Maya Essay Research Paper Mayamy

Maya Essay, Research Paper

Maya{my’-uh}The ancient Maya were a group of American Indian peoples who lived in southern Mexico, particularly thepresent-day states of Chiapas, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatan, and Quintana Roo, and in Belize, Guatemala,and adjacent Honduras. Their descendants, the modern Maya, live in the same regions today, in bothhighlands and lowlands, from cool highland plains ringed by volcanos to deep tropical rain forests. Through the region runs a single major river system, the Apasion-Usumacinta and its many tributaries, andonly a handful of lesser rivers, the Motagua, Hondo, and Belize among them. The ancestors of the Maya,like those of other New World peoples, crossed the BERING LAND BRIDGE from Asia more than 20,000 yearsago, during the last ice age. The Maya were the first people of the New World to keep historical records: their written history beginsin 50 BC, when they began to inscribe texts on pots, jades, bones, stone monuments, and palace walls. Maya records trace the history of the great kings and queens who ruled from 50 BC until the Spanishconquest in the 16th century. All Maya “long count” calendar inscriptions fall between AD 292 and AD909, roughly defining the period called Classic. Earlier Maya culture is called Formative or Preclassic(2000 BC-AD 300), and subsequent civilization is known as Postclassic (AD 900-conquest). