is most likely of a lower status than most others. The Maya have many amazing and interesting weapons.

The Mayan people used many interesting types of weapons. Most of the Mayan’s weapons were very useful. They had had bows that were made out of strong wood and arrows also made out of wood except for the tip. The tip was made out of different types of stone. The knifes that they used varied from materials. The spears that they used were made out of strong wood with obsidian tips. The word “Atlatl” means spear thrower in the Mayan language. The Atlatl was made completely out of wood and metal except for the obsidian tips at the end of the spear. The club was just carved out of wood. The sickle was made out of thin types of metal. Their armor was made mostly out of copper. They Mayan warriors almost always kept their armor shiny and clean. They also used shields made out of, most likely, wood. They decorated the shields with feathers with colors of red, blue, yellow and green.

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The Mayan people used their weapons in many different ways that usually confused or startled their opponent. The Mayans were very creative when it came to weapons. Some of their techniques were already used by other cultures. They used a spear for throwing or, stabbing by charging in a group.

They used knifes for sneaking up behind their opponents quickly to stab them. Bows were used for long range combat with the perk of not getting detected. The Atlatl (spear thrower) was used by an object or gunpowder throwing the spear forward. While the spear was thrown in the air the tip would project out.

The club was, of course, used for crushing the opponent and sometimes for taking prisoners. The sickle, a thin, curved blade, was originally used for cutting grass. When there were not enough knives the Mayans would use sickles. All these weapons have their own special uses.

Citations: Library.thinkquest.Maya

Weapons and Warfare. <http://library.thinkquest.org/TQ0310200/mayawp.html?tql-iframe [Accessed 10/23/13]

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Elite Woman Reading

Above is an image of a clay figure of an elite or noble woman reading a book on her knee. You can tell that she is a noble by her jewelry and current occupation. Reading and writing were mostly reserved for the upper class. As an elite child you would be taught by the priests to read and write. Mayan writing was complex and difficult to learn, thus it was reserved for nobles and scribes. In the picture the woman is wearing a jade necklace. Jade was a symbol of nobility. She is also wearing jade earspools, big stones or stone rings worn in the ear. She is also wearing a wristband made of numerous small jade beads. Mayan people lived very differently than we do today.

The Mayan Civilization had a very complex, specific and strict social structure. It contained an Upper, Lower and Middle Class all having specific boundaries. As a member of the Upper Class you were considered a noble. For nobles, clothing was very important. It showed their social status. Nobles wore clothes made of dyed cotton and sandals made of deer hides. They also wore jewelry made of jade, obsidian, coral, rare shells, jaguar teeth and other precious items.

The noble’s houses were made of stone and had high vaulted ceilings, huge courtyards and gardens. The jobs of nobles were very diverse. Some of them were high ranking artists and craftsmen, priests & priestesses or managers & bureaucrats. Many nobles had slaves and lived a rather lavish lifestyle. The King and the royal family were also nobles. Young women of nobility were taught by their mothers the duties of the household. Young men learned their father’s occupation so they could inherit the business someday. They didn’t cook, clean, hunt or trade. However, they did have to sacrifice. Because their blood was the most important they had to give more of it. They considered this a very important job and took the responsibility very seriously. p2.knc

As a Lower or Middle Class worker you were considered a commoner. Commoners wore clothes of plant fibers and sandals of smoothed tree bark. As jewelry they wore ornaments made of bone, wood or shells. In the morning, wives cooked and cleaned. Young daughters would help their mothers in the house or run errands at the market. Men hunted, traded and farmed.

Young sons helped their fathers in the field or learned their father’s job so that they could do it someday. The homes of commoners were simple with little furniture. Families slept together in one room on mats. All they really need were pots and dishes for cooking. Families lived in compounds in a collection of small thatched huts. When the children got married they built their own house in the compound. The head of the family had the nicest house. All of the people in the compound shared the same garden, shrine, baths and storage buildings.

Citations Eboch, Chris. The Way People Live : Life among the Maya. Farmington Hills, MI. Thompson Gale. 2005. Print Huascar, Xolotl. “ The Mayan Class Structure” The Americas. http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Article/427711.Web. October 23, 2013

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Plate with Deer Hunting Scene

The image above is a plate with deer hunting from Yucatan. The Hunter in the center of the plate has already captured a deer which he has draped over his head and shoulders. On the edges around the center scene, hunters are wearing deer masks to try to distract the deer they are trying to catch. As you can see in the picture, even though they didn’t hunt as often as you would think, they did hunt and had many different strategies that made hunting easier. In the picture you can see how difficult it was to catch something, and how much cunning and skill was needed, which was the reason why they relied the most on crops and farming. The hunters used one very important skill, which was disguise, to confuse the prey, and made it easier to catch the prey. The hunters had to be specifically taught to hunt, which was a very important skill for men to have a family. This is another reason why they didn’t hunt as often as you would think.

You would think that like other ancient civilizations the Maya used meat as their main food source, however, you would be wrong. To the Maya, meat was very rare. They didn't find the need to always be out Hunting because they had crops. One of the most important crops, corn, could be used for everything. So, they never found a very important use for meat except for flavoring, so they saved meat and animals for only celebrations, special times, and for a type of healing. When they did hunt, they hunted wild turkey, monkeys, deer, ducks, rabbits, iguanas, frogs, snakes, and also caught fish.

Another food that was rare was chocolate, which they used as money, but could also eat. They sometimes used chocolate as a drink, which they referred to as the drink of the gods. Even though there were plenty of animals to eat, they liked to save it for special occasions, and it wasn’t easy to hunt every day, rather than just grow crops.

The ancient foursome, (Squash, Beans, Maize, and Chile) were very important because they could be used for a lot of different things and were included in a lot of the ancient Mayan’s most common recipes. The Maya grew corn because of its many purposes. It is easier to grow one crop with many different purposes, than to grow lots of different crops that each serve a different purpose. Other crops they grew were sweet potatoes, cotton, and fruits like, papaya, watermelon and avocado.

Corn/Maize was considered sacred so every step in the growing and farming of corn were interwoven with a religious celebration. The best crops were grown on chinampas which were spots of land built in swampy lakes. Fields were called Milpas. Farmers had to use slash and burn farming to get rid of trees and other plants and to make the land more fertile. A piece of land could only be used for 3 to 4 years before soil turned "bad". So the Maya thought of maize as the most important crop because of how easily it grew and how many purposes it had. p2.lfjl

Citations Baquedano, Elizabeth. Aztec Inca & Maya. New York: New York Knopf, 1993. Print.

Discover the Ancient Maya. "Slash and Burn Farming".http://www.manatee.k12.fl.us/sites/elementary/samoset/3boltonmayafluency3.htm.[Accesse d 10/24/2013 Maya Empire for Kids. "Food and Maize".http://mayas.mrdonn.org/food.html. [Accessed 10/24/2013] Mayan Kids. "Chocolate and Corn". http://mayankids.com/mmkpeople/foods.htm.[Accessed 10/24/2013] Nicholson, Robert. The Maya. New York: New york, Chelsea House, 1994.Print Odijk, Pamela. The Mayas. New Jersey: Englewood Cliffs, 1990. Print. "pre-Columbian civilizations." Britannica School. EncyclopĂŚdia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 25 Oct. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/109431#69336.toc>.

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A Clay Figure of the Goddess Ixchel Weaving

The image above is a young lady sitting down weaving with a back strap loom. The sculpture is made of clay. The loom is a board looking object against the women’s stomach. Through this model you can see by her facial expressions that weaving is a long tedious job. The model represents how women usually do hard work like weaving In the Mayan Culture. Since the lady in the picture is working hard, she must intend to give her weavings to the gods or goddesses. The lady looks like she could weave almost anywhere or at any time. In the molding you can see how she is holding the loom with one hand and using some tool like needles in the other hand. The lady looks like she is wearing jewelry, and wearing jewelry just makes it even harder to weave. This lady in the molding and other Mayan women really work hard to make beautiful pieces of art like the pieces of clothing that they weave.

Mayan weaving is an important skill used for everyday lives. Weaving was worth a lot and was often used to make clothing. Women would often pay the taxes and pay important rulers by giving them something that they had woven. It was a lot of hard work and took maybe a few months to make one piece of clothing. They would put the weaving board against their stomach and would sometimes dip pieces of clothing in some dye that they got from plant and fruit juice to give it some color, and just weave until they started getting sore. They would weave almost anywhere and anytime, even when they were walking. They were very skilled at weaving, and they usually learned at a younger age.

The purpose of Mayan weaving was to give back to the gods and important rulers what they gave to you. This meant to the Maya that you should give important things like their blood and weavings because the gods gave them life and they also gave them skill to make weavings.

Sometimes they use weavings to pay the patron saint, Santa Rosa, in Chamula's Church. They usually go there with their mothers to pray to the saint that they might grant them the art of weaving. They had a myth that their “mother moon” the goddess Ixchel taught the first women how to weave. Whenever a girl is born the mother presents her with tools one by one, and she says “Well then, little girl, This will be your hand This will be your foot Here is your work With this, you’ll look for your food, Don’t take the evil path, Don’t steal p2.lmr

When you grow up Only with these will you work With your hand With your foot."

Some tools that they gave the children was a bamboo needle case and needles made of cactus spines.

Citations: Baqedano. Elizabeth. Aztec Inca & Maya. New York: New York, Knopf, 1993. Print Mayan Hands. "what weaving means". http://www.mayanhands.org/culture/meaning-function-of-mayan-textiles/. [ Accessed 10\24\2013]

Schevill, Margot Blum. " Innoration and Change in Maya Cloth and Clothing." The Maya Textile Tradition.

New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1997. Print.

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Bonampak Mural

The image above is a scene from the Bonampak mural. War captives are begging for their life and you can see blood dripping down from them. There are a lot of guards at the bottom to make sure the war captives donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t escape. The Mayans shown at the top look like they are the ones sacrificing the captives and also helping guard. The war captives are all on one level except for the one that looks like he is about to be sacrificed. This is also part of how and what did the Mayans sacrifice. The war captives are what the Mayans sacrificed. The Captives bleeding and being tortured is the how did the Mayans sacrifice. The image is very famous because sacrifice is really important to the Maya and this image helped show the way that the Mayans sacrificed. At the top of the image it looks like pictures hung on the wall. Those pictures could be glyphs that represent something special. Sacrifice was a big part of Mayan culture and their beliefs. The Mayan culture would never be the same if the Mayans didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t sacrifice.

An important part of the Mayan culture is how and what did the Mayans sacrifice. Sacrifice is an important part of religious worship in the Maya. At special times, such as birth of an heir to the throne, the beginning of a war, or the end of a katun, the Mayan rulers offer their own blood to the gods. This ritual is called bloodletting. Bloodletting is at many religious ceremonies, festivals, and holidays such as New Year celebrations. Blood is the most common sacrifice. The drawing of human blood was thought to keep the gods alive and was for instance necessary to achieve contact with the gods. From now, the

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Mayan rulers, as the intermediaries between the Mayan people and the gods, had to go through ritual bloodletting and self-torture. The Mayan Gods demanded constant sacrifice, which came from slavereds. Young slave girls who excelled at weaving would not be considered for sacrifice. Pom comes directly from Mayans. The Mayans burn the Pom and blood. The smoke is considered a sacrifice and communication to the gods. Pom means copal in the Mayan language. Copal is a sticky flammable organic substance from tropical trees. Blue is the color of sacrifice. To ward off minor problems or to cure illness, the locals might offer a gift of food, hearts of large animals (such as jaguars or crocodiles), or pottery to the gods. Another kind of sacrifice is human sacrifice. There is an informal and a formal way to complete human sacrifice. Both the ways are TORTURE.

Sacrifice in the Maya is important but how they drew sacrifice is just as important. In Acropolis, the very detailed illustrations in the third room illustrated the bloodletting, torture, and sacrifice of war captives.

In a famous mural the wife of a king was pulling a thorny rope through a hole that was pierced in her tongue. The blood flowed out of her mouth and onto paper strips in a basket. This is called bloodletting.

Bloodletting was sometimes performed at public ceremonies. It was performed so the viewers could watch the blood loss induce a trance in the person spilling his or her blood. The Mayan believed that the person in this trance was being transported into a spirit world to communicate with the gods. The detail and vivid colors of the scene of sacrifice is only now made apparent by computer-aided reconstruction.

The Maya sometimes described sacrifice in stone reliefs. The winners at Chichen Itza were the ones who scarified the losers. The stone relief carving from Chichen Itza ball court included the winner, the loser, the ball, and the vine. Another ball court is El Tajin. At El Tajin, the stone relief shows priests carrying the loser that was sacrificed. Included is this stone relief is the loser, the priests, the attendant, the death gods, and the plants. The Maya also described sacrifice with glyphs. Glyphs are how the Mayans write.

Glyphs are syllables and are different from our writing system because we use letters and they use syllables. A glyph is a symbol that stands for either an entire word or for one sound that makes up a word. The Glyphs representing syllable sounds are called syllabograms.

Citations Benson, Sonia. "Maya Arts and Sciences." Early Civilizations in the Americans: Almanac. Vol 2. Detroit: Thompson Gale, 2005. Print.

Benson, Sonia. "Maya Religion and Government." Early Civilizations in the Americans: Almanac. Vol 2.

Detroit: Thompson Gale, 2005. Print.

Day, Nancy. Your Travel Guide to Ancient Mayan Civilization. Minneapolis: Runestone Press, 2001. print http://www.unclemangoimports.com/Copal_Pom_Incense.html. 10/24/13.Web. Laughton, Timothy. The Maya Life, Myth, and Art. New York: Stewart, Tabori & Chang, 1998. Print.

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Jaguar and other zodiac animals

`The image above is a representation of the Mayan jaguar god of the underworld, Xbalanque.

The jaguar was a powerful predator in the forests of the Mayan civilization. The Mayan people associated the jaguar with water that comes from the earth, the growth or failure of crops, and with life after death. Because the Mayans saw this god as a powerful god, he received many sacrifices in order to make the crops grow well and avoid the destruction of the crops. The jaguar god was a god with significant impact on the daily lives of the Mayans. The jaguar was also one of the Mayan zodiac animals that represented the months of the year.

Animals held a significant place in Mayan Culture. While humans did not have domestic animals, there were a variety of uses for animals in Mayan Culture. Mayans used animal fur, feathers, and skins for self-adornment. The quetzalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s vivid green tail feathers were rare and were used mainly by the king and other wealthy Mayans for self-adornment. Mayans found the fanciest animal skins that they could to make clothing, such as jaguars and cheetahs. Mayans also used animal hides for functional clothing. Deer hides were the most common material used to make Mayan shoes and sandals. The use of animal skins for clothing and self-adornment created a demand for skins and feathers which led to the creation of a trade route in the Mayan empire. Mayans also used animals for food. Some of the animals that were used for foods were, chickens, cows and ducks. In addition to wearing skins and eating animals, the Mayans used animals in their written language. Animal glyphs are part of the written language of the Mayans. Animals were represented in glyphs as gods and as symbols used to tell stories. Animals were important to the Mayans because of their usefulness in adornment, common clothing and communication.

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Many of the Mayan gods had animal forms and were represented by animal glyphs. Three Mayan gods that had animal forms were Quetzalcoatl, Chac, and Xbalanque. Quetzalcoatl, the god of the sky, was represented by the Quetzal birds which lived in the cloud forests. The bright green tail feathers of the Quetzal birds, which were gathered when they came down from the cloud forest, were used in the worship of Quetzalcoatl. Chac, the rain god, was represented by a serpent with fangs who carried a lightning shaped ax. The rain was believed to be his blood, and rain was a precious resource in Mayan culture. The jaguar was associated with the god Xbalanque who was an underworld god and who was the source of plants and spring water. Like Chac, Xbalanque’s association with water held great significance for the Mayans. The significance of animals in the Mayan culture is reflected in the animal images of their gods.

Citations

Eboch, Chris. Life Among the Maya. New York: Thomson and Gale, 2005. Print.

Gibson, Claire. The Hidden Life of the Ancient Maya. China: Metro Books, 2010. Print "Maya." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 1 Nov. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/51572>.

"Popol Vuh." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 31 Oct. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/60844>

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Clay Figure of Mayan Ruler

The image above is a clay figure of a Mayan ruler from the island of Jaina. The quetzal feathers on his headdress show that he is a king. The king wears elaborate ceremonial clothing and adornment.

Because he is a king, the earplugs and necklaces he wears are most likely jade, their most valued stone.

His wristbands have a geometric pattern on them. This figure was probably brightly painted, based on traces of blue paint left on his headdress and loincloth. Although not visible in the picture, he wears elaborate sandals. The king is possibly wearing tattoos, as all Mayas did. The figurine is a great example of the Mayan kings’ ceremonial attire and adornment.

The Maya’s life revolved around their religion. Their religion created their ideas of beauty.

Because corn was their primary food source, it was an important part of their religion and fashion. The Maya worshipped the maize god, the god of corn, which was their most important god. Babies’ heads were shaped with wooden boards to elongate the forehead. They did this to resemble the maize god who had a head in the shape of a corn cob. Hair was styled around the head to represent corn silk on the corn cob. Jade, their most precious stone, symbolized green corn stalks and life. The Maya filed their teeth to inlay them with jade. They also wore jade jewelry. Another example of adornment based on religion is the fact that kings wore quetzal feathers to represent Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent.

The Maya’s ideas of beauty had great religious importance.

In Mayan society, different classes had different attire. Male commoners either wore long shirts that reached the knees, or loincloths. Female commoners wore simple, wide tunics or dresses called huipils.

Cloaks or mantas were worn by both men and women. Nobles wore leopard skin and cotton suits and

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capes. Some Mayas made shoes by dipping their feet in latex, which dried and became fitted shoes.

They also wore moccasins.

All classes of the Maya wore jewelry and tattoos. They painted abstract patterns on their bodies with different colors, depending on their age and occupation. For example, priests wore blue paint and unmarried men wore black. Girls pierced their ears, lips, nose, and skin between nostrils. They wore jade and gold ear plugs, lip plugs, and nose rings. Crossed eyes, big noses, and headdresses were high in fashion. Crossed eyes were developed by tying a bead to a strand of hair between the eyes at a young age. This trained the child to focus on the bead. Big noses were a sign of nobility. The height of the headdresses depended on your social status, so the king would have the tallest, while the commoners had the shortest. The Mayaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s idea of beauty was very different from ours.

Citations: Alonzo, Gualberto Zapata. "Mayan Dress". An Overview of the Mayan World. Merida, Yucatan: M. Esquiliano, 1956. Print.

"Beauty: It's All in the Head." Mayankids.com. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.

Day, Nancy. "Local Customs & Manners". Ancient Mayan Civilization. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Lerner Publications Company, 2001. Print.

Laughton, Tim. "Clothes and Beauty". The Maya. Bromall, PA: Chelsea House Publishers, 1993. Print.

"Maya Empire for Kids: Leaders and Nobles." Mrdonn.org. Mr. Donn's Social Studies Site. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.

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Cacao Beans

The image above is of cacao beans that were one of the forms of currency in Mayan civilization.

Cacao beans were also used to make chocolate, which was only made into a drink. It was very special, and used only in special ceremonies. The beans grew on trees, but grew best in the lowlands. They were very valuable because pests and droughts could lower harvests easily, and they were used as currency.

Cacao beans go with Mayan trade well because they represent currency in Mayan civilization. So if you wanted a rabbit in Tikal, you would have to pay 10 cacao beans for it. Beans were also traded with foreign civilizations for the flesh inside them to make chocolate. Traders could get lots of valuable things from other places where cacao beans did not grow well. This trading activity provided nobles and kings with things like turquoise and dyes. The Lowland Maya did this type of trading with the Highland Maya.

Trading was a complex part of Mayan society that helped them flourish. The Mayans traded locally and kept to themselves. Then around 400 AD they started to trade long distance to other cities that needed their exports. In Mayan civilization, cacao beans were used as currency. Not all civilizations that they traded with used cacao beans as currency, so they usually bartered with other cultures for goods. There are only four surviving books recorded by the Maya in the world, but we know how many cacao beans some things cost. For example, a pumpkin was four beans, a rabbit was ten, and a slave was 100. If you were poor and didn’t have cacao beans to pay or anything to barter with, you could do labor for that person. For example, Jeff the peasant would get a cow, and Steve the priest would get Jeff to build him a bed. Mayan traders didn’t have pack animals like donkeys in their environment, so did they carry it themselves? No! They used slaves to carry the obsidian or jade to other civilizations. Slaves weren’t much help when Mayan traders needed to travel by water to trade for salt with an island like Cay Ambergris. Traders used canoes that took them to these islands. The Mayans had four main exports.

They were jade and quetzal feathers for jewelry, obsidian for cutting tools, and the most important, salt.

Trading was a big part in their civilization because the king of Chechen Itza might have more prestige, or power then the King of Tikal, because he traded more.

Traders were a respected and powerful part of Mayan society. Traders brought back valuable things for their cities, and in turn became wealthy. Trading wasn’t just a high ranking person’s job.

Common people could also become traders, and even become very powerful. Mayan traders were respected by their kings, and were not taxed. Toward the Late Classic Period, traders started to gain political power. The Cocom family is one example. By trading, they were able to become rich and powerful. Kings weren’t the only people that respected Mayan traders. People were generous to traveling traders, as they would feed their party and let them stay for the night. Big cities would become prosperous because their traders were active. For all the respect they were given, traders could be tricky

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and illegal at times. For example, they could give cacao pods to somebody and instead of flesh inside, there would be sand.

Citations Conrad, David. The Ancient Maya- A Commercial Empire. Jan 2006. http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/1574-the-ancient-maya-a-commercial-empire. (Accessed 25 Oct 2013) Foster, Lynn V. Handbook to Life in the Ancient Maya World. New York: Facts On File Inc., 2002

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City Layouts

The image above is a map with an architectural layout of two Mayan cities. The image shows the cities of Uxmal and Chichen-Itza. The image includes some pictures of Mayan temples and buildings as well as modern day buildings such as hotels and parking lots. The plaza is located in the center of the city image where there are no buildings. The highest class people such as kings, scribes and skilled artisans lived adjacent or nearby to the plaza or center.

Middle ranking members of the society lived right outside that area. Almost all the Mayan cities had a plaza, a pyramid temple, a grand palace and a ball court in the city center.

Chichen - Itza however, did not contain a grand palace. Most of the cities had similar design and layout. Each Mayan city is very similar but also very different at the same time.

From early Pre-Classic times to the post classic era, Mayan Civilization was always centered on cities. Constructing the Mayan cities took time, labor and lots of planning. The

Maya required two things to construct the cities. They required the central organization of

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planning, including materials and labor. They also required specialized labor in many different building crafts. Peasants worked on these construction projects to pay homage to the king and state. It took political power to command a large work force when building cities. The Mayans

had a very different building design than we do. They did not build in right angles but relied heavily on bilateral symmetry. This means if you cut a building right down the middle each half would look like a mirror image of the other. In each city the general design was the same. The most common material used to build was limestone because the source was plentiful in most of Mayan settlements. They also used many other materials and substances such as mortar (made from burning limestone), stones, basalt axes and even fire. Though they did not use metal tools to build, they were able to construct buildings with just as well as we do with metal tools.

The center of the cities was very important to Mayans because it was where everyone gathered to watch public religious ceremonies. The ceremonies were held on the plaza (a large open space surrounded by pyramid temples, royal places and ritual buildings). Plazas could hold tens of thousands of people at a time. The buildings in the ceremonial center were multi-plat formed, enormous stone structures featuring vaulted arch construction. This also included the interiors and exteriors to be covered in a limestone plaster, often tinted with color. The most important government and religious building surrounded the city plaza. The royal palaces, ball courts, and less important government buildings were adjacent or close by the city plaza. Raised, paved roadways (scabe) connected the ceremonial center to outlying parts of city. In the outlawing parts of the cities the palaces of lesser nobility were built.

Homes of regional bureaucracy and middle ranking members of society made up next layer outside the city center. Mayan city defensive structures (also outlawing parts of the city) were surrounded by farms and forests. The largest cities traded for food and supplies from suburban cities and regional agricultural villages. No matter where you lived (the center of a city or the outlawing parts) all the Mayan structures were amazing.

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Citations: o

Britannica School. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 25 Oct. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/74585>.

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Day, Nancy. Your travel Guide to Ancient Mayan Civilization. Minneapolis: Runestone Press, 2001. Print.

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Moore, Christina. Anthropology 008: Mayan, Aztec, and Inca Honors Page." Project one; Mayan architecture." https://www.courses.psu.edu/anth/anth008_cmg149/mayan.html. [ Accessed 24 Oct 2013

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Mayan Museum Exhibit Catalogue Mayan Architects

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Depiction of battle predicted by a priest

The above image is the outcome of a battle conducted because of the position of the planet Venus. Toward the left is a naked prisoner walking back to the victorious city. Behind the prisoner is most likely the leader of the city, dressed with a jaguar skin and carrying his weapons. This battle was conducted because the planet Venus was in a good position for the Maya. What that position was or who they battled, is not known. But what we do know is that the Maya really knew that Venus was where they wanted it. Even though nearly all ancient civilizations observed the sky, the Maya were leaders of ancient astronomy. They calculated the length of the solar year to a fraction of a second and the length of a lunar cycle to 23 seconds. One of the planets studied most often was Venus. There were 584 phases of Venus, and the priests and astronomers knew exactly what they all meant. Obviously Venus was in a good position before this was painted, or they would not have gone to battle and most likely not have won if they had.

People often think of the Maya simply as people who believed in voodoo and could predict the apocalypse, but they were very intelligent and powerful people. They predicted eclipses thousands of years in advance that actually happened, and made huge cities with pyramids at the center, often called stone mountains. One of the primary fields of science for the Maya was astronomy. They didn’t use any fancy magnifying lenses or computers, because they obviously didn’t have any. They simply watched the sky every night and compared measurements. Note that this was done with incredible accuracy even by today’s standards. Imagine where we could be if we studied the with which the Maya calculated distance and time is amazing. No other ancient civilization that we know sky as carefully and often as the Maya. Astronomy was important enough that nearly every building in a city was designed as an observatory, as well as something else. The accuracy of has ever done that. Think where we could be if the Maya had the technology of modern astronomers. We would most likely have time machines and interstellar space travel. We don’t know exactly how or exactly why the ancient Maya studied the sky, but they did. The only way we’ll ever get to know is to guess.

Along with an amazing knowledge of astronomy, the Maya had several calendars based on the sky. The Tzolkin was a calendar with 13 numbered days and 20 names for days. This means that dates would be expressed as a number from 1 to 13 and one of 20 named days. For example, the Tzolkin would start with 1a, and then 1b, and this continues for 260 days, when the cycle restarts with 1a.

Another of the calendars of the Maya was the Haab. The Haab was a 365 day solar calendar. It had 18

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months with 20 days each and 5 unlucky days at the end called the Uayeb. The Haab was combined with the Tzolkin to create a cycle where day 1 of the Haab and 1a of the Tzolkin occurred together every 52 years. The Tun, also called the long count calendar, was just the amount of time that had passed since Mayan creation, supposedly August 11, 3114 BCE. Dates in the Tun were expressed with 5 numbers. The date 8.12.7.0.9 would be 9 days, 0 months of 20 days, 7 years of 360 days, 12 sets of 20 years, and 8 sets of 400 years. This would be 1,240,929 days after creation or about February 3, 285 BCE. It is very humbling to remember that all of this was created by hand, from stone, before Columbus even discovered the New World. Don’t say that the Maya were not as technologically advanced because they didn’t have computers or cars, because at the time, they were just as advanced as anybody for their time.

Note: A is not actually the name of a day on the Tzolkin.

Citations: Laughton, Timothy. Exploring the life, myth, and art of the Maya. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, 2012. Print.

"Mayan calendar." Britannica School.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.

Casio. “Keisan online calculator.” Date duration calculator. Casio, 2013. Web. Oct. 24, 2013.

Teresi, Dick. Lost discoveries: The ancient roots of Modern Science – from the Babylonians to the Maya. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002. Print.

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Clay incense burner

The image above is a Mayan pottery censer used to hold sticks of incense. The Maya commonly made sacrifices of burning incense. The smoke was believed to go to the upper world where it would be received by the gods. Incense was also used to ward off evil spirits, which the Maya thought caused illness. The Maya had a very intricate medicinal system that employed a combination of science and religion. The incense burner associates with the religious side more than the scientific side of their medical practices. Although it is surprising that the incense burner is a part of the Maya medicinal system, it is an interesting view into how religion was a part of their understanding of illness and their approaches to treat it.

The Maya had a very complex, progressive medicinal system that utilized about 1,500 plants.

Many of these florae contain chemicals that are incorporated in medicines today. For example, the Mayans treated stomach pain with snake root. Today, chemicals from the Indian snake root are used to treat constipation and are included in a drug named reserpine. The Mayans utilized some surprising items as medicine. One was the gemstone, jade, which was used to treat kidney ailments. Another unexpected Mayan remedy was chocolate, which used to treat many ailments including weight gain, stimulation of the nervous system, and improving the nervous system. The Mayan people had a very advanced medicinal system for their time, and they used a broad variety of materials from nature for healthcare management.

The Maya medicinal process was a mix of science and religion. The Mayan deities of medicine were Itzamná and Ix’Chel. Illness was thought of as unbalance, and health was pictured as balance. The Maya believed that the gods punished sin with sickness. Supernatural spirits were sometimes contacted to comprehend what wrong the person had committed and what propitiation should be done. The Mayans had six religious medical principles. The Maya belief systems described the separation between body and soul, whether a symptom or treatment was considered to be hot or cold, the cooperative approach of medicine, natural cycles of plants, status of blood, and a person’s life force. The Mayans’ medicine was a very innovative, multifaceted system, which integrated both scientific and religious aspects. p2wen

Citations Authentic Maya. “Maya Medicine. http://www.authenticmaya.com/maya_medicine.htm. Authentic Maya, January 28, 2011. Web. October 26, 2013.

Baquedano, Elizabeth Aztec, Inca & Maya. New York: Knopf, 1993. Print Dillinger TL, Barriga P, Escarcega S, Jimenez M, Salazar Lowe D, Grivetti LE. Department of Nutrition, University of California, Davis CA 95616, USA. J Nutr. 2000 Aug; 130(8S Suppl):2057S-72S. “Food of the gods: cure for humanity? A cultural history of the medicinal and ritual use of chocolate.” http://www.chocolate.org/cacao-chocolate.html. Department of Nutrition, august 2000. Web. October 26, 2013 Therapeutic Research Faculty. “Indian Snakeroot.” http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-

supplements/ingredientmono-787INDIAN%20SNAKEROOT.aspx?activeIngredientId=787&activeIngredientName=INDIAN%20SNAK EROOT.Therapeutic Research Faculty, April 18, 2013. Web. October 28, 2013.

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Moon Goddess rattle

The above image is a rattle depicting the moon goddess. She is wearing a cloak and a headdress. The goddess is so respected that they make childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s toys depicting her. The rattle could also be used to appease the goddess or ward off evil spirits. The gods were often depicted in rattles and statues as offerings and to show respect. The Mayans tried hard to respect and follow their gods. The Mayans were interesting people, why did they leave their cities? What other adventures did the Hero Twins go on? The world may never know!

The Hero Twins appear often in Mayan Mythology. They were the conquerors of Seven Macaw Earthquake and Zipcana, but their greatest achievement was the defeat and deaths of the Lords of Xibalba. The story of the Hero Twins begins with their father and uncle. The two men were the greatest ballplayers in the land. They made so much noise that the Lords of Xibalba invited them to play a ball game against them. The men made it to the underworld but were tricked when the Lords put statues of themselves in their place and when the men greeted the statues the lords leapt out laughing and told them they had failed. The lords then offered the men a seat so the men sat down. The men discovered that the seat was burning hot but it was too late they sat down and the Lords said they had failed again and the men were killed. The Lords of Xibalba hung the head of the Hero Twinsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; father in a tree. The hero Twins were born when the head of their father spat into the hand of a death maiden. They too became great ballplayers and were invited to play against the lords of death. They were not deceived by the statues or the hot seat. The Twins were challenged by the lords to spend the night in the dark house without lighting the two cigars they were given. The Twins got through the dark house without lighting the cigars by calling fireflies to land on the cigars making them look like they were lit. They got through the razor house by crawling under the blades and the jaguar house by feeding the jaguars bones they had brought with them just in case. They failed their last test by jumping into hot ovens and dying. Their ashes were thrown in the river. They reformed as catfish and turned back into boys. They found they could chop themselves up and still live and burn down a house full of people and not hurt them. (They P6. EDS

could also un-burn/reform the building.) They traveled to the underworld and preformed to the lords.

One asked if they could chop him up. The Twins said they could so they chopped him up but did not reform him. The Twins then revealed their identities and drove the lords off a cliff. The Twins arose into the heavens and became the sun and moon. The Mayans were unsure of which twin was which celestial body.

The gods of the Maya were represented by things in nature. The Mayans saw their gods in things and believed the objects were representations of their gods. The Moon goddess was represented by a rabbit because thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s what the Mayans saw in the moon. Jaguars were powerful beings and so one of the most powerful gods (The sun god) is represented by one. Chac the god of rain is represented by a dragon.

Rain is a vital source of water and food. Quetzalcoatl (ket-zil-quat-ul) is the most powerful god and he is represented by the feathered serpent, which combines the serpent and the quetzal bird. Mayan kings wore capes and cloaks of quetzal feathers. Seven Macaw (Defeated by the Hero Twins) was represented by a macaw. Gods were respected and feared so it is reasonable for the gods to be represented by animals that are feared and respected. The Mayans drew glyphs of their gods in either form. Some farmers put statues of dragons around their farms as representations of Chac so he would send enough rain.

Citations: Allan, Tony, and Tomb Lowenstein. Gods of Sun and Sacrifice: Aztec & Maya Myth. Amsterdam: TimeLife, 1997. Print.

Donn, Linn. "The Maya Empire for Kids." The Maya Empire for Kids. Pete's PowerPoint Station, n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2013.

Gibson, Clare. The Hidden Life of the Ancient Maya: Revelations from a Mysterious World. New York: Metro, 2010. Print.

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Bonampak Mural

The image above is a painting from the Bonampak Mural showing the torture and sacrifice of war prisoners. The prisoners were being sacrificed at the feet of the nobles in Bonampak. There is one prisoner at the top of the stairs begging not to be killed. He was captured in a raid of a neighboring city and he is about to be sacrificed to the gods.

This is one of the scenes in the third room that changed peopleâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s view of the Maya.

These gruesome pictures showed people that the Maya had a dark side. This picture is a prime example of the Maya giving sacrificial offerings to the gods. Most if not all of the prisoners will be killed as sacrifices to the gods. The people who are killing the war prisoner are wearing jaguar pelts which were also shown in the second room. They were also wearing that because the Jaguar Sun God. The jaguar was viewed as a very mighty creature by the Mayans. The Maya were beautiful artists as you have figured out by hearing about the fascinating Bonampak Mural.

The Bonampak Mural is very fascinating because of what the mural depicts. The three rooms all show different things but it was mostly a story of a battle, the victory, and the celebration. There are three rooms of the Bonampak Mural. The first room shows when Chan Muwan, the king of Bonampak at the time, designated his son to be the heir to the throne. The second room shows a raid on a neighboring city. One P6. FHK

important part of the second room is a painting where there is a short skirmish. Then it shows prisoners being tortured. The last room shows the horrific torturing and killing of the war prisoners after the raid. In the last room there is a scene in which Chan Muwan, wearing a jaguar pelt as a testament to the jaguar sun god, is sacrificing slaves. The second and third rooms were very important in showing that the Mayan were not always peaceful people. The murals also showed some of the Mayans instruments like the wind instruments including the ocarina, flute, and trumpet. Also it showed the percussion instruments like drums, scrapers, and gourd rattles. That is what the Bonampak Mural showed.

The Maya were very religious people and The Bonampak Mural was very important to them religiously. The Bonampak Mural shows some very graphic scenes of torturing and killing prisoners. The third room was mostly showing the torturing and killing of prisoners. But the killing part to them was actually a sacrifice to their gods.

They were offering sacrifices by killing the prisoners they captured from war. The sacrifices were actually very religious ceremonies. They thought that war prisoners would be perfect offerings to the gods because they are not citizens of their own city and they would not be missed. The Bonampak Mural also changed the view of the Maya. Instead of people thinking that the Maya were peaceful, they thought that they were unmerciful in wars. Another reason that The Bonampak Mural was important to the Mayans is that in many paintings the people were wearing jaguar pelts. The jaguar pelts were shown in the mural as a testament to the Jaguar Sun God. The Jaguar Sun God was said to make the sun go up and down every day. The fact that the people are wearing jaguar pelts obviously is a testament to the god. That is why The Bonampak Mural is important to the Maya.

Citations "Bonampak." Britannica School. EncyclopĂŚdia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.

Coe, Michael D. The Maya. New York: Thames and Hudson Inc., 2005 "Designing From Nature". 2008; http://mayankids.com/mmkpeople/textiles.htm. [ Accessed 24 Oct 2013].

"The Maya Murals of Bonampak: Windows on an Ancient Culture". http://peabody.yale.edu/exhibits/maya-murals-bonampak. [ Accessed 24 Oct 2013].

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Priestly Prediction

Depiction of a battle predicted by Mayan priest In the picture above is a depiction of a battle predicted by the Mayan priest. This picture is depicted by Mayan artisans to show a battle with predicted victory by the Mayan priest. In this picture it shows a kingly warrior with a headdress and jaguar skinned cloak (the sign of a high noble) and a spear and shield in one hand and a war club in the other, also shone in this picture is the line of victorious Mayan warriors escorting naked war prisoners back to the city. The prisoners will most likely be used as human sacrifice to make the gods happy.

This picture is important to the representation of the priest because since the day of this battle and the outcome was almost certainly pre-decided and predicted before the battle had even happened by the Mayan priest. This was done so hopefully to increase the chance of being victorious. Because Mayan priest studied the stars (planet Venus in particular) and by doing this communed with the gods they believed that the gods of their religion would guide them to victory with every kind of necessary support, one instance of this might be the best day to attack. Another one of the reasons this pictures is important to the representation of the Mayan priest is it shows what the priest really predicted and why it was important. Mayan priests predicted good days to plan or do important things (like attack or defend in a large scale battle) and also predicted important events (like eclipses). This artifact of pottery painting is important because it gives people an example of one of the most life changing things that the Mayan priests were tasked with predicting and getting right, something that could drastically change the life of the Mayan people. Imagine if a priest was thought to have misunderstood the stars because of a lost battle and was blamed with whatever outcome or lost that came from failing. After doing my individual research about the Maya I have found them to be a very interesting and unique culture and I hope you go on to learn more about this incredible set of people.

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The Mayan astronomers were a series of priest who studied from around the age of 7 the art of reading writing and astronomy. To become a priest you had to be born into a high noble family or have a family line of priest.

The high priest was just below the royal family in the ancient Mayan social structure so he was very powerful and normal priest would be just below him. At around sunrise or sunset almost every day the priest would study the cosmos and the various movements of the stars and planets. Some planets like Venus even had 584 phases all mapped by the Mayan priest. The most important reason why Mayans studied the stars and made their calendars was so they could predict very important things that would affect the everyday life of an ancient Mayan. For instance if you were a Mayan noble you would much rather plan a party on a â&#x20AC;&#x153;goodâ&#x20AC;? day so to ensure the successfulness of it. Priest used a calendar called the Tzolkin Calendar which was a 260 day sacred year calendar. Then when priest did their predictions and studied the stars they would use their Tzolkin calendar to tell the Mayan people what kind of day it was. Not what day it was but what kind of day it was, meaning whether it was a good or bad day depending on what god represented it. According to Mayan beliefs almost every day was represented by a certain god, some days it would be a helpful god and this might be a good day to plan an important ceremony. Other days it could be represented by an unhelpful god these days were regarded as good days to stay inside or not do much. One of the other important calendars was the Haab calendar which was used to track the time it took for the earth to orbit around the sun one time. This calendar was ultimately used as an agricultural calendar. This calendar was so important that these predictions of when to plant and to harvest could either save or kill out the Mayaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s massive population through famine. The Mayans believed that through their view of the universe (the over world, middle world and underworld) the sky gods who more generally helpful to the Mayan lived in the over world. This was thought of as the cosmos so looking at the planets and stars and reading the many phases of them could predict very important aspects of everyday life for the Maya.

The Mayans view to the universe, similar to most cultures but still shares some form of uniqueness. Mayans believed that the universe had 3 different levels, the cosmos which was above earth and was were the sky and

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moon gods lived. In the Mayan culture these gods were thought to be the more helpful and caring for the Maya.

The next level of their universe was earth where humans and good bad and neutral spirits all lived. The final level of the Mayans universe was the underworld which like its name was truly believed to be underneath the earth.

This realm was thought as a dark and foreboding place ruled by the lords of death. When Mayan astronomers looked up at the Milky Way they instead thought of it as a line of recent souls traveling from Xibalba (the underworld) to the over world. Mayans believed that when you died and were buried the lords of death would then consume you and make you part of the earth henceforth creating the balance that was very important for the Maya by giving back to the earth that was dying for you. Also along with this trade idea often Mayan priests would lead many city wide sacrifices that were very common in everyday life. The Mayan view of the universe was important to the priests because they studied the cosmos because they thought it was inhabited by the gods and priests also led the majority of the religious rituals along with the king. Certain events of the year that were considered to be very important for the Mayan people like the solar eclipse could be predicted to a fraction of a second by the Mayan priests. One of these days was the lunar eclipse which was mapped, predicted and recorded all down in a sacred Mayan book called the Dresden codex (codex meaning Mayan book). In this book Priests predicted and recorded times that it took for the earth to do 5 or 6 lunar rotations, which was roughly around the time each eclipse would happen. Eclipses were important for the ancient Maya because they believed that when the sun disappeared it was because the chaos snake took a bite out of it making this a pretty frightening event for the Maya. This event was called chi' ibal kin which in ancient Mayan meant to eat the sun. So it was very important for the Mayan priests to warn the people of the city and prepare every one for its happening. Since the priest warned the inhabitants of the village they could now decrease a lot of confusion and fright for the ancient Maya.

Citations

Callahan Kevin L. Mesoamerican Religions http://www.angelfire.com/ca/humanorigins/religion.html[Accessed 24 Oct 2013] web Gibson Clare. The Hidden Life of the Ancient Maya. Scotland: Metro Books, 2010. Print.

Miller Mary and Karl Taube. The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya. London: Thames and Hudson, 1993. Print.

Welser Leslie. Astronomy of the Mayans http://www.starteachastronomy.com/mayan.html[Accessed 24 Oct 2013] web

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Painting of the Mayan Ball Game

The image shown above is a painting of the Mayan ball game it shows players competing to hit the ball. You wouldn’t want to be a ballplayer in mayan times

The Mayan ball game is played by hitting the ball back and forth trying to score points in by hitting the ball into hoops, the ball may not touch the ground.

When the ball stops the game ends. Unlike Mayan ball courts later courts were closed ended. The losing team’s captain was decapitated on the spot. Then his skull was most likely coated in latex to form a hollow ball. This was related to Mayan creation when one of the Hero Twins was forced to use his brother’s head as the ball. The uniforms were heavily padded they included a yoke, face paint shin and forearm guards and sometimes a head dress.

The teams were usually made up of captives sometimes even the kings of a captured village were on one of the teams. On the side the Mayans were betting on was made up of professional ballplayers. When the prisoners played they were highly untrained and weakened with punishments such as mangled arms and burnt backs. The professional ball players were trained and almost certain to win.

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Coe, Michal D. the Maya. 6. NY, NY: Thames and Hudson, 1999. Print.

Laughton, timothy. the maya. NY, NY: Barnes and Noble, 1998. Print. the Blood of Kings. 1. NY, NY: George Braziller, 2006. Print.

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Plate with Deer Hunting Scene

The image above is a plate with a lively hunting from the Yucatán that is decorated with black and bright orange colors. In the center of the plate there is a hunter that is carrying a deer that he had killed. Around the center circle there are hunters that are behaving like animals to distract the animals long enough to catch them. This was one of the ways that the Mayans hunted. They used several tools that help them catch their pray. They had bows and arrows to get distance shots and fish in a lagoon.

They had spears and spear throwers to kill animals at a close distance. A spear thrower has 2 finger holes which are connected to a long grove. The last weapon that the hunters had and used was called a fatal weapon. It is like a sling shot but you would whirl it around your head and let go of one end. It had great accuracy and the injuries that you could get from it were fatal. It is so fascinating how the Mayans hunted and got their food. The way that we get our food is different than how the Mayans got theirs.

The food standards of the Mayans compared to our modern day food is amazing. You might have wonder what did the Mayans eat or how did they make their food. Let me make this clear what you have today is different than what the Mayans had. All of the meals contained corn meal because the Mayans thought that the first Mayan people were made out of corn. The corn meal was made into different things like tortillas, patted cakes, dumplings, corn balls, and corn cakes to represent the making of the first Mayans. In each of their meals they wanted to have protein, carbohydrates, and fat so they can do their everyday activities. Although protein is in the Mayans diet, meat was not in their everyday meals. Instead they ate bugs like beetles, flies, grasshoppers, salamanders, and many more. The Mayans loved to eat spicy things. They made all of their meals with jalapenos spices. They even put peppers in some of their drinks. The Mayans loved chocolate so much they used it as currency. They had a lot of chocolate recipes. Although the Mayans loved chocolate it was found more in the upper class areas. You might even find cactus in the chocolate drinks. The Mayans ate the fruit that was on the cactus and used cactus’s juice in alcoholic drinks.

Many people go to the store and buy their foods. The Mayans didn’t have stores. They got their foods from farming. They used different tools to do different jobs. They had a tool called a digging stick that was used to dig down deeply. They had an ax that they used to chop things down. The farmer’s tool is very similar to a hoe. They used hoes to turn soil and famer’s tool to dig and hoe. Although farming was where they got most of their food men hunted as well. They hunted deer, monkey, rabbit, varies of

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birds and pigs. Most of what they grew was for eating, but they used some plants for medical reasons, clothing, chewing gum, and dyes. They grew many types of plants. They had different kinds of fruits and vegetables. Some kind of fruits, vegetables, and flowers were corn, peppers, tomatoes, black pepper, peppercorn, potato's, cacao bean, sapodillas, cotton, sweet potatoes, vanilla beans, papaya, cacti and avocado. They kept animals or insects that they used to cook with or use for other purposes. They raised stingless bees so they can use the honey for a sweetener and had dogs for hunting because they can lead the way and find animals with their sense of smell.

Citations

"Central America." Britannica School. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

"Food and Agriculture." Ben. clchharter, 10 February 2010. Web. 10 October 2013 "Food." Britannica School. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

"Maya." Britannica School. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

"Mayan Life" Oracle Think Quest. Project by students for students. 29 October 2013 "The Maya Secrets of ancient cultures" Braman N. Arlette, John Wiley & sons, Inc. Hoboken, New Jersey, 2003 Baquedano, Elizabeth. "Farming." Aztec, Inca and Maya. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1993 Criscenzo Jeeni."What Part Did Agricultural Practices Play in the Growth and Collapse of the Ancient Maya Civilization? â&#x20AC;&#x153;Jaguar sun. My questions and theories, 1997-2000. Web. 23 October 2013.

Robert Nicholson, "The Maya" Chelsea House. New York 1994. Print.

Smith Hermann. "Dig It" Cassado Internet group, Belize.29 October 2013

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Clay Figure of Warrior

The image above is a clay figure of a Mayan warrior. This Mayan warrior has his shield raised in a passive gesture, but it is balanced by the offensive gesture of the weapon raised in the terracotta warrior’s right hand. The warrior is wearing a protective helmet to block the worst of an enemy’s blow.

The Mayan warrior in this picture is made out of stone, and is being used as decoration of a burial urn lid. In the warrior’s right hand, there is something that looks like a stone headed axe. The weapon that the warrior is holding could also be an obsidian edged club. The terracotta warrior was most likely carved using an obsidian chisel. The helmet on the Mayan warriors head might have sometimes been used in battle to hit someone with. The stone that the warrior was carved out of was most likely also used to make some type of weapon. There is so much more research to be learned about the Mayans and their weapons.

Mayans were warriors who made many different types of weapons that were used both for hunting, and in battle. Four main types of weapons were made using resources found nearby. The resources include obsidian, flint, stone, and wood. Mayans made obsidian tipped spears. The Mayans made obsidian edged clubs. Mayans also made double sided obsidian edged swords. Mayans used wood in weapons more than they used obsidian. The Mayans made a device out of wood that allowed warriors to throw javelins farther during battle. Mayans made fire hardened javelins with a stone tip as well. Mayans also made wooden axes that were fire hardened and were edged with flint or obsidian.

Mayan weapon makers also made blowguns carved out of sticks. The Mayans made slings out of sticks and rubber cords. Mayans also made bows and arrows with flint or obsidian tips. There are more stone weapons than wooden weapons. Here are just 2 of them. The Mayans made clubs with stone heads and P 6.

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a leather strap strung through the bottom of the handle. Mayans also made stone knives with ivory hilts.

The ancient Mayans made all different types of weapons in all different ways. To make jade weapons, the Mayans rubbed a rubber cord over the jade. The cord had some type of abrasive substance on it, like sand. After continuous rubbing, the jade would start to be worn down into the correct shape for the weapon being made. To make javelin throwing sticks, the Mayans carved a groove into a straight stick, and a notch at the end. The javelin rested in the groove and the butt of it was held in place by the notch at the end. Mayans also made to finger holes at the opposite end of the notch.

The finger holes helped the Mayan warriors hold onto the stick. To make axes, the Mayans took a straight, short, stick. Then the Mayans tied an axe head to the top of the stick using flexible rubber strings. The strings were put over the head, and then wrapped tightly around the stick right below the head. To make arrows, the Mayans took long sticks that were thin but strong. Then using then using the same method used to tie an axe head to an axe, Mayans would tie an obsidian, flint, stone, jade, or wooden tip to the arrow. Mayans would then put bird feathers at the other end of the shaft for stability.

Citations: Authentic Maya. "Maya Warfare". Authentic Maya. Authentic Maya, 2005 .Web. October 28, 2013 Baquedano, Elizabeth. Aztec, Inca & Maya. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1993. Print.

Eboch, Chris. Life Among the Maya. Michigan: Lucent Books, 2005. Print.

Staeger, Rob. "Chapter 6: Tools and Weapons of Central and South America." Native American Tools and Weapons (2003): History Reference Center. Web. 24 October, 2013

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Mayan Codex

The picture above is a Mayan codex and on it has important records written on it. On the codex you can see that it is divided into sections because of the dates on it and it has different information on it so it needs a different box. The codex is folded in to two long groups of two and each one has different information on it. It was one of the little information papers that survived the long years. In the Mayan writing paper it is a long strip of paper that is folded into groups of two and when you look at the picture above it has about 32 visible boxes. In the 4 boxes that you can see the best you can see Mayan numbers and little glyphs but the part that takes up the most space is the picture of the god in the box like the one in the first visable box. The glyphs on this codex was read from top to bottom and left to right like we read today. The glyphs are writtin at the top of the page or box and they are written the same way as they are in syllables so it would translate the same. The reason it has the numbers in it is probally because it is a specall date that they are recording and they want to remember the date of the important day.

The Mayan writing system had many shapes but not letters and the shapes were called glyphs.

The glyphs were used in the system as letters but they were written in syllables so the word chocolate would be choc-o-late. The choc part would be its own glyph but the way you convert them is you take the first letter of the syllable and that would be c. Then you would go to the c and find the next letter in

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it so ch and ch already has its own glyph so it would be that glyph. Then the second syllable is just an o so you would use the pure vowels and use the o glyph and then you would do the same thing for the last one that you did for the first one and then you would have the word chocolate in glyphs. The Mayan writing system was made up of 800 different glyphs and you would take the different glyphs and write with them, but the priest and nobles knew them all. The Mayan number system was a twenty base system unlike the Americans use a ten base system and it goes like 10 100 1,000 10,000 100,000 and so on. The Mayan system went like this 20, 400, 800, 1600, 32000 and so on so it got into really big numbers fast because they had to keep track of time since the Mayan world started. Also the Mayan numbers had a special way of being written. The numbers were written vertically so the bars for five would be at the bottom and the dots for the ones would be on top. They carved their glyphs into temple walls but they also wrote in paper books called bark tree fig. They bark was starched out on a table and then they wrote in it. These glyphs can be very complex like an Oreo cookie and some are very simple like a smiley face.

The meanings of the glyphs were unknown for thousands of years until we discovered them and their meanings. There are many different kinds of Mayan glyphs in history and we had to figure them out to rediscover the Mayan world and history. The meanings of the Mayan glyphs are odd some would mean a syllable and some would mean the earth and some would mean death. The pronunciations of the Mayan glyphs were unknown and so we can only know so much. The correct pronunciation of the glyphs should be the syllable that they represent so the word supercalifragilisticexpialidocious would be sup so you would pronounce the glyph sup. The glyphs really donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t normally mean a word or phrase but like I said earlier some do like the glyph that means the world. Some Mayan glyphs mean two different things and you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t tell them apart. Some women, nobles, and priest will write and they will change the glyph a little bit so it looks uniquish and it can look like a different glyph than you meant to write and it is difficult to tell which one it is. The way that they wrote/ carved the glyphs were very creative and they looked amazing for when it was colored. They were carved on walls and stone template and the design of the template. So if their writing required a date then it would be divided into sections. If they were recording a story then it would not be divided into section and it would look normal. If you ever write in Mayan be prepared for the challenging system.

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Mayan Mitchellâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s

This above picture is of Mayan Mitchells a short and robust Mayan. Men surprisingly wore more jewelry than women. Elite men often wore jade nose plugs, ornate ear plugs, heavy ritual belts, beaded collars and necklaces with pendants. Gold and tumpago was popular in bracelets, and amber stones set in the tumpago alloy often functioned as nose plugs. Mayans embellished garments with feathers and animal skins, tailored to fit loosely around the skin. Knots secured the clothing. The clothing was secured with a woven belt that had long tassels. Head holes cut into the cloth allowed a loose-fitting shirt to be added. A Hupil, was a blouse for women to wear. The whole outfit lay over the person's body in layers: jacket over the sarong, a hip wrap over the skirt, and kilt over the breech-clout. Mayan just like us wants to be physically perfect.

People in our modern society strive to be physically perfect. The Mayans wished to be physically perfect also. Yet their definition of "physically perfect" was different than our modern society definition. Mayans wanted their foreheads to be sloped back and the skull longer. They flattened their foreheads to look like their god and appear more powerful. To the Mayans, being slightly cross-eyed is considered beautiful. Large noses were a sign of nobility. Mayans also filed their teeth down to a point and made little holes in their teeth. Mayans filled the small holes in their teeth with really small bits of pyrite, hematite, turquoise, or jade. Jade was the most valuable mineral to the Mayans. Women wore a lot of jewelry and had nose, ear and lip piercings. We do this in our modern time. Everyone painted their bodies with abstract designs and wore tattoos on special occasions. Men tattooed their faces. Mayan hair was pulled back and a small spot was burned to emphasize the sloped forehead. While many people

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today consider these customs to be unusual, the Mayans considered their customs to be special and ways to make themselves perfect.

The Maya embraced a lot of pain to look beautiful. To flatten the forehead, your head would be placed between two boards for a several days. It was common for a child to die from this process. As the sloped head was considered extremely attractive, the parents ignored the risk and deformation continued. Doing this when you are little allows the skull to reshape. Mayans also thought being slightly lightly cross eyed was beautiful. To get this effect, you would dangle a small object in front of your face and stare at it for many hours. You can also type balls to you hair to hang down in front of your face. To have the perfect nose you had to have a removable artificial nose bridge to extend the sloped forehead.

The artificial noise bridge was made of clay or plaster. To decorate teeth, you first file them down to a small point. Ancient Mayans filed their teeth in different shapes and drilled small holes in them to hold jade beads. The Maya endured a lot of pain just through looking physically beautiful. Today people go through a very little amount of pain trying to look physically beautiful.

Citations: Nicholson, Robert. The Maya. New York. Chelsea House Publishers. 1994. Print Mary,Miller. Extreme Makeover. Archive Acarology. January and February 2009.Web. October 21, 2013 Mayankinds.com. beauty is all in the head. Mayan kids. 2008. Web. Oct 21, 2013

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Seated scribe clay figure

The image above is showing a seated Mayan elite woman reading a book. The woman is wearing many pieces of jewelry made of jade which shows that she has a high status. She would be in the elite class of the Maya because only the royal subjects (a very small fraction of the Maya) are given an education to read and interpret written records. The book she is reading has many colorful glyphs and is made of papyrus. This image explains the social status of a Mayan in the elite class because you can see the quality of clothing and book she is reading. In the Mayan society clothing and adornment was one of the main ways to tell one class from another. A lower ranked Mayan would not wear as nice quality clothing or jewelry because they were not as wealthy. Low class Mayans did not have as much time to study or do what they enjoyed as the elite in the picture is doing, because they were busy farming and working to get enough food for their families. The Middle class could afford some of the same elite class adornments and education. In the Mayan society each social class was important and contributed to the society in many different ways.

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There were three main social classes in the Ancient Mayan society. At the top of the society there was the elite class which was very large and complex. The elite class consisted of royalty and priests, along with the most skilled and influential craftsmen, merchants, architects and warriors. Skilled craftsman were highly supported and ranked by the Mayans. The elite class had riches and power which included the responsibility of the choices and the wellbeing of the city. The nobility and the priest used surplus time to build cities, pyramids and temples. People of the elite class often performed ritual acts of devotion, giving their own blood to please gods and maintain power. Under the noble rank the middle class included lesser officials, lower priests, soldiers, merchants, artisans and craftspeople. Bureaucrats, also known as public servants were ranked in the same importance as the middle class of society. In the Ancient Mayan society it is more difficult to move up to a higher class within a group than today. Under the lower class of the Maya were the essential service people that were responsible for making the city run. These people lived farther out from the city and farmed, crafted or served higher ranked people in the class. Ninety percent of all Mayans were farmers, commoners, crafts people and servants. Commoners could gain wealth and rise to middle class but as non-elites. Though there were three main classes in the Mayan society there were also many smaller social classes that are made up of the specific people in each class.

The Ancient Mayan social structure was very much like the city structure. Large scale

Mayan cities were made up of ceremonial centers, residential suburbs and smaller outlawing towns. The more important people lived in the center of the city and the less important classes lived farther in less important parts of the city and in farming villages. Kings and priests had the highest status in the Mayan society. The kings and priests lived in big stone houses with vaulted roofs in the center of the city. Center was the most important direction to the Mayans.

The center of the city had the most impressive buildings, temples, royal palaces and ritual buildings. Palaces of lesser nobility lived farther out from the city. Lesser nobles and the most skilled and influential artisans and merchants lived around the center of the city where the less important government buildings were located. The homes of regional bureaucracy and middle ranking members of society made up next layer of the city. The last layers of the city were made up of farming villages with small simple houses of packed mud, stone and debris. The lowest class, farmers, commoners, crafts people and servants lived in these farming villages. In the Ancient Mayan society the structure of the city was very dependent on the social structure

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Citations: Britannica School. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 25 Oct. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/74585>.

Eboch, Chris. Life among the Maya. Detroit, Lucent books, 2005.print.

Huascar, Xoltol,Ancient Worlds: the Americas,"the Mayan Class structure"http://www.ancientworlds.net/aw/Article/427711. [accessed 10/25/13]

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Clay Figure of Goddess Ix Chel Weaving

The image above is a clay figure of a young woman weaving on the ground with a back strap loom.

The woman weaving in this figure is believed to be the goddess Ixchel. She is holding the weaving sword which is used to flatten out the weft threads (threads that run over and under the longer pieces of yarn inside of the loom bars called warp threads). The woman in this picture is probably weaving fabric for a cloak for a family member, or she might be trying to earn money from her weaving. Weaving could be done in many different ways. The back strap loom was the most commonly used, but there were other looms as well. There were also different types of yarn. You could use fruit, flowers, plants and other things to dye it with. The yarns were used to create fabrics. Social status was the determining factor in who got which type of fabric, with the wealthiest getting cotton. Dyeing yarn to make beautiful and unique fabrics brought color to the lives of Mayan people. There were many colors. Weaving and dyeing showed effort and required lots of creativity. Weaving must have been important to the Mayans or they wouldn’t have a god for the art of weaving.

Weaving was an important part of how the Mayan families lived there lives. The Mayan women would weave to earn money for food and other daily needs. The money earned from weaving also helped pay the family’s taxes. Weaving in the Mayan culture is over 1,000 years old and can actually be traced back to a Mayan myth with the moon god teaching women sacred designs. When a young girl started learning how to weave, she had to learn the skills and techniques from her mother. Weaving was also important to girls because they couldn’t marry well until their weaving skills were good enough. When a weaver is weaving she picks a combination of designs and then forms the designs together to make her weaving piece. The cool thing about Mayan weaving is that it is unique - no two weavings are the same. To start weaving, the women would wash the yarn, comb it, and then finally make their beautiful woven fabric. There were different types of looms you could use to weave with. The back strap loom was the P6.MKG

most common. It has a strap that goes behind your back and neck (from the name) and if you lean forward, it moves the yarn to create the weaving action. Your social status was reflected in the type of material you used. Commoners usually used yucca, maguey, or palm fibers to weave their fabric. That left the better material for the nobles which was cotton. As you can see, weaving was important because it was a source of income to families and material for clothing for everyone.

Color makes every day brighter. If it werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t for Mayan dyeing there wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be any color in the Mayans clothes. In order to start dyeing the yarn that the weaver was going to weave with, you had to have special mordents that helped to set the color into the wool or yarn. Then you had to gather fruit, flowers, plants, and bark to use as dye for the yarn. There were lots of different colors that each had a different Mayan language name. Some examples are Red was tzoj te' and Lavender was Makom. There was a special type of weaving that incorporated dyed yarn called brocading. To brocade the weaving process was the same, but you wove the colored yarn in as you were weaving the piece. The colored yarn then formed a design. You might think that brocading is related to embroidery, but it is not because with brocading the colored yarn is really and truly woven into the piece of weaving. Color was an important part of the Mayans lives so they collected fruit, plants and other things to make dye in order to add color to their everyday lives.

Citations: Baquedano, Elizabeth. Aztec Inca and Maya. New York: Alfred A. Knopf Inc. 1993. Print.

Fox, Jeffrey. The Maya Textile Tradition. New York: Harry N. Abrams Incorporated. 1997.

Print Jeffrey J. Foxx. The process of weaving. Flmnh. Earth bound. 1984. Web. October 23, 2013 Kids, Mayans. Mayan textiles. Mayan Kids. 2008. Web. Oct23, 2013

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City Layouts

The image above is a city layout of Chichen-Itza and Uxmal. Just like the modern day the people would plot out their building plans and then write them down. Doing this could be pretty helpful when remembering what buildings were where. Making a city wasn’t surprisingly that easy. Most cities would take a lot of labor and 7.5 million working people’s days. And on top of that there were over three thousand buildings in a city! Larger scale Mayan cities would usually have a ceremonial center, residential suburbs, and smaller outlying towns. The cities would also be surrounded with temples and pyramids. Imagine having to build all that! The reason they had all this was simple. It was to impress gods and to intimidate foreigners with their power. From Pre Classic times to Classic times Mayans have been building cities, so I guess you can say it’s in their blood. There’s so much to discover about Mayans, what will you discover next?

Mayans believed that dedicating temples/buildings to their gods could help them because they believed it could put the gods in a good mood. They needed that so that they would have a good day and everything would go nicely for them. Also different figures of gods placed on a building could protect them and look after them. For example a lot of the buildings of Yucatán in the Puuc style are decorated with the face of Chac, the Mayan rain god. He is a very important god to those living in a place that really needs farming to survive. Something that made Chac very recognizable was his nose in the shape of an elephant tusk. Sometimes there were three or four Chacs stacked over a doorway, giving a lot of protection for the home they are placed on. He is also located on the corners of buildings with eyes watching two sides at the same time. The use of Chacmools, the carriers of messages to the temple of idols, was introduced by the Toltecs of Tula from Central Mexico. They would also make monuments to honor the gods and show how much they respected them. A lot of the buildings made for the gods would be used to pray for them. Most of the temples were located on top of pyramids so that they could get even closer to the gods.

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"Maya" Britannica School. Cary Academy Library, Cary NC. 23 October 2013 <http://school.eb.com/levels/middle/article/275746>

One of the most common materials used for architecture was limestone. The Mayan’s used limestone because they believed it was pretty and it would impress the gods, which was always a good thing. A reason limestone could be so useful to them was because they could crush it then put it on a pile of logs and it would serve as fuel. Sometimes a vertical piece of wood would be placed in the center while construction was occurring. When they removed it the chimney was full of coals to set fire to the logs. Another reason limestone was so important was because they believed it showed power. The more power you had the stronger your civilization would be. Limestone was plentiful in most of Mayan settlements which made it easy to get to. There were usually mines right outside the city where they would get their blocks for construction. So in some cases limestone was important because it impressed the gods and foreigners but in another case it’s kind of like what we do in the U.S where the most easily to get to building material is the main material we use. So think about how maybe the Ancient Mayan Civilization isn’t too different from modern day.

Day, Nancy. Your Travel Guide To Ancient Mayan Civilization. 1st edition. Minneapolis. Lerner Publications Company, 2001.

Mercier, Pierre-Yves et. Al., Editors. The Route of the Mayas. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1995.

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The medicinal chest

Paragraph Paragraph 1: one: This is a Mayan censor that is burning incense. He is a healer of the Mayan culture. He is using the sticks of incense to heal and tell the gods to heal people. Burning incense is a big part of healing in the Mayan world because they believe that this will heal someone.

This picture has many things to do with the connection of the Mayan world. Medicine, sacrifice and other necessary terms to heal people. Incense is a very important thing in medicine and the relationship with the gods. Mayan healers will travel out to the forest to get the items to burn incense. The burnt incense goes up to the sky gods like I talked about the gods in paragraph one. I realized that Mayan medicine is based on the gods more than it actually is on medicine. And I had great time learning about Mayan medicine, Mayan medicine is really amazing.

Paragraph two: How did the gods connect with Mayan medicine? Gods had a lot to do with Mayan medicine. The Mayans believed that the gods punished you by making you sick if you did a sin. These sicknesses were very close to killing out the Mayans. Your life fate in the Mayan culture is decided by the gods who inflict you with sickness. To heal yourself, you had to use medicine, rituals, ceremonies, and sacrifice. Lady Ix Chel is the god of medicine, and also made the first people out of cornmeal. The moon god is the god of child birth and medicine. The moon goddess has the power to bring and bring about birth. A cuxtal is also the god of child birth. Mayans didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t believe that germs got you sick, everything related to the gods. In Mayan culture if you washed your hands and stayed healthy, even if you did a sin you would be punished with sickness. Although gods make you sick, you consumed medicines to hold off the evil spirits.

Paragraph three: What materials from their environment did the Mayans use as medicine and how?

The Mayans had over 1200 types of medicine that were found in the forest. Doctors had to memorize all of these plants. Some of the more important medicines are yucca elephantine, snake root, pudding pipe P6.PHC

treerabbit fern, quinine, palm nuts, peyote, snake skin and snake flesh, nuts and seeds and hundreds of other plants or herbs. You would get these medicines from stalls that are in the villages or plazas. You can also get medicine yourself by gathering it in the forest. These stalls sell the most important types of medicines and the more popular ones too. Medicines are stolen out of villages sometimes. Then you would think, how do you get these medicines into your body. Well there are many ways. You can insert the medicine into your body is by rubbing liquids on your foot, drink, eat, injection and many other ways to cure certain sicknesses. All of these plants are found in nature or are generated. There are also many types of sicknesses, some are deadly and some arenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t as dangerous. There are many sicknesses like pneumonia, rheumatism, epilepsy, indigestion, tooth ache, stomach worms, jaundice, dyserny, tuberculosis and many forms of cancer in common diesis. These diseases are very harmful to the Mayans. The Europeans invaded the Mayans and gave them new diseases.

Ancient Mayan Civilization. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013 Day, Nancy, ancient Maya civilization, Minneapolis Minnesota, learning publications company, 2001 print.

Encyclopedia Britannica Online. Encyclopedia Britannica, n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013.

Introduction, Mayan Kids.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013 Kinderlsy, Dorling, Aztec Inca and Maya, Singapore china, eyewitness books, 1993 print.

"The Maya Empire for Kids."

The Maya Empire for Kids. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Nov. 2013.

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Bonampak Mural selection

The image above is of war prisoners being blood sacrificed by the nobles as well as begging for mercy for their pain. These prisoners of war are “suffering torture and decapitation at the feet of Bonampak’s finely dressed lords and ladies”. It represents how much more worth that the upper class had opposed to the people of less importance. It also represents how much pain that the Mayans had to go through: fingernails ripped out, body parts torn off. Some even had to plead that they would only do something minor, like fingernails ripped out, rather than hands being tied to wood on fire, still living. The Mayans main priority was not to hurt them for the fun of it or just because, but for the reason that they wanted to please the gods. The Mayans idea of life was very religious and cultural, and even though they had some tough times, they were smart and impacted how we live today.

The purpose of sacrifice was certainly not something that was done for oneself, but for the entire city. The Mayans believed that life was a series of bargain and exchanges with ancestors and gods. But mainly, religion revolved around the theme of sacrifice. Their city was built especially for sacrifice, because there are large open areas for political and religious gatherings. Cornmeal, also known as corn dough, was one of the most important sacrifices to the Mayans. It represented the beginning of creation because it was said that Ix Chel, the medicinal god created the humans from corn dough. Incense was another important sacrifice to the Mayans.

They were known to ward off bad spirits and to please the gods, of course. Human sacrifice was considered the highest form of sacrifice. Sometimes, when there was bad weather, war prisoners or city people were sacrificed. As for the Mesoamerican Ballgame, the losing team wasn’t guaranteed to be sacrificed, for it was thought to be an honor. Blood sacrifice was very

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significant; the Mayans believed that blood was the most important substance in your body. It was mostly done by the priests and kings on the tongue, lip, cheek, or earlobe. A sting ray spine was pierced through and usually, a thorny oyster shell collected the blood. Then, the blood was burnt through a paper inside the oyster shell, and sent as bloody smoke towards the gods. The purpose of sacrifice in general was not self-gain; it was all done to achieve a better life for your city.

The Mayans were very riveting people, who sacrificed for the benefit of their city.

Sacrifice was a very important part of the Mayans religious cycle of life. They ultimately believed that when they planted their crops, the lords of the underworld were helping their produce grow and letting them survive underground. After all, the ground under our world (the soil) is in their territory. Because they didn’t eat the crops that the Mayans planted, after dying, they gave their body to the lords of the underworld. By burying yourself, you were sacrificing your body to them because they gave you food (crops) in your lifetime so now they got to consume your body. The Mayans were often buried on top of one another so that it would be easier to consume, unlike now, when we each have our own separate graves. This fit in with the Mayan belief that human sacrifice was necessary for the “continued success of the peoples' agriculture, trade, and overall health”.

Citations Blood and Sacrifice. By: Bower, Bruce, Science News, 00368423, 6/7/86, Vol. 129, Issue 23 Eboch, Chris. Life among the Maya. Detroit: Lucent Books, 2005.

Miller, Mary. "Of Blood and Human Damage." National Geographic. 187:69 (February 1995).

Phillips, Charles. Aztec & Maya. New York: Metro Books, 2008

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Madrid Codex Chac

The image above is of Chac, the Mayan god of rain, lightning, and thunder. Chac brought rain to the Mayans’ crops. Chac was also dangerous, wielding an axe and occasionally striking it against hard objects, resulting in the lightning that was so dangerous to the Mayans. Chac is related to the cosmology and astronomy of the Mayans since he was a sky god and therefore related to the stars. In Mayan cosmology there were four Chacs at each corner of the world holding the sky in place. The stars and the sky were a vital interest to the Mayans. That Chac was grouped in that category meant he was quite a powerful entity. He lived in a celestial realm, also in the sky, and sent down rain and lightning from it.

Astronomy and Cosmology were very important aspects of life to the Mayans, and they have to be respected for their dedication and amazing accuracy.

You may look up in the sky at night and see the Big Dipper and Orion, but the ancient Mayans saw different pictures in the stars. They saw more stars as there wasn’t light pollution in their time, so the star clouds of the Milky Way were clearly visible. The Mayan interpretation of these clouds was what they called the World Tree. The Mayan’s World Tree connected their Overworld in the sky with its branches and their Underworld, deep in the Earth, with its roots. One of the major parts of the tree was the Kawak Monster. On its head was a flint knife in a sacrificial bowl, representing sacrifice to the Mayans. The Mayan zodiac had 13 constellations. These included a scorpion, a pig or peccary (pig-like animal that the Mayans hunted), jaguar, at least one serpent, a bat, a turtle, and a shark. The Mayan gods also existed in the sky. There was a Jaguar sun- god, represented by the sun, as well as a moon goddess, which was the Moon. Eclipses that the Mayans saw were interpreted as a serpent taking a bite out of the moon.

The Mayans were accurate in their predictions involving the movement of the sky, but their methods were very different from what people use today. They studied the sky from observatories located on top of pyramids. Observatories were important parts of Mayan life and were often incorporated into ceremonial complexes. They used notched sticks to measure the distance between planets or stars. In the observatories, there were windows and doors in the walls. These strategically placed openings were there to help observe certain stars and groups of stars on important days of the year. One of the Mayan calendars was based off of these observations as well, recording the time it takes for the Earth to get around the sun. The phases of Venus were also mapped with the same methods.

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Citations: Bunson, Margaret R. and Bunson, Stephen M. Encyclopedia of Ancient Mesoamerica. New York: Facts on File, Inc., 1996. Print.

History Source LLC. "Ancient Mayan Life 101". Historylink101.com. 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

"Maya." Britannica School. EncyclopĂŚdia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 31 Oct. 2013

Mayankids.com. "Beliefs". Mayankids.com. info@mayankids.com. 2008. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

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Jaguar and other Zodiac Animals

The image above is a jaguar and other zodiac animals. The jaguar is Gemini who played an important role in the story of creation. In the Mayan culture the jaguar was a symbol of power. These zodiacs were carved into stone on Mayan temples. All of the kingâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spiritual companions were jaguars to show that they were powerful. Rulers also wore jaguar pelt to show their status and would give it as a sacrifice. The jaguar also was the symbol for the Lords of Xilbalba, the rulers of the underworld. During the night Gemini would have to battle the Lords of Xilbalba. The Mayans used the jaguar to show strength, power, and nobility.

The Mayans used many different animals and food sources to meet their needs for nutrition. They used a variety of seafood along with land animals. Some animals they semidomesticated to later kill and eat. The Muscovy duck was domesticated and penned to later eat.

However, the wild turkey was just hunted in the wild or captured and put in pens to fatten. White tailed and brocket deer were snared and killed for food. There were no great herds of goat or cattle, they mainly used dogs. The dogs also rounded up peccary and other large animals. Birds were abundant in the region and were commonly hunted. The Maya also fished in nearby ponds and rivers where they caught mollusks, snails, and frogs. There were also many fish which they salted and dried. They then traded this to regions where it was a delicacy. In some waters they caught spiny lobsters, conch, and shrimp which they used for meals. In addition to this they caught thorny oysters which they used for worship along food. The conch shell was used for long distance calling. Getting honey was easy for the Maya. The bees were tiny and had no stingers.

Hives were stacked into hollowed out tree trunks so many bees would have access.

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Along with nutrition, the Maya used animals for worshiping. Thorny oyster shells were attached to a string. They were pulled through the king and queenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tongues to make a blood offering. One of their gods was half jaguar and half human who could transform into a jaguar.

The Maya believed that everyone had an animal companion. Bloodletting was a way to connect with their companion. Everyone had at least one companion but some powerful priests could have two or more. All kings had jaguar companions. The companion shared your soul and you could transform into it when you died. The jaguar was known for its solar powers. The sun was believed to transform into a jaguar. It was forced to do battle with Lords of Xilbalba. Rulers wore the jaguar's pelt as part of their dress and offered it for sacrifice. While the hero twins were battling the lords of Xilbalba, four wild animals brought news of hidden corn. They were the remains of the bone woman, Hun Hunahpu's first wife.

Citations Bassie, Karen. "Mayan Creator Gods."

Foster, Lynn. Ancient Maya World. New York, NY: Facts On File, 2002. Print.

Great Discoveries in Archaeology. WordPress, 24 Apr 2013. Web. 25 Oct. 2013. <http://anthropology.msu.edu/anp264-ss13/2013/04/24/mayans-religion-gods-animal-spirits-andpyramids/>.

Laughton, Timothy. Exploring the Life, Myth, and Art of the Maya. New York, NY: Rosen Publishing, 2012. Print.

MesoWeb. N.p.. Web. 24 Oct 2013. <http://www.mesoweb.com/features/bassie/CreatorGods/CreatorGods.pdf>.

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Cacao Beans

The above image is a cacao tree with large, green cacao pods used to make chocolate. Inside the pods, there are slimy, white, beans that are dried and crushed up into cocoa. Chocolate comes from this cocoa, but for the Mayans, cocoa was used to make a valuable drink sort of like hot chocolate. It was widely used at rituals as a celebratory item. There are also several medicinal uses for cacao. Then, since these beans were so plentiful, the Mayans decided to use it as currency to exchange for goods. If the beans were shriveled, they were worth less than regular. It was traded throughout many miles and was just as important as the maize crop. The Mayans used slave labor to tend to their fields of cacao trees.

Abandoned milpas, or corn fields, were a main resource for cacao plantations. An adult male slave could be exchanged for 100 cacao beans. One tree could produce about 2500 beans a year. Counterfeit cacao was almost a business among the Maya. People would scrape out the flesh of the bean and pour in sand or cornmeal. If some beans were dropped on the ground, everyone would scramble madly to pick them up. Everyone loves some good, rich, chocolate, but we have to give some credit to Mayan culture for revolutionizing this important crop. It played and still plays a key role in common society.

Chocolate was an economical, medicinal, and ritual staple in Classic Mayan culture. Grown and cultivated by slaves in abandoned corn fields, the cacao tree had to have a specific environment for it to thrive. The Mesoamerican regionâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hot and humid climate was near perfect for the cacao tree, which is why it was able to be mass-produced as currency. The large, green pods growing off the trunk had white, slimy beans inside that were dried after they were harvested. They were crushed up, and mixed

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with many different spices and water to make a ritual drink. This drink was comparable to hot chocolate, except richer and bitterer. At special celebrations, it was social tradition for this drink to be consumed, sort of like Native Americans passing around a pipe. As a medicine, the beans were versatile, aiding anemia, poor appetite, mental fatigue, consumption, tuberculosis, fever, and gout. Since the crop was vulnerable to rodents and being stolen, it was forced to be circulated through trade, helping the transition from commodity to currency. It was circulated throughout great distances, as the demand was so high. The crop was so very valuable, that 12,000 of the beans could buy out the entire city of Tenochtitlan, a large, thriving city. One bean could buy a tamale, chopped firewood, or a whole tomato.

A large rabbit was worth 30, or 10 for a smaller one. Some people even made counterfeit by scraping out the flesh of the bean and putting in sand or sometimes cornmeal. In modern times, cacao as a ritual object has become obsolete because the Mayans dispersed and joined other religions. Now, cacao is cultivated exclusively for monetary gain instead of being used ritually.

The Mayans traded many different sorts of commodities, which caused the economy to thrive.

Different objects were valuable for different reasons: religious, material, and medicinal. Salt was one of the most important goods that were traded by the Maya. The human body requires salt to replenish sweat and help hydrate the body by attracting the water that we consume. The Yucutan coast is covered in salty mud during the dry season, when the ocean recedes. These salt flats are called salinas and provide all of the salt the Maya needed. Another important item was obsidian. Produced from dried volcanic ash and lava, this rock will sharpen to a fine point, a point that was used for tools. Hunting, carving, and surgery were a few of obsidianâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s uses. Other items like jade and quetzal feathers were popular among royalty to glorify them through body adornment. The large feathers of the quetzal bird were gathered from the cloud forests of Mesoamerica and worn on the body of the king. Green jade was intricately carved into designs showing deities. Seashells for needles, embroidered cloth, and decorative stones like chert, amber, and turquoise were other commodities. Cotton, cacao, honey, tobacco, and alcoholic fruit beverages were popular agricultural products. The commodities of a community depended on the resources that naturally occurred in their area. If you wanted to purchase something from someone else, there were trade markets in central cities where you could bring your goods to trade. Long distance trade was close to obsolete because of the rough terrain and heavy goods.

Trade had to happen between the Maya in order to have a happy and thriving community.

Citations: Bunson, Margaret, and Stephen Bunson.

Encyclopedia of Ancient Mesoamerica. New York: Facts on File, 1996. Print.

Cacao/chocolate : Food of the Gods: Cure for Humanity? A Cultural History of the Medicinal and Ritual Use of Chocolate. Department of Nutrition, University of California, Aug. 2000. Web. 23 Oct. 2013. <http://www.chocolate.org/cacao-chocolate.html>.

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Dillinger, Lisa, and P. Barriga. "Cacao/chocolate : Food of the Gods: Cure for Humanity? A Cultural History of the Medicinal and Ritual Use of Chocolate."

Foster, Lynn V. Handbook to Life in the Ancient Maya World. New York: Facts on File, 2002. Print.

Steinberg, Michael K. JSTOR. Web. 24 Oct. 2013. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/4256520>.

"The Ancient Maya - A Commercial Empire." : Mexico History. Web. 25 Oct. 2013. <http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/1574-the-ancient-maya-acommercial-empire>.

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With numbers

This picture above is with numbers this is a picture from a Mayan book. This book look nothing like what are writing looks like and there are number all over the writing. The top row of numbers is in a pattern. This pattern is the numbers 13 and 4. The number 13 is in this Mayan writing of their history all over the place. The Mayan used their mathematics all the time when they were writing their history all over their city. This picture is a great example of what the Mayans use their numbers for. They may have been recording different time, date, or maybe something else. This image shows how they used their number and help you understand this picture even better. Mayan math is a really import part of the Mayan culture. It helped them of all kinds of thing they needed. Without Mayan math the Mayans would have not had all of their gods and their retrials they had.

The Mayans were wonderful mathematicians and did a lot of the same math as we do today. The Mayans had only 3 numbers they had a shell, a bar, and a dot. This made math a little bit easier. A shell represented zero a dot represented one and a bar was five. They would stack the numbers and make bigger numbers that could then be added or subtracted when needed. There could only be four dots in a row before it turned in to another bar that meant five. Once they started another place holder they would have to put a shell under it so that people would know there was not another number. The Mayans followed a base 20 numbering system that meant that unlike ours they wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t repeat numbers until after 20. This makes there whole math system a little different than ours. The Mayans also added and subtracted. They would just add or subtract the bars and dots that they had. Some Mayan merchants would lay out coco beans in the numbers so that they could see the problem. This way they could see what they were adding like when we write down math problem. The Mayanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s math has a lot of similarities and differences from ours.

The Mayans would use math in their everyday life and they would use it in different ways. One of the major ways they used their math system was with astronomy. They would use math to calculate the stars and predict when the gods would be mad or when it will be a good day. This is one of the major ways they would use math but they also used it in their calendar system. The Mayan calendar was so complex that they used math in it all the time. They would calculate the days since humans were on the planet. A long with that they would predict the present, future, and even the past. Math was always used when they were using the calendar. The Mayans would write their whole future on the grand buildings they had. They would build these huge buildings and temples. To make these huge buildings P7.

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that could be carved on was a lot of work and to get the size, shape, height, and everything else right took a lot of math. They also used their math system all the time when they would count. Just like us the Mayans would count a lot and every time that they did that they would be using math. The Mayans were always using math all the time for things such as building, creating a calendar, astronomy and counting.

Citations "Mayan math ." hanksville. Web. 30 Oct. 2013 .

"Mayan math ." michielb. Web. 30 Oct. 2013 .

McKillop, Heather . The ancient Mayan . Santa Barbara: 2004 . Web. 10 Oct. 2013 .

Nicholson , Robert . The mayan . New york : Chelsea Juniors, 1994 . Web. 10 Oct. 2013 .

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Clay Incense Burner

The above image is of a clay censor used to hold sticks of incense. This figure is propped up with its right foot and the tail of its clothing on the bottom half of its body. And that hole in the top of the cylinder on its head is where the smoke comes out when incense is burned. You put the incense sticks in its mouth and to make it into sticks won’t be a problem because what you end up burning is resin which is a sap from a tree or plant and sap is sticky so you can mold it into a stick and burn it. The smoke from the resin stick will then raise becoming food for the gods and goddesses. If you were sacrificing then the cloud of incense goes up to the rain god and his human petitioners told that the cloud of incense will attract big rain clouds. The Mayans desperately needed rain to help their crops grow, or there will be famine, the king and queen would be blamed, and they wouldn’t be able to trade at markets for better food and different goods. When you think about it Mayan healers were like the first doctors and with them recording all their information for us today we have antidotes for most all illnesses.

They just restocked the Mayan medicine chest and it is now overflowing with new interesting information. One example being they have medicine markets for different healers to trade their goods. One item that was sold there was the cacao bean which can help so many people and is very important for healers to have, cacao is so important because of its 3 special qualities. Cacao helps to treat the emaciated, to stimulate nervous systems, to improve digestion, and cacao countered the effects of weak stomachs and stimulated kidneys. But now we don’t use cacao for such reasons because scientists have found a more efficient way to treat these problems. Other Mayan medicines healers would want to have were Rabbit fern was helpful by treating connective tissues, Palm Nuts to help with circulation, Pudding pipe tree was given for coughs and fevers, and Quinine was used for malaria. You can find quinine in the cinchona tree where it naturally occurs in the bark. Now in modern times our scientists don’t use these products to cure such illnesses because we have found newer antidotes with our more advanced P7.CAM

technology. All though there is the one exception of a medicine we kept using until 1940 which was quinine (used to help cure malaria).

Breaking news Mayans found out a way to keep evil (all types-siblings, spirits, and grown-ups) away from you. It’s called burning incense. Now that might sound silly to you but burning incense really does make evil leave you alone. Of course Mayans only tested on evil spirits that came inside you when you were sick but I’m sure burning incense will ward off siblings and grown-ups too. But before you burn anything you might want to know what to burn. With incense you will want to burn copal resin as your first choice. Copal is from the bursera plant which is related to frankincense and Mur. Resin is the sap that comes out of a plant or tree. So copal resin is the sap from a bursera plant. If you don’t have copal resin laying around then your next choice would be rubber tree resin or chicle tree resin it’s your choice. Even though you now know what to burn this whole ward off evil thing still might sound a bit unusual the Mayans thought it made all the sense in the world. To the Mayans when the smoke rose in to the air it became food for the gods and goddesses up above. Then if you were sacrificing to satisfy the rain god his human petitioners told that the clouds of incense had the power to attract dark rainy clouds for which the Mayans prayed for to help their crops grow. So in the Mayan world it all makes sense but now a day we might just get grounded instead but I guess there’s only one way to find out.

Citations: Baquedano, Elizabeth. Aztec, Inca and Maya. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993. Print Dillinger, TL., etal.Chocolate.org. "Food of the gods: cure for humanity? A cultural history of the medicinal and ritual use of chocolate."http://www.chocolate.org/cacao-chocolate.html. [Accessed 25 October 2013].Web Phillips, Charles. Aztec and Maya. New York: Metro Books, 2010. Print

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Mayan Hoops

The image above is two ball players playing the Ballgame with the equipment required to play. They used the equipment to hit the ball back and forth, keeping the ball moving. If they let the ball stop, there was a chance they would be sacrificed. They used their body parts that were covered by padding to hit the ball back without hurting themselves. They also tried to get it through the hoop to score points and potentially win the game. From the angle of the picture, most of the parts of the uniform are seen. The Yoke is around the waist of the players, and the Yuguito is on their wrist, shins and knees. The Yoke is protecting all their vital organs from tragic damage that could be inflicted from the ball. The headdress of the players is important because it helps identify the class of the player and what is significant to them. The player on the left would be of a lesser class then the one on the right because he doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t have feathers in his headdress and his uniform is less extravagant. The deer like structure signifies sacrifice and the water lily shows that water and creation was important to them. The heavy rubber ball that they hit back with pads can weigh up to 8 pounds. It is in the middle of the picture and visible in the air going towards the opponent. Also pictured is the middle part of the I shaped court, is the players using the slope to keep the ball in play. The hoop that is for scoring points is pictured. The hoop is barely big enough to fit the ball.

The Mesoamericans had unique items that were essential to play a wonderful game named the Ballgame. The ball was the first essential item. It was very heavy and could weigh up to 8 pounds depending on the place in Mesoamerica. Some of the balls had skulls inside of them with rubber strips around the skull to make the ball hollow inside and therefore, lighter. To get the rubber for the ball, they cut a vertical channel in the soft bark of the rubber tree and let the sticky sap run slowly into a pail. They mixed in the juice of a morning glory vine to make the ball bounce more. Once you shaped a ball, there was no way to change the shape. Second, there was the uniform with its many parts including the Yugito, Yoke, Hacha, Manopla and Palma. The Yuguito was used to protect the ball playerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s knees, shins and wrists. The Yuguito was shaped like a brutalized face. A Yoke, made out of carved stone or woven

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fabric, was worn around the waist. The Yoke was U shaped and protected the body by deflecting the ball. These were also worn at the before and after ceremonies. The Hacha is a decorative piece that is worn with the Yoke. Hacha means ax in Spanish which is why it sometimes resemble an ax. The Hacha also resembled an animal at times. It was worn to both the before and after ceremonies. The Palma is Spanish for palm frond. The Palma was either lashed to the yoke or held in the player’s hand. This piece of the uniform was just for decoration. Held in their hands was a Manopla. The Manopla was used to hit the ball. Some of Manopla stones were carved into animal figures. The court was another distinctive item for the Ballgame. The court was I shaped. The top and bottom of the I were end zones where the ball couldn’t go. The middle part of the I was the playing field. The playing field often had a plastered ground. On the outside of the middle part of the I was a 2 foot high bench that sloped upward. These helped keep the ball in play. On the slope was a hoop that will be explained later on. The court was made of colorful stone and the bench was decorated with relief sculptures. Finally, there were a few rules to the amazing ballgame. The most important rule is that the ball had to be moving at all times.

The main objective of the game was to score points. To score points a player had to get it through the hoop on the slope. The hoop was just bigger than the ball so it had to be pretty much perfect to get a point. The last rule is that you cannot grab or kick the ball.

The Mesoamerican Ballgame was more of a religious ritual than a game. For example, the movement of the ball symbolizes the movement of the Sun, Moon, and Venus. Also, the lords of death played the hero twins and 1 Hunahpu and 7 Hunahpu. The lords of death tried to lure people into the game and play them so they could have sacrifices for the bothering noise of the Ballgame. They call the Hero Twins heroes because they defeated the lords of death in the ball game. The Maize god and his brother were the first to play but they were defeated, buried in the court and one of their heads was hung on a tree in the underworld. When they played the Ballgame, it was recreating the scene of when the Hero Twins defeated the lords of death. The ball game was also used to honor gods and goddesses. If you lost, they would paint you with red strips, decapitate you, hold you by the hair and let your blood drip into the earth. They thought this because blood was a valuable sacrifice and ballplayers were considered great sacrifices. The sacrifices were necessary to keep the crops growing, people healthy and sun shining. They would bury players under the court if there was a sacrifice. They didn’t always have a sacrifice even though they thought it was necessary for people to live. There was also sometimes when the winners would be sacrificed. If they were not sacrificed, they would be showered with praise, glory and fortune.

The game affected not only the life or death of the players, but also the watchers who looked for sacrifices so that everything would function right in the city.

Citations Eboch, Chris Life among the Maya Thomson Gale, 2005.

Palmer, William III. Maya Ballgame http://library.umaine.edu/hudson/palmer/Maya/ballgame.asp. [Accessed 25 October 2013].

Schele, Linda and Miller E. Mary, Kimbell Art Museum, 1986.

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“Welcome To the Mesoamerican Ballgame” http://www.ballgame.org/. [Accessed 25 October 2013.]

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Cacao beans

The above image is Cacao beans. Cacao beans were a source of chocolate made into expensive chocolate to drink during ceremonies. It was grown in gardens or on trees only in certain areas. Beans were valuable because of the chocolate. It is money and actually grows on trees. You could get a rabbit for 10 beans and a pumpkin for 4 beans. You could get a male adult slave for 100 beans. That was enough beans to make 25 cups of chocolate! This relates to trade because if you didn’t have items to trade you had to use beans.

If you were a Mayan you had to trade get supplies that you need to live such as salt, cotton, shells, and dry fish etc. There were two main routes that you could take or you could make your own.

The main routes made for you were the northern route and the southern route. If you lived in lowland Maya you needed to trade with someone from Highland Maya to get salt. You would also use cacao beans, feathers, and chocolate as your currency. If you couldn’t get what you needed you would also trade with New England. The engineers built raised roads to allow for trade. The exchange of these products usually involved a direct trade of items, such as jade for ceramics.

If you had a successful trade you could raise your social ranks. Even if you didn't have a successful trade you still were highly respected. Many people became wealthy because of trading.

Although highland Maya traded salt they had to go almost 100 miles to get salt. Your king was in charge of making sure that you were able to trade so you could get everything you needed to survive. The lowlands also traded honey and rubber. Before the Maya traded long distances they were part of Teotihuacán trading system. Ever since the Maya traded long distance until the Spanish came.

Citations Benson, Sonia. "Maya Economy and Daily Life." Early Civilizations in the Americas: Almanac. Vol 2. Detroit : Thomson Gale, 2005. Print.

Bower, B. "Ancient Maya Trade: Tracing Salty Swaps."

Science News 144.22 (1993): 358. Middle Search Plus. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

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Fash, William and Mary E. Lyons. The Ancient American World. New York: New York, 2005

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Bonampak Mural

The image above is a fraction of the Bonampak Mural, showing a ceremony where prisoners of war are being sacrificed and tortured. The king, royals, and ladies on the top level are dressed in jaguar skins and feathered headdresses for ceremony, but the prisoners are dressed merely in a cloth. If you look closely above their heads, you will see there are Mayan hieroglyphs. Underneath the king are the prisoners, some with fingernails torn out, blood dripping to the ground, some begging for mercy, one with disassembled arms, and a head without a body. The black balls on either side of the top row are balls with skull centers from the Mesoamerican Sacrificial Ballgame, which are also being sacrificed. This gruesome scene helps prove that the Mayans were not the most peaceful culture. They obviously took sacrifice very seriously, and included torture for prisoners. This part of the mural shows many of the ways the Mayans sacrificed. The colors in it are very bright and stand out, especially the colors of the clothing and accessories. The prisoners are pictured weak and helpless, but the royals are strong and stately. The Bonampak Mural explains Mayan culture and history.

The Bonampak Mural displays aspects and events from Mayan history. The mural covers all of the surfaces of three rooms through intricate detail and bright, lively, colors. One aspect the Bonampak Mural depicts is royal accessions and ceremonies. These celebrations include noblemen paying respects to young heirs to the throne, sacrificial ball games, and musical performances. Kings and nobles were P7.AEE

dressed stately in jaguar skins, gorgeous jade jewelry, and feathered headdresses. This was to impress viewers and show their power. Warriors and soldiers were also shown in jaguar skin uniform and helmets. They were pictured fighting in gruesome battles and raiding settlements close by. The warriors were shown in chariots with bow and arrows and spears. Another very important aspect in the Bonampak Mural is sacrifice. There are schematic scenes of rulers sacrificing blood, of ballplayers being sacrificed, and kings and priests sacrificing prisoners and torturing them. In addition, the Bonampak Mural shows images of court life and trials. The mural shows astronomy and objects in the sky that the Mayans discovered. Many, like the Sun and Moon, were also religious symbols. Calendars were included and Mayan glyphs explained certain images pictured in the mural. Aspects in the Bonampak Mural help explain Mayan history.

The Bonampak Mural changed what we know about the Mayans and their history. The murals show the Mayans’ lifestyle and important aspects of their beliefs. The Bonampak Mural is unfinished, which is a great clue that the Mayans abandoned their city at that time. The murals also display calendars that let us know about the Mayans’ keeping of time and their twenty‐base number system. In addition, their social classes were expressed through adornment. Most importantly, the Bonampak Mural shows an enormous amount of sacrifice scenes, explaining their sacrificial rituals.

Before the Bonampak Mural was discovered, we thought that the Mayans were a peaceful, priest‐led society interested in astronomy. This is true, but there was much more to it. The Mayans were huge believers in sacrifice for their gods. There are beheaded figures, prisoners with torn out fingernails, blood dripping onto the ground, disassembled arms of a living man tied around a burning pillar of wood, stingray stingers and thorny oyster shells on a string ripped through royals’ tongues, blood pouring out onto sheets of burning papers, with bloody smoke rising into the heavens. The Mayans took sacrifice very seriously. They were astronomers with strong religion, but with this came gruesome sacrifice for their beloved and feared gods.

Citations Phillips, Charles. The Complete Illustrated History of Aztec and Maya. Metro Books: Anness Publishing Ltd. Joanna Lorenz, 2008.Print.

Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.“The Maya Murals of Bonampak: Windows on an Ancient Culture”.http://peabody.yale.edu/exhibits/maya‐murals‐bonampak.Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History.Web.November 1, 2013.

Bonampak.“Bonampak.” http://maya.nmai.si.edu/gallery/bonampak.Web.November 1, 2013.

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Jaguar and Other Zodiac Animals

The image above is of a jaguar and other zodiac animals. The Maya had a zodiac of constellations mainly of animals. However, the only creature that occurs in both the Maya and familiar zodiac of the Western astrology is the scorpion. Other Maya zodiac animals include the turtle, which corresponds to part of Orion; the peccary and the turkey, both of which may have represented Gemini; the jaguar which the picture above shows; the bat; and a mythical fish. Most of these animals also figure prominently in Maya mythology and art, particularly the turtle, which plays a big role in the creation story. Every king has a jaguar companion as their animal companion spirit and was often depicted with jaguar in Mayan art. Although all kings had one or two companions it was greatly different for the gods. The only god the jaguar representation was the sun god in whom the jaguar represented. Mayans respected the jaguar because of the companionship with the kings so they didn’t hunt the jaguar. So in conclusion our America really wouldn’t be the same without the Mayans and how they discovered such great things such as their ways of hunting and respect for some animals and all the unique religious beliefs.

In the Mesoamerican time, Mayan’s had a lot of animals who helped them through survival. The Mayans believed that every person had an animal companion who shared their soul but that wasn’t the only thing they believed about animals. Mayans hunted animals to sustain their basic needs for food. Male Mayans were the ones assigned for this hunting task. They used bows and arrows in order to kill domesticated and wild animals such as, deer, pigs and even monkeys. The Mayas kept certain dogs as pets that would help them to hunt the other animals. However, they raised one kind of dog that couldn't bark and had no hair that they ate for food and they also raised bees to make honey. The Mayan people also hunted for fish and birds by using nets and blowing guns. They captured birds with colorful plumages, like parrots and quetzals, and they used the feathers to decorate their clothes and headdresses and used other animal fur to make warm coats. In the Mayan ballgame the animals played a part in being mascots for the team. The team would decorate all their gear in animal fur of the specific animal. The Mayans couldn’t hunt every animal because of some were dangerous, including the jaguar, caimans (a type of crocodile), bull sharks and poisonous snakes.

Food source was not the only things animals were used for, they also were sacrificed to the gods and used to punish people by making them eat their skulls. Merchants, who also played a big part in Mayan civilization, faced challenges in getting products to distinct markets so they used animals as transportation. There were many ways animals helped transport people and things, the primary method of transportation for merchants was using the smaller animals to pull carts because the Mayans did not have beast of burden like horse and oxen, to help them carry large loads.

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Animals had great connection to the Mayan gods and nobles. Animals were very important to the Mayas.

They hunted animals to eat, but they never killed an animal without a good reason. They believed that every god was represented by an animal on earth. They named these sacred animals ‘nahuals’. One very important nahual is the jaguar, which represented the sun god. Every King had a jaguar as their animal companion spirit, and was often depicted with jaguar in Mayan art. Most Mayans had one animal companion, but some every powerful Mayan priest could have more than one. There were some animals that weren’t jaguars that had some significance. Actually every animal has a special significance. The frog is a symbol of fertility. The snake is related to the skies. And the two-headed snake, found in a lot of Mayan art, is a symbol of power. The rabbit was the master of writers, and the monkey was the master of mathematicians. Since every king had a jaguar companion but Chac the god of rain, water, thunder, and lightning had many animals on his torch of power. Chuen the tzolken eleventh day sign had been written twice to the left of the Chac’s upended torch which Chac held to show his power. Iguanas are what Mayan's used to sacrifice to the gods. The bird perched on top of the serpent's head and neck is an ocellated turkey. There were many other ways animals represented the Maya gods like in paintings and artwork. Atop the exterior temple walls, artists decorated with molded stucco, wall paintings, and sculpted reliefs. Sculpted reliefs are designs raised from the wall to give a three-dimensional appearance. These designs were usually of shapes, animals or god-like figures.

Amazingly, the Mayans were able to carve such detailed drawings with simple stone tools, interior walls, by contrast, were simple, having little or no decoration at all.

Citations Eboch, Chris. Life Among the Maya. Thomson Gale: Thomson Gale Corporation, 2005 Goff, Brent. "Cracking the Code." National Geographic Extreme Explorer 3.1 (2009): 18. Middle Search Plus.

Web. 29 Oct. 2013.

Goldman, Phyllis Barkas. "The History of Latin America." Monkeyshines On Central & South America (1995): 4. Middle Search Plus. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

"Maya." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/51572>

"Mayan Culture." Phoebe Grant's Fascinating Stories of World Cultures & Customs (2005): 59. Middle Search Plus. Web. 29 Oct. 2013

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Moon Goddess Rattle

The above image is a Moon goddess rattle which was found buried with dead bodies on the very small island called Jaina. Scientists believe that since the island is so far off into the water and the moon shines down on it people may have used the moon goddess rattle in burial rituals. Another theory is that it was given to dead people for use in Xibalba the Mayan underworld. The Mayan goddess rattles are made of fired clay, and they have clay pellets or whistles in them to make noise. Ix Chel was very important to the Mayans because she was the moon god. Mayans felt they should worship Ix Chel because she created them. There was some uncertainty in Mayan culture about the moon gods. Even though Ix Chel was the moon goddess, the Hero Twins reincarnated as the moon and sun when they died in Xibalba. That made Mayans wonder which god or goddess was actually the moon god/goddess. Mayans believed that there was life after death but only through sacrifice. That made it very important that the Mayans used rattles such has these to honor the gods in rituals and sacrifice. The fired clay rattles and figures are made to honor the gods. They were mostly used for important gods like the Maize god, Ix Chel, and other gods. This Ix Chel rattle is a very important piece of Mayan history and culture.

Mayan culture had such distinctive mythology but they represented it through such simple things. Ancient Mayan culture is so unique, and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s amazing to see how their religion works.

Mayan religion was one of a kind. They believed that life after death only occurred through sacrifice. The Mayans had hundreds of gods, some good and others bad. Mayans believed that their kings were related to the gods. Kings who were farther away from the gods in the family tree were less powerful. The Maize God was their most highly worshiped god. He was often depicted as a handsome young man with a tall head shaped like a stalk of Maize. The Mayans loved to look like the Maize god so they shaped their childrenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heads like Maize when they were very young by flatting the developing bones with wooden boards. Mayans believed

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that the moon god, Ix Chel created them. They believed humans were created three different times. The first time they were created out of earth, but they were mindless so they were destroyed. The second time they were fastened out of wood but they were soulless so they were destroyed. The third and final time they were created when Ix Chel flicked the fat off her fingers while making tortillas. Another very important god to the Mayans was Ahau Kin the sun god.

Ahau Kin was a sun god with jaguar like features, but at night he became the Jaguar God, and the lord of the underworld. Mayans believed that a single god could appear in four different forms. Hunab Ku was the god who created the pantheon but Mayans believed he was far too powerful to ever communicate with humans. The Mayan pantheon was extremely complicated, and even today Mayan gods leave some scientists are baffled. The Mayan pantheon was so unique, that’s what really made the Mayan culture stand out because everything is centralized around their gods. That is really amazing in such an ancient culture.

Mayan beliefs are very specific and unique. Lots of Mayan beliefs involve the Hero Twins; others have Mayan gods or different Heroes. One of the most well-known Mayan myths is a myth about the Hero Twins. The myth explains that the Hero Twins and Xbalanque went to the underworld and played the Mayan ball game against the Lords of Death. The Lords of Death are giant, gruesome monsters who were believed to eat people’s dead bodies once they were buried. The Lords of Death never play fair, so it was a miracle that the Hero Twins defeated the Lords of Death in the ball game. The Hero Twins and Xbalanque were reborn as Moon, and other planets. This myth sparked Mayans to believe that there was life after death, but only through sacrifice to the gods. Another fascinating myth that the Mayans had was they believed that the earth was flat. If you walked in the direction of one of the cardinal points, you would eventually reach abyss. Holding up each cardinal point were creatures called Bacabs. Bacabs were believed to be enormous, two-headed serpents. Mayan mythology is unlike any other. It is so intricate and complicated that scientists even today can’t understand all of it. Mayan mythology makes the Mayans one of a kind because of its complexity; it’s so fascinating to see what an ancient culture believed.

Citations: Bunson, Margaret and Bunson, Stephen. Encyclopedia of Ancient Mesoamerica. New York: Facts on File, 1996 Callihan, Kevin. Mesoamerican Religions 1997; http://www.angelfire.com/ca/humanorigins/religion.html [Accessed 23 Oct 2013] Foster, Lynn V. Handbook to life in the Ancient Mayan World. New York: Facts on File, 2002.

Print.

"Maya." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/51572>.

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Maya Gods 2013; http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/2004/maya/gods.htm [Accessed 23 Oct 2013] Mayan Gods and Mythology; http://web.archive.org/web/20120712023117/http://www.river-styx.net/maya-mythgods.htm [Accessed 10 Oct 2013] Mythology to the Mayans 2012; http://www.windows2universe.org/mythology/maya_culture.html [Accessed 23 Oct 2013] Overview of Religion & Mythology in Medieval Mayan Empire By: Berger, Adam, Early Americas: Overview of Religion & Mythology of the Maya, 2011 "pre-Columbian civilizations." Britannica School. EncyclopĂŚdia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/109431#69375.toc>.

"Religon and Mythology" Student Reasearch Center. EBSCO Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2013. < http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=khh&AN=52524897&site=src-live>.

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Depiction of Battle Predicted by a Priest

The above image is a depiction of battle predicted by a priest. In the painting a naked captive is being marched back to the winner’s city. Following him is the leader of the winning army and probably the leader of the city. He is dressed in a fine jaguar pelt with the head of the jaguar hanging from his waist. In one hand he carries a bloody club and in the other hand he holds a shield and spear. This picture shows that priests predicted a wide variety of things varying from the planting of crops to the right time to wage war. This war was predicted by a priest who studied the position of the planet Venus.

Priests played this kind of crucial role in the Mayan life. Without the priests to predict planting, all of the crops would die and the Mayans would starve to death. If they weren’t able to predict warfare the Mayans would attack at the wrong time and lose the war. This all goes to show that without the priests the Mayans wouldn’t have lived a very long time. Priests played a crucial role and the Mayans couldn’t possibly have done anything without them.

Three different Mayan calendars all meant different things in the Mayan daily life. The Tzolkin calendar also known as the Sacred Year calendar had the meaning “Count of Days”. It had 13 numbered days and 20 day names. To complete its full cycle the Tzolkin calendar took 260 days. Tzolkin is not the original name of this calendar but it is the name that is used commonly. The original name of this calendar is unknown. The Haab calendar is the traditional 365 day calendar. This calendar cycle is often referred to as the Vague Year. There are 18 months with 20 days in each month. At the end of the year 5 unnamed days are added to equal 365. These days are considered extremely unlucky and usually called Uayeb. The Tun calendar or Long Count calendar is used to record time since the creation of the world.

In the Mayan belief, the creation of the world occurred on August 11, 3114 BCE. Many people believed that the world was to end on December 24, 2012 because the Mayan calendar ended. It actually just started its 5th cycle of all the calendars meeting at the same point. In theory if the world were to have ended on December 24 it also would have ended 4 times before.

Different kinds of priests had several different roles and statuses in the Mayan life. The king was considered the high priest and was the most important priest of all. The king had several assistants, both priests and politicians. All priests had to keep the spiritual and material world functioning properly and smoothly. Some of their duties included prayer and ritual but they also had the challenge of properly running a government. The priests had to interpret the will of the gods. Priests communicated with the gods using several different methods. Only the priests had this type of knowledge so they held much

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power above the general populous. Literate people had access to more knowledge than most which proved a priest’s fitness to rule. Some priests conducted rituals and predicted the future and others cured illnesses and even led soldiers into battle. The Chilan priests predicted the future by studying the calendar and interpreting omens. The Ahmen made sure the high priest’s orders were carried out on farms and in smaller villages. The regular priests, or Ahkinob, presided over most public ceremonies such as human sacrifice. All of these different priests were important to Mayan life and without them the Mayans would not have been so successful running a government for such a long time.

Citations Eboch, Chris Life Among the Maya Detroit: Lucent Books, 2005 Maya World Studies Center. mayacalendar.com "Calendar Description and Coordination" 2001; http://mayacalendar.com/f-descripcion.html. [Accessed 25 October, 2013].

"Mayan calendar." Britannica School.Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/51578>.

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Clay figure of the (goddess) Ixchel weaving

The image above is Clay image of the (goddess) Ixchel weaving. She is using a back strap loom to craft a very intricate weaving piece. It shows the importance of weaving and how the gods weave. This sculpture relates to weaving because the Mayans wanted to be connected to the gods. The Mayans mimicked the gods weaving process. This shows that some weaving techniques were based of their religious beliefs of the gods. This also shows that when women weave they imitate the goddess Ixchel. I think weaving was a way to represent Ixchel. I think that Mayan women weave because if Ixchel was the goddess of weaving than the Mayans wanted to be more like the gods so they made women the weavers.

The Mayans wore a lot of different types of clothing. The type of clothing that an average man would wear is called an “Ex.” These were pieces of cloth wrapped several times around a person’s waist.

A woman would usually wear a poncho like tunic (Pagi) to cover her upper body. This was combined with a skirt and a sleeveless shirt to make the average female outfit. Cloth had many different uses in Mayan society. Fabric could be used as clothes, to decorate temples and sometimes to pay taxes. The designs on their weaves were usually based on the nature or the geography of the village it was created in. Weaving was a very essential part in the Mayan’s world. As a woman, to be able to weave could cause you social benefits in Mayan society. Being able to weave would give you a better chance of getting a husband. Weaving was so important to the Mayans that to not be able to weave was like having crooked teeth for our society. Different symbols or patterns on their clothing represented many different things such as the sun or the moon. Each of these symbols represented your social status.

Wearing the proper type of clothing or design was so important to the Mayans that wearing the wrong symbol or clothing from a different class was punishable by death.

The Mayan’s clothes were very intricate and had many designs. These designs were made with many colors. The way they colored their clothing was by using dye. Before the dying process, the cotton is usually a tan color. Cotton was not the only material used; they also used a combination of sisal (a very rough material) and cotton for the less noble ones. The Mayans tie dyed their shirts using many colors especially for nobles. The way they did this was by taking the cloth, wrapping it up in a bundle and dipping it in the dye. Different colors of dye had different representations in the Mayan view. Yellow represented the sun and the maize god. Red stood for life and energy, this dye was made by a small bug

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in the desert. Black was made by grinding coal. Yellow was made from blackberry trees. Last but not least, blue was made from a certain type of clay. These dyes were made with many natural plant ingredients. Today, we dye our fabric the same as the Mayans did using natural dyes.

Citations Day, Nancy. Your Travel Guide to Ancient Mayan Civilizations. Runestone Press, 2001.

"Huichol and Cora." Britannica School. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 23 Oct. 2013. < http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/41443>.

Images of the Maya http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/maya/default.htm [Accessed at October 25, 2013] Odijk, Pamela. The Ancient World The Mayans. Silver Burdett Press, 1989.

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Plate with Deer Hunting Scene

The image above is a Mayan plate from the Yucatรกn showing a lively hunting scene. The plate is decorated with black and orange paints and the center of the plate shows a hunter that captured a deer.

Surrounding the main image, hunters are masked as deer to distract the animal that they are trying to catch. The hunter in the center has the captured animal draped over his head and back to make it easier to carry. This image connects with the other two topics because it shows a way that the Mayans hunted for food. It also shows a way that the Mayans got food and mainly meat. Deer are one of the semi-domesticated animals that Mayans hunt when the animals come to feed on their fields. This also shows a strategy they used when they were hunting for animals. Mayans were very clever when it came to hunting and they always had some way to trick the animals in to their territory. This image is just one example of all the ways Mayans are clever in hunting and agriculture.

It is known that the Mayans had all different types of foods. One of the main groups of foods that the Mayans ate is called the Ancient Foursome. This includes maize (corn), beans, chili peppers, and squash. They had other foods such as cornmeal, black beans, roasted meat, rabbit, stew, and turkey. A small "bark-less" dog was also eaten. The principal food of the Mayans was maize. Maize also made up 80% of the Mayan diet.

Mesoamerica is described as the "daughter of maize" and corn was the single most important fact of both Mayan daily and religious life. More than just a natural resource, maize is seen as the principal feature of an agricultural community. The Mesoamericans also obtained food through harvesting, hunting and fishing. Very little meat was eaten, except at ceremonial feasts, although the Maya were expert hunters and fishers. The Mayans were also known for their chocolate. The seed from the cacao tree is the main ingredient in chocolate drinks and chocolate was referred to as "The Drink of the Gods". The two most important things needed to sustain any human population are food and water, and in that case of the ancient Maya, a mystery still lays in how the Mayans secure their water.

The Ancient Maya had a diverse and sophisticated method of food production. It was believed that shifting cultivation agriculture provided most of their food but it is now thought that permanent raised fields, terracing, forest gardens, managed plows, and wild harvesting were also central to supporting the large populations of the Classic period in certain areas. Many Maya communities today are most likely living and farming much like their ancestors did 2,000 years ago. The Maya usually have a communal farm for the less fortunate: widows, elderly, sickly, that everyone takes turns tending. Then, each family group has a small field, P7.HC

which today is called a "milpa". They still clear the land the way their ancestors did before they had metal tools or machines, by a method called slash and burn. Just before planting, you can see smoky fires all over the Maya region as farmers clear their land by burning and then planting in the rich ashes. They do this during the dry season from the beginning of August, to the end of October. The problem is that after only 2 or 3 years the soil is worn-out of nutrients and a plot must be left uncultivated for several years. When you consider that the soil in the Maya region is naturally poor for farming, the slash and burn method was and actually still is a sound technology.

Citations Criscenzo del Rio, Jeeni. What Part Did Agricultural Practices Play in the Growth and Collapse of the Ancient Maya Civilization? 2000; http://www.jaguar-sun.com/farming.html. Web. [Accessed 23 Oct. 2013].

Crystal, Ellie. Mayan Agriculture and Diet 2013; http://www.crystalinks.com/mayanagriculture.html [Accessed 23 Oct. 2013].

Day, Nancy. Ancient Mayan Civilization. Minneapolis: Lerner, 2001. Print.

Juniors, Chelsea. The Maya. New York: A Division of Chelsea House, 1994. Print.

"Origins of Agriculture." Britannica School. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

Smith, Herman. Ancient Maya Subsistence 1996; http://www.ambergriscaye.com/museum/digit23.html. Web. [Accessed 23 Oct. 2013].

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Clay Figure of Warrior

The image above is a statue of a Mayan warrior carved in stone. The warrior is holding in his left hand, a shield, and in his right hand, the statue is holding a club. The statue is most likely a member of the Mayan’s light infantry. His armor consists of a helmet and a leather jacket. The leather jacket is most likely stuffed with rock salt. The simple helmet and leather jacket suggest he is a member of the light infantry of the Mayan army. The Mayans did not spent to many resources of the light infantry. It is possible that the light infantry consisted of civilians in times of great need. The statue’s shield is also built like a gladiator shield. The gladiator shield is a warped square made of wood. His club could be an obsidian spiked club. Obsidian tools and weapons were favored by Mayans because of their durability and sharpness. Mayan warfare was most common in the Classic time period, when Mayans fought for territory. The statues shield, in real life, was made with wood, and the most important piece of his equipment. Mayan warfare was a truly interesting thing, in its complexity and beauty of organization.

Mayan weapons were known far throughout Mesoamerica. A very famous and important weapon was the atlatl, the “Spearthrower”. The atlatl threw spears up to 150 feet p7.jck

away! The way it worked was you hooked a spear through a hole in the main body of the atlatl, and swung the stick in a circle. The atlatl represented the god of lightning’s lightning bolts. Another popular weapon was the blowgun. The blowgun was a wooden tube that had darts in it, that could be fired up to 150 feet away. Some more melee based weapons were the obsidian spiked club, daggers, and swords. Sometimes spears were also in that mixture of weapons. Most of the bladed weapons were made with obsidian, because of its sharpness and durability. A record from Columbus indicates that the Mayan’s swords with obsidian blades cut through wood like a knife through warm butter! Mayan armor was not what you would picture armor today. The Mayans used leather shirts stuffed with rock salt.

Even the Spanish adopted this new fashion statement! The Mayans were some of the first cultures to use biological warfare. The Mayans would sometimes fill gourds with wasps and bees, and chuck them at towns. This turned out to be affective in winning wars.

The Mayan army had its own social structure. Some important roles in the army were the batab, bate, the nacom, and the bird warriors. The batab was a special role held by rulers of dependent cities. These warriors were war captains that fearlessly led their troops into battle against the Spanish. Studies suggest that the batab was only employed during the Spanish conquest. The bate were fearless warriors that were the juggernauts of the Mayan army. These fine warriors are not known about, but were supposedly the rulers of Mayan cities. These mysterious warriors also could have been women! The nacom were feared commanders that were employed in times of great need. In different parts of Mesoamerica, the nacom had different uses. Some nacom were military strategists, while some were military officers. Moving on, the bird warriors were kings that had little battlefield action. To show their power over their troops, these warriors had bird feathers on their armor. Some more abstract, but similar troops were the heavy and light infantry. The heavy infantry used an almost complete set of armor, and a gladiator-like shield. The light infantry used simply a helmet, shield, and spear.

Citations: 1.

Foster, Lynn V. Handbook to Life in the Ancient Maya World. New York: Facts on File. 2002.

Print.

2. "Maya." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.

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City Layouts

The image above is a picture of a Mayan blueprint comparing the Mayan cities of ChichenItza and Uxmal. As you can see, these cities had some similarities and differences. Both cities had very important features. Chichen-Itza had one natural sinkhole to the south of the Castillo which provided the city with water. The city also had many grand architectural features, such as sacbes (raised white roads that were paved). These sacbes connected important ceremonial and sacred locations to the main sinkhole. On the other hand, Uxmalâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s city design was a lot of buildings closely grouped together to make one big city. Uxmal is considered one of the most important archaeological sites of Maya culture, along with Chichen Itza. Its buildings are known for their size and decoration. Like Chichen Itza, Uxmal also had many sacbes connecting various buildings. Both Uxmal and Chichen Itza had many famous temples or monuments such as the Pyramid of the Magician, with five levels, and the Governor's Palace. Both of these structures were in Uxmal. Some famous monuments in Chichen Itza were the temple of El Castillo, or the Stone Mountain. El Castillo was specifically and architecturally designed so that on only the summer and spring equinox, the shadow of a feathered serpent would appear to be climbing the steps of the temple. The Mayans believed that this was one of the four serpents that held up the world.

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Out of all the grand and luxurious cities of the Maya, the architecture is what stands out to me. The Maya designed their cities with an entrance called a sacbeob also known as a raised white road made of limestone. The sacbeob connected important buildings to the ceremonial locations in the center of the city. The Mayan city walls and sides of buildings inside of a Mayan city were covered with art! The writing on the walls were images (or glyphs) depicting their gods and people playing ball games, sacrificing humans and blood to the gods, and daily life images. In the Mayan cities, there is a plaza with a large flattop pyramid at the end. All of the buildings were made mostly out of stone. In a kingdom, there was the outer wall, then beyond that there were the villages where peasant farmers lived.

Artisans, nobles, and other types of royalty lived on the inside of the city walls. All of the structures built by the ancient Mayans were built in honor of the gods. Sacrifice would have been carried out in the high temples. Mayan city design was temples in the middle. The closer you were to the middle the more connected to the gods you were. The king’s palace was in the middle and then farther away was nobles and craftsmen. Altogether, Mayan architecture was truly amazing.

Mayan art was grand and spectacular. When the Mayans drew, it was so beautiful, so precise to the point that you could clearly see what they were trying to draw, whether it was an image of their gods, or simply a portrait of themselves. The Maya wrote on the walls in their glyphs to depict godly or daily life scenes. These glyphs were Maya writing, and the Maya wrote by drawing these glyphs. The Mayan calendar itself was full of glyphs showing the days and years of the calendar. In a Mayan city, art was everywhere from on buildings and walls to pots and calendars. Calendars were especially important to the Maya because of their godly significance. Ball courts often had images of the rival captain’s head being held above the ground and letting the blood flow onto the ground, to purify mother earth. This image in the ball court was just another example of how the Maya used art in their daily lives. The Maya used ink to draw their images. The ink had to be carefully well placed, and if spilled, it would ruin the whole image or glyph. Maya would put art everywhere. The Mayan art was influential to Mayan society because their whole writing system was based on art and drawings. This art helped them develop this complex writing and communication system. As you can see, Mayan art was both interesting and amazing.

Citations: Day, Nancy. Your Travel Guide To ANCIENT MAYAN CIVILIZATION. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Lerner Publishing Group. 2001 Carlisle Public Schools. Art and architecture http://www.crystalinks.com/mayanarch.html

Britannica - The Online Encyclopedia. http://school.eb.com/levels/middle/article/319491/Chichén Itzá/

10/31/2013.Web.

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Bonampak Mural Selection

The above image is of the Bonampak Mural, which shows prisoners being tortured. The prisoners in the mural are having their arms mangled and their fingernails torn off underneath the finely dressed royals.

This mural is the main reason that modern archeologists were lead to believe that the Mayans were more than just peaceful people. The Bonampak Mural represents sacrifice because the prisoners are being sacrificed to the gods. Like blood sacrifice, human sacrifice was a very important part of Mayan religion. Humans would regularly be killed and sacrificed as ultimate nourishment for the gods. Mayans would sacrifice high-class prisoners of war to their deities in times of crisis. A main reason that the Mayans would sacrifice humans would be to get favor from the gods. They believed that if they could prove that they would do anything for their gods, they would get favor back. Although blood sacrifice is the most common, human sacrifice was also an important element of this interesting culture.

Many items are sacrificed in the Mayan culture, including corn dough, incense, and most importantly blood. Blood is the most important substance to the Mayans. To the Mayans, blood was what specifically defined that certain person. Blood sacrifice was mainly made by rulers. The priests who ran the sacrifice would pull a thorny rope through the nobles' tongues. The blood that fell from the nobles' tongues would be put on a sheet of paper where it would be burned. The smoke that came from the blood was the way that the blood would be transported to the gods. The blood was sent to the gods because it was nourishment for them. Blood sacrifice was an important way for Mayans to gain contact with their gods.

Sacrifice was a hugely important part of Mayan culture and religion. The Mayans believed that because the earth gave itself to humanity, they would have to give back. If the Mayans ever neglected these sacrificial duties, chaos would break out. Although commoners were known to sacrifice to their gods, Mayan rulers sacrificed more often. The Mayans believed that the more that a king sacrificed, the more

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power he had. A king could sacrifice for many reasons, including sacrificing in a time of agricultural distress, sacrificing for the good of his city, and sacrificing to connect with the gods and ancestors.

Mayan rulers were known as mid-points between the Mayan people and the Mayan gods. Rulers sacrificed their blood so that they could obtain the ability to converse with their passed ancestors and the Mayan deities. Without sacrifice, the Mayan rulers would not be able to seek help from deities and cities would be less stable in times of need.

Citations Callahan, Kevin L. Mesoamerican Religion. "Maya". October 23, 2013.

"Maya." Britannica School. Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 24 Oct. 2013.

Laughton, Timothy. Explore the Life, Myth, and Art of Maya. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group.

2012.

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Clay Figure of Mayan Ruler

The above image is a clay figure of a Mayan ruler. This powerful man was made out of clay. He was also a noble ruler. Noble rulers were a great source of information on the life and customs of the Maya people. They achieved many things that other people could not. This man is wearing an ornate necklace and large heavy earplugs. The men who are nobles looked like this, with large, big, and heavy accessories. The men and women always tried to look their best, and this man was surely doing that.

Beauty meant so much to them because it made them look like they had lots of knowledge. The man in this picture was meant to look powerful, just like every other man wanted to look. Beauty was very important as a noble. The Mayas were also short and chubby, like in this statue. This picture has slanting eyes and long black hair, just like the Mayans.

Mayan Women loved to show how much beauty meant to them. The Mayan women wanted to look so beautiful because they wanted to look as nice as the nobles and have the privilege to get married. The nobles took pride in their status and worked hard to look beautiful. For the average woman in Mayan culture to achieve this, they would focus on their appearance to look like a noble. One sign of beauty was wearing hats. Both nobles and common women of the time loved hats because the bigger the hat, the more important the wearer. Some hats were larger than the person was! Many women focused on their beauty when they were not a noble, so that they could get married to a noble. Another way Mayan women focused on beauty is through tattooing. When the women tattooed their body, they thought it would make them have magical powers. Tattooing was also a preservation of life and death.

If you were a lady and you got tattooed, you then had approval to get married. You would not be able to get married if you did not have a tattoo. Jade was considered a "fancy" jewel that noble women wanted to use to "upgrade" their social status. Women would wear their hair in a ponytail from the top

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of their head. Some women braid or decorate their hair with ornaments. Women would do all kinds of things to their hair because they wanted to show off their flattened head. Some women would think that jaguar teeth, claws, and crocodile teeth were pretty.

Mayan Clothes are unique; they have their own shape and style. Clothing worn over the body was usually made out of deer, leopard, jaguar, or snake skin. Some of the clothes would be draped around the body to keep the person warm. Other clothes would be worn daily. Clothes were most commonly made of cotton, which was a soft material. Only the noble women would wear the cotton clothes.

Women wore a cotton garment similar to a skirt. Women of high rank would have decorative knots or fringe. Women DID NOT wear anything on top of their clothes. Men wore a loin cloth called an ex. The Mayan women made their family's clothes by weaving them. They would use bright and different colors to make the clothes. The weaving would take a long time, and it would take a lot of work and preparing.

The clothes were all very different in shape and in color. They each had their own unique style. They would tie-dye the yarn and used bright colors for dyes. When the women stitched their clothes, they were usually not just ordinary clothes; the clothes told a story. The story could relate to anything that was going on in their life, and what had happened in the past.

Citations: “Beauty It's All in the Head.” Mayan Kids. Web. October 28, 2013.

"Dress." Britannica School. Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 29 Oct. 2013.

“High Fashion.” The Mysterious Mayas. Mays for Kids, Web. October 23, 2013.

Lawrence, Kay. "Stitched In The Margins." Architectural Theory Review 18.2 (2013): 164-174. Art Source.

Web. 29 Oct. 2013.

Marry Miller. “Extreme Makeover.” Archeology. Archaeological Institute of America, 2009. Web. October 23, 2013.

“Mayan culture thrives in the shadow of three quiet volcanos.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch (MO) 2W72W7765697400. (2006): 1. EBSCO Student Research Center. Web. 24 October 2013.

Nicholson, Robert. "Clothes and Beauty" The Maya Oxford: Chelsea House Publishers 1994. Print.

“Tattoo.” Crystal Links. Maya Civilization, Web. October 23, 2013.

Taube, Karl. “Flower Mountain: Concepts of life, beauty, and paradise among the Classic Maya.” Res. 45 (2004): 69-98. EBSCO Book Collection Non-fiction. Web. 24 October 2013.

“Traditional Garments.” mayanculture.com. Web. October 28, 2013.

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Madrid Codex

The image above is a picture of a Madrid Codex otherwise known as Codex Tro-Cortesianes in which the Mayans predicted the future and recorded the Priests rituals. This codex was made from maguey plant, or animal skins. The Mayans painted the glyphs on with fine brushes.

They painted the glyphs on strips of bark paper that were folded many times and then covered in a layer of chalky paste called gesso. The codex in the picture has many glyphs about or representing the gods.

The Mayans usually wrote books about their history. The Mayans called them codices. There were many types of codices. The codices were used for different purposes. The Folding tree codex was made out of the soft inner bark from a fig tree and were placed in royal tombs. Each of these codices holds different contents but usually they contain astronomic almanacs. Some codices were made out of bark paper. The Mayans coated the bark paper with lime to make a smooth white

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surface for their codices. Each book was written on a long strip of bark.

They folded the bark over and over again to form pages. The outside of these codices were usually made with deer hide or wood. Sadly, when the Spanish came they burned most of the codices. Luckily they did not succeed. There are still four codices left in the world.

The writing system for the Mayans is very complex. You could read it up to down or right to left. The Mayans called their writing glyphs. They used glyphs for syllables, words, and stories. Mayan scribes were taught to be creative. To make words the Mayan scribes figured out how to combine glyphs. The scribes combined several glyphs to make one glyph. When combining glyphs you have to be careful to show characteristics from all the glyphs you used. The only people that knew all of the glyphs were the Priests and the scribes. The glyphs were based off of the god’s heads.

Citations Crystal,Ellie. “Mayan Writing.” Crystalinks. http://www.michielb.nl/maya/writing.html. October 26,2013.

Capstone Pr. Inc. “The Maya.” Heinemann Educational Books.

8/15/2008. October 25, 2013.

“Maya Writing.” Maya Astronomy Page. July 22, 2005. http://www.michielb.nl/maya/writing.html. October 26, 2013.

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El Castillo

The image above is the square-sided, temple-topped pyramid that dominates Chichén Itzá‘s central plaza, and one that was very significant to the Maya. It is so imposing that the Spanish gave it the name El Castillo, which means “The Castle”. Kukulcan, the feathered serpent deity of Chichén Itzá is represented on the temple. Kukulcan or Quetzalcoatl climbs up the temple stairs on the equinoxes. The serpent wasn’t actually there, but the temple was constructed to have a serpent shaped shadow climb up the naturally lighted steps. The priests would perform the rituals in the temples that were on top of the pyramids. The Mayans believed that inside of the temples there were portals to Xibalba or the Underworld. They thought that the priests or kings/queens were teleported into and out of the Underworld. Inside the temple, there were painted representations, or reliefs, of the god of that city.

Because the Stone Pyramids or pyramid-temples were built so durably, they have lasted for thousands of years, allowing us to study and learn more about Mayan culture.

Pyramid-Temples of the Mayan people were magnificent structures which some even called palaces.

The pyramid-temples were made with a layer of limestone and a layer of white lime stucco, polished so that they gleamed in the sun. The white lime stucco was painted blue or red later. They raised the tops of the pyramid-temples to make them as tall as possible; they were over two hundred feet tall.

Sometimes a new temple was built on top of an old temple to add layers. Inside, the pyramid-temples were multi roomed; the rooms spanned by corbels or "false arches". They also had a relatively small interior. Some of the pyramids weren't supposed to be climbed into or onto, so the Mayans filled the pyramids that weren’t supposed to be climbed into with narrow, steep stairways and doorways that led to nowhere. The narrow corridors usually led to a burial chamber for high ranking officials. In these rooms you would find jade. Along with the complex inside, the Mayans didn’t have many tools so building the pyramids would have been difficult. Because of this, it would have required a lot of human labor. The king and the priests would supervise the labor of the common people. These peasants would work on the projects of construction to pay the tribute to their king and other people and items. They would do the projects during the time that they couldn’t work on farming. The laborers had to carry loads of materials on their back, or by rolling them on logs. They would have to get from a nearby quarry over to the construction site.

The pyramid-temples were not only well-structured palaces, but they also had religious purposes. Many pyramid-temples or Stone Mountains were made to be sacred or use lighting to affect the look. The Stone Mountain at Chichén Itzá uses lighting to create a serpent shadow illusion to make it look like P7.PSC

there was a serpent climbing the stairs to the temple but only on the equinoxes. The serpent represented Quetzalcoatl or Kukulcan, their feathered serpent deity. The Mayans built two kinds of pyramid-temples, one that was meant to be climbed, and the other which wasnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t. The first kind was for sacrificial rituals. During these rituals, the priests would climb up the pyramid from the earth to sky by way of staircases. They believed that the climbing of the stairs got them closer to the gods. The other kind of pyramid-temple was sacred and not to be touched. The priests would perform their sacrificial rituals to their god. On the wall there would be a painted representation of the god of that city. The people of each city paid tribute to their own god.

Citations Coe, Michael, et al. Ancient America. New York: Facts on File, 1980. Print.

Flaherty, Thomas. The Magnificent Maya. Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1993. Print.

Moore, Christina Project One: Mayan Architecture Oct 2001; https://www.courses.psu.edu/anth/anth008_cmg149/pyr.html [Accessed 24 Oct 2013].Web. Nicholson, Robert. Atlas of The Maya. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1993. Print.

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Madrid Codex Chac

The image above depicts Chac the rain god striking the sky with his impressive axe. There are different Mayan syllables and numerals. Chac is show with a long nose and his hair is bundled up on the top of his head. He was most often shown in blue. When Chac flew with his mighty axe there was wind. Occasionally, he would run into a hard surface. This would result in sparks or lightning. The sound of the crash would travel far creating what the Mayans said was thunder. This relates to their theory of the cosmos and the world around them.

The Mayan world rotated closely around the cosmos and all things that were related to the sky. One thing they believed about the sky was that it was the heavens. The Mayans thought that the world was separated into three parts. There was the Overworld, Middleworld, and the Underworld. The Overworld was located in the sky and housed most of the gods. We all live in the Middleworld which is where all living things roam. The Underworld is for the Lords of Death who were the gods in charge of consuming the dead bodies that were put into their realm. This way, they could keep the cycle of life going. The cycle of life was thought to have started when beings were first created. The goddess Ix Chel made the first people out of the corn fat from her tortilla she was making. These beings were called the four mother fathers. Since this goddess put in effort to create them, the humans must repay her. Whenever they are buried, the Lords of Death consume their bodies, giving them power. Another belief that the Mayans had about the sky is their constellations created names. Even though they look like figures in today’s representations, they are actually syllables making up names of some of the over 150 Mayan gods. Did you know that at different times of the year, the constellations changed and different gods were shown? The name of the constellation was called a sign and if you were born on a bad sign, you were believed to be cursed with bad luck for the rest of your life.

Sacrifice was a major part of how the Ancient Mayans thought of the world. They thought that if they were giving energy back to the gods, the gods would be willing to favor the Mayan people. Nothing bad would happen to them if the villagers gave the gods a “present”. There were four forms of major sacrifice. In order from most important to least they were Blood, Human, Food, and Incense. Blood was most valued from the Queen and King because they were believed to be more closely related to the gods. Blood was

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considered valuable because the rain god Chac gave his blood as rain for the prosperity of the human people. Human sacrifice was usually in the form of the losing ball playerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s captain. The ball playing being was considered valuable because they would have been fighting for their entire city. Food was important as a form of sacrifice because the gods combined efforts to create it. It was believed that planting was dangerous because the seeds would have to enter the Underworld. The farmers or whoever planted that seed was relying in the cycle of life and the Lords of Death to take care of it. The least valued form of sacrifice was burning incense. Incense was used to burn wonderful scents into the air during religious ceremonies. Did you know that some incense sticks were made out of rubber?

Citations Foster, Lynn V. Handbook of the Ancient Mayan World. 1st Edition. United States of America. Facts on File INC, 2002. http://factsonfile.com. R972.81. Oct 24, 2013 Maya; http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/51572. [Accessed 23 Oct 2013] Nicholson, Robert. The Maya. 1st Edition. Great Britain. Two-Can Publishing Ltd, 1993. Chelsea House. 972.81. Oct 244, 2013

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Seated Female Scribe Clay Figure

The above image shows a pottery figure of a Mayan woman reading a book on her knee. She is one of the elite, a small fraction of Mayan society who could read and interpret written records. Only the people in the upper class could read and write in Mayan society. You would be able to tell that she is in the upper class for a few reasons. The first is her book. She would not have it if she was not an upper class person. The second reason is what she is wearing. She would not have as much jewelry, such as her many bracelets and necklaces, if she were not in the upper class. The third is that her relaxed position makes it seem like she was not a person who did manual labor, like a farmer. This woman would most likely be one of the members of the community who would live nearer to the center of the city, where many upper class citizens lived. It seems as if the Mayans valued religious and intellectual importance, so this woman, being able to read, would be of more importance to the gods. This would mean that she would need to live closer to the sacred portal to their world. Because she could read, it is also likely that she was a scribe. If she was a scribe, it would have been hard to read her writing, as Mayan scribes, after learning this complex language, were encouraged to tweak the language a little bit to form their own artistic style of writing. The complexity of their language, as represented by this upper class figure with a book, is not surprising given the complexity of their architecture, religion, social structure, and in fact their entire culture.

The Mayans had three main social classes, each with a few jobs in that class. In the Top Class, the best, most respected class, there were the leaders, the priests, and the nobles. The leader was the most powerful person in the Mayan community. The leader had complete control over the people of his city and the people in the surrounding villages. When he died, all of his power went to the eldest son. The power was passed down this way until there was no eldest son, and then the power went to the closest male relation to the leader. The priests were the most powerful after the leader. They were believed to be able to speak to the gods, so they had incredible power in Mayan society. They decided when to begin planting, when people could marry, and even who to sacrifice. The least important of the people on the top class were the nobles. They were the relatives of the rulers. In the Middle Class, there were

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the craftsmen and the warriors. The warriors’ main job was to capture enemies. The stronger the enemies were when you caught them; the better you looked in the eyes of your city. Warriors were young, unmarried men, and they lived in a communal house. The craftsmen had many different jobs.

They wove fabrics, made musical instruments such as drums, castanets and shell horns, and made statues and pottery figures honoring their gods, their leader, or their life. In the Lower Class, there were farmers and slaves. Farmers were peasants; they lived in villages outside of the city in thatched roofed houses. The fathers and sons worked in the fields, and the wives and daughters cooked, cleaned, sewed, babysat, carried the goods that their family grew to the market and sometimes helped in the fields. Since there were no metal tools, they sometimes had slaves to do their heavy work. The slaves were the very bottom of the ‘social pyramid’, they were usually enemies captured in war or criminals being punished; in Mayan government if you stole, you had to work for the person that you stole from.

Some of the thing that slaves did were care for children, clean the house and work in the fields.

What makes Mayan cities interesting is how they were models of Mayan social structure. You would be able to tell where someone stood in the Mayan social pyramid by where they lived. The most important people lived in the center of a city, and the most important places were there. The Mayans chose the center as the home for their most important citizens because in the Mayan world, center was a direction. Center was the most important direction to the Mayans. This was because in the Mayan world center stood for the sacred portal to the overworld (the home of the gods) and the underworld (the home of the Lords of Death). This was represented by the tree of life, because its branches reached to the overworld and its roots reached to the underworld. You had to be important to live in the center of the city because the more important you were, the more likely it was that you would need to go to the overworld or the underworld. For example, the King, Queen and High Priest lived almost in the very center of the city because they sometimes needed to go into the temple, which was thought to be a portal to the underworld, to make blood sacrifices. In the very center of the city there was the Plaza. The Plaza was a huge gathering space that could fit tens of thousands of people. The Plaza was in the center of the city because it was it was important as a gathering place for the people of the city. It was surrounded by the most important government buildings, the religious buildings such as the temples, the palaces of important royals such as the King and Queen, and the ball courts. The next closest to the center were the less important government buildings, along with the lesser palaces and the homes of the upper middle class and middle class Mayans. The farthest away from the center were the homes of the lower class citizens and the farmers’ fields.

Citations Bunson, Margaret R. and Stephen M. Bunson Encyclopedia of Ancient Mesoamerica. New York, Facts On File Inc. 1996.

Martin, Phillip. "Maya Cities." The Mayan Empire For Kids. http://mayas.mrdonn.org/index.html.

10/25/13. Web Nicholson, Robert. The Maya. Pennsylvania: Chelsea House Publishers, 1994.

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Picture of Ball Game

The Mesoamerican Indians played the Mesoamerican Ball Game for sport and for religious purposes. The game consisted of two teams with three players on each team. The goal of the game was to knock a rubber ball into a hoop located on the side of the court center field. The ball was made from latex found in the rubber tree. To retrieve the latex, holes were cut into the tree and latex flowed out and into bowls. This is similar to how maple flows out of a maple tree. The latex was then heated until it formed into rubber. The rubber was molded into a ball and the left to air dry. The ball size could be as small as a softball to as big as a beach ball.

The juice of the Morning Glory Vine is added to latex to give the ball its extraordinary bounce. Rubber was also used for shoes and for medicine.

The Olmec Indians were the first tribe to play the Mesoamerican Ball Game. The Olmec lived right next to the maya. We don’t know exactly what the rules were, but we think the players could not use their hands, feet, or their hips leaving their stomachs the only place to bounce the ball from. Feet and hips were allowed only when the ball was rolling on the ground. The court was located in the center of the city. It was shaped like capital letter “I”. On the sides of the court were embankments to bounce the ball back into the game if it bounced out of bounds. Sometimes the ball was made with a skull in the middle of the ball to make it lighter and faster. It also symbolized the life and death aspect of the game. The Ball Game had many scary aspects to it. The entire losing team would be sacrificed to the gods. The losing team captain would be the only team member who would be decapitated. Tribal dances would be performed by the winning team after the game in celebration.

The picture up top is showing two ball players playing the ball game. The two players are both wearing different items. The ball player on the left is wearing a yoke to protect their body from the ball, knee guards to protect their legs, and a fancy head dress. The guy on the right is wearing a jade necklace, a yoke, a fancy headdress, knee guards, and what looks like a bracelet. In the background were buildings so one might think the game is taking place in the city. On the top of the picture there are some Mayan glyphs. I think they mean The Great Ball Players or perhaps the artist’s name. On the side of the picture there is a circle. It is perhaps either the sun or a sacrificial item. This image shows the many important parts of the ball game, including the team, the sacrificial item, and a city in the background. This picture helps us understand about the ball game and what the players wore.

Citations: McKillop, the Ancient Maya, Library of Congress Catalog, 2006 The Sport of life and Death Mesoamerican Ball Game, 10/25/2013, National Endowment for the Arts P2 BAI

Painting of Ball Game

The Maya played a religious and dangerous game that was the first team sport in the history of the world. The objective of the game was to hit a rubber ball into a hoop and whoever got the most points wins.

They hit the ball back and forth with their hips till they got the ball into the hoop. The court was shaped like an “I” and was made of cut stone. They painted the court in bright colors to signify how rich the Maya were.

Before the games, sometimes they would sacrifice a ball to the gods. The court is a symbol of the cities wealth and power. The winning team was showered with wealth and praises. The losing teams’ leader was sacrificed to please the Gods. This was done in the Mayan culture regularly, where the religion had a lot of sacrificing rituals. They believed that humans should be put back in the earth and consumed by gods.

When they played the game they had to be protected by pads that blocked the ball so they wouldn’t get injured or die. They wore headdresses, jade, and some clothing and not as much pads to protect them. The names of some of the pads were called Yuguito, Yoke, Hache, Palma, and Manopla. A Yuguito was a knee pad that had a human face on it. The Yoke was placed on the ball player’s waist. The Hache was a decorative stone accessory on the ball player’s Yoke. The Palma was on the hand or on the Yoke to protect them. The Manopla was made of stone and used to hit the ball. All of the pads protected them in some way. Some of these protective wear were used for decoration and shows wealth.

The picture depicts the people playing the ball game from Mesoamerica. In this picture you can see they are both dressed in the uniform for the game. You can see that the Yuguito is on their knees when they are playing. They both have the Hache and Yoke on their waist. Both have a headdress, and the person on the right has a headdress that is a bird with a fish in its mouth. The ball players are diving for the rubber ball in the middle of the picture. The court is also shown here, as can be seen by the benches behind the ball players.

There are symbols or letters as the top border of the picture. This painting depicts the game well enough for people to understand the painting.

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Citations Laughton,Timothy. Exploring the Life, Myth, and Art of the Maya. New York: The Rosen Publishing Group.

2012. Print.

National Endowment for the Humanities. “Explore the Ball Game.” The Sport of Life and Death the Mesoamerican Ball Game. National Endowment for the Humanities. 2001. Web. 29 Oct 2013.

"Pre-Columbian Civilizations." Britannica School.Encyclopeadia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 25 Oct. 2013.

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Plate with Deer Hunting Scene

The Mayans were skilled farmers because they spent a long time working in the fields, growing food.

Each farmer had their own plot of land in which they grew mainly maize (corn), squash, chili peppers and beans. The Mayans used the slash and burn method to farm. They would cut down the trees in an area and burn them. Next they would use the treesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; ashes as fertilizers because it was good for the soil. The Mayans needed water for their crops so they built canals to supply water from the swamps. In May, they would start planting crops then from August to October also called the dry season, they burned trees. In November they would start harvesting the crops. Both men and women helped get and make food. The men and sons worked in the fields while the women and daughters did the cooking and cleaning. This distribution of labor helped them to become skilled farmers.

The Mayans ate many different types of food. They made Tortillas and Tamales from corn, which were very popular. An average man would eat twenty tortillas in a single meal! Even though most of the Mayans were vegetarians, the upper class normally ate turkeys and sea food. In the mornings, they would eat hot porridge. Some people think the Mayans might have made the first chocolate drink. To add for flavor into their food they added a seasoning called recaudos. A couple of other different foods they ate were (Kakhik) smoked turkey broth and (Pochitas) unfilled tamales. All these kinds of food caused the Mayans to have a large diet.

In the picture above, you can see a bright black and orange wooden plate which represents a hunting scene. Inside the plate there are people trying to look like deer. The people around the outer circle are trying to distract deer to catch them. The Mayans grew corn crops, which attracted deer. Deer were some of the most commonly hunted animals. In the center of the picture, there is a hunter who has captured a deer which he his carrying on his face and back. This why the deer was so important to the Mayans.

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Citations 1. Baquedano, Elizabeth. Eyewitness Books: Aztec, Inca & Maya p.15. New York. Alfred A. Knopf. 1993. Print.

2. Nicholson, Robert. The Maya: Fact, Stories and Activities. New York. Chelsea Juniors. 1914. Print.

3. Day, Nancy. Your Travel Guide To Ancient Mayan Civilization. Minneapolis. Runestone. 2001. Print.

4. Mayan Agriculture and Diet. www.crystalinks.com/mayanagriculture.html. Web

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Plate with Deer Hunting Scene

During the Ancient Mayan Civilization food was cooked and served in pottery utensils. Bowls, colanders and cups were usually made from gourds. People ate simple meals such as stews and vegetables spiced with chilies. Maize (corn) was the main food in the Mayan culture. Tortillas, a Maize based food was made from flour which was created from Maize that was washed and ground. The prepared flour was then added to hot water and the mixture used to make the tortillas. The tortillas were cooked over a hot fire and eaten with beans and chili. Other vegetables such as squash and wild greens were eaten as well.

Fruits like the papaya, the custard apple, aguacate (avocado pear) and the fruit of the Cacao tree were also a part of the Mayan diet. An average man can eat nearly twenty tortillas in one meal! Tamales were another Mayan staple and were made from ground corn wrapped in corn husks and then boiled in water. Some other foods enjoyed by this ancient civilization were sweet potatoes and pineapples. Fresh venison (deer meat) was highly valued and considered a prize sacrifice to the gods (it even has its own glyph). Turkey and seafood were popular meals of the upper classes. A dried piece of venison served with balls of ground maize, wrapped in leaves and soaked with water flavored with chili peppers was a common (lunch) meal for farmers. Some locals kept flocks of tame turkeys and ducks for their feathers and meat. Beans for the Maya were a major source of protein. Vanilla, allspice, honey, coriander and oregano were used to flavor things such as drinks.

The Yucatan was known as "the land of turkey and deer" and the Maya where keen hunters. Men were mostly assigned the job of hunting. The Maya hunted fox, peccary, raccoon, armadillo, rabbit, jaguar, opossum, tapir, monkey, iguana, porcupine, squirrels and the coatimundi. They used bow and arrows to kill domesticated and wild animals such as, deer, pigs and even monkeys. When they hunted fish and birds, they used nets. They made hooks out of sturdy cactus thorns, shells and bones. Traps and snares were used to catch smaller animals and blow guns were sometimes used to shoot birds.

This beautiful Mayan plate from the Yucatan is decorated with orange and black paints (common colors of the Maya) and depicts a lively hunting scene. The hunter at the center has already captured a deer and is wearing it as a headdress. The images surrounding the central image are hunters disguised as deer to distract the deer they are trying to hunt. Deer were an important food source for the Maya.

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CitationsBaque, Dano,Elizabeth Eyewitness Books Aztec, Inca and Maya.Dorling Kindersley Limited, London, 1993. Print Day,Nancy. Your Travel Guide To Ancient Mayan Civilization. Minneapolis: Runestone Press, 2001. Print.

Nicholson, Robert. The Maya. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1994. Print.

Odijk, Pamela. The Ancient World The Mayas. New Jersey: Silver Burdett Press, 1990. Print.

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Scenes of Sacrifice

The Maya used a variety of technology to sacrifice different things. When humans were sacrificed, a sharp obsidian or flint knife would be used to cut open the chest. The priest performing the sacrifice would reach between the ribs and remove the heart of the victim. The priest would then smear the heart on the statue of a god. The victim’s head was cut off and hung on a tzompantli, a rack to hang the sacrificed heads. When Diego de Landa went to see the Mayans, he eventually saw the head of one of his crew member`s hung on a tzompantli! The priests then threw the victim’s body down the temple. Sometimes the priests didn’t take out the heart, and just chopped off the head. Another way for blood sacrifice was to pierce yourself, allow the blood to drip onto a piece of paper, and burn the paper. Sometimes fire was used as a sacrificial tool. These are just a few of the tools, technology, and techniques that the Mayans used to sacrifice things.

The Maya also sacrificed other things to the gods. Plants, food, feathers, jade, and shells were just a few things to be sacrificed. All of these things were less valuable than human blood, however. Jade was very important to Mayan civilization because it was used in tombs, and on jewelry. It was also used in trades because many people thought that wearing jade was beautiful. Shells were important because they symbolized zero.

Feathers were important because they symbolized that the wearer was either rich or powerful. As you can see, there are many things, other than humans, that the Mayans sacrificed.

This picture shows several prisoners of war, soon to be sacrificed, pleading for their lives. The people in the middle of the picture are about to be sacrificed. Pay attention to the position of their hands and arms. They are in a pleading position. The people who are holding spears and wearing intricate headdresses are the nobles and rulers. Also notice the man in the center of the picture with all of the feathers decorating his clothes. These are quetzal feathers. They indicate that the man is the ruler of a Mayan city or a very, very powerful person in their city.

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Citations: Baker, Deborah J. "Human Sacrifice."Early Civilizations in the Americas Almanac Volume 2. Farmington Hills: Thomson Gale, 2005. Print.

Bradley, et. al. "Game." The Mesoamerican Ballgame. Mint Museum of Art, Inc. 2001. Web. 10/24/13.

Katie Moore, Matthew Rippley-Moffitt. "Who were the Maya." Notes. Cary. Cary Academy, 2013. Print. "sacrifice." Britannica School. EncyclopĂŚdia Britannica, Inc., 2013. Web. 25 Oct. 2013. <http://school.eb.com/levels/high/article/109492> Teachers' Curriculum Institute. "Religious Beliefs and Practices." The Maya. Teachers' Curriculum Institute.

Web. 10/29/13.

Time-Life Books. The Magnificent Maya. Alexandria Va: TimeLife Books, 1993. Print.

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Seated Female Scribe Clay Figure

What the homes the Lower Class lived in The homes that the lower Mayan classes lived in were very small compared to the normal American house. They would house an entire family; like brother and sister, and mom and dad.

The base of the house was made of stone, mud and stuff that could be stacked about 2ft high.

This would elevate the house to get away from floods. The lower parts of the walls were made of stone. They just stacked stones and used daub which is a muddy substance that dried hard.

This little wall was from 4 to 12 inches tall. This was a strong base so the walls wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t fall over in a storm or earth quake. The upper parts of the walls were made mostly of straight tree branches or a special vine known as wattle. These protected them from the cold and the vines looked like bamboo (to me). They kept them connected with a muddy paste called Daub which was mud mixed with sand, grass, or wood chips. This mixture dried and when it dried, it dried hard as brick. The roof was a plain normal roof that was ether made of thatched grass, corn hutch, or palm leaves. It probably depended on where they lived. This is what the lower class lived in. It was not very big. It had only one room and about enough space for 2 people, but they had a whole family in there. Imagine that everyone who lives in your house is now living in your room.

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One of the ways that a new king comes to be is,when the son of the current king is born, the king or Halak Unik (Hal. Ac. Yu. Nik) will perform a blood sacrifice on himself. This was an offering to his ancestors. When the new king started his rule, there was a human sacrifice to show his new start as the leader. To become the king, one must take home a captive in a war, and this person was used as a sacrifice for what is called an ascension ceremony. This is most important ceremony in the heir’s entire life. This is the ceremony of when he inherits his place at the top, and becomes the leader of the city or civilization. In Mayan religion, it was believed that a leader was necessary for the continuance of the universe.

The Female Scribe The picture that is shown earlier is a female scribe with a book in her right hand. She is obviously reading this book. She is one of a select few that can read and write. These people were called scribes and were very important in the Mayan society. This image is of a clay woman scribe that is the color brown and a little orange which are the colors that the Maya often used for drawing, painting, and sculpting. This woman was probably a person used for writing down events in the city or recording battles and wars. They could even record a sacrifice or new king's rise in greatness. Scribes were very important and were in about the middle of the social pyramid.

Citations Eboch, Chris Life among the Maya. Thomson Gale, 2005. Print Baquedano, Elizabeth. “Eyewitness Books” Aztec, Inca, & Maya. Dorling Kindersley Limited, London, 1993. Print.

The Ancient World Staff. " The Mayan Class Structure” Ancient World The Americas.ncient World LLC,October 17, 2004.Web. October 23, 2013.

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Seated Female Scribe Clay Figure

Mayan society was divided into five different social stations that were almost impossible to move through for men, and you were born into. The duties of Mayan social stations vastly differed: from the slaves being sacrificed to the ruler sacrificing the slaves to the gods. The rulercalled the Halach unics- controlled everything in the city they ruled, but was busy a lot because he (or she) had to do so many rituals to keep the gods happy. Aristocrats or high nobles controlled food, trade, commerce, and the army as well as all of the high priestly positions as well as being Batabs- High civic administrators. Lower nobles took all of the lowest priest positions, architect, engineering, scribe, and military official jobs or were Ah Cuch Cabs- lesser civic administrators. The common people were farmers, laborers, warriors, and domestic workers that usually did not move up through stations. Slaves were at the bottom of the social pyramid, and the slave class was made of people in dept, criminals, and prisoners of war. Slaves were used for domestic duties and work in fields or were sacrificed.

Mayan women usually only cooked for their husband, but there are many other different things women could do in the Mayan world! They wore a skirt belted at their waist and sandals.

They also plaited their in tresses and painted their faces. The Mayan women could join an order of female priests called The Vestal Order that was headed by the princess of the city. Mayan women of noble status could become scribes or marry a noble-born man. Women were not taught how to count, but they were taught to write and cook. The wife of the ruler could only take the mantle of command if the ruler died and had no male relatives, though the women would get lots of jade jewelry while the ruler was alive. Their parents made them beautiful by dangling a bead in front of them while they were young to make them slightly cross-eyed.

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As you look at the picture of the clay women, you notice how she seems to be holding a stack of books. This is because she was most likely a scribe and used the books for writing. The woman was most likely at least a lower noble but not the wife of a ruler, because the wife of the ruler would have scribes, not be a scribe herself. You can see the woman sitting in a criss-cross position with the books on her leg for support while she is writing. The scribe is wearing jewelry on her head and armbands on her arms. Her hands are resting on her knee and the stack of books, while she appears to be looking down at the stack of books on her knee, which might mean she is currently writing in the top book. She appears to be wearing a dress, but has a loose type of shirt that is cut down the sides on her top that sits a little bit lower than her shoulders. Her hair appears to be set in two buns on the back of her head next to each other.

Citations  Odijk, Pamela. 'The Mayas.' Englewood Cliffs :Silver Burdett Press, 1989. Print.  Nicholson, Robert. The Maya. New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1994. Print.  " Mayan Society" Crystalink.Web.10/23/2013

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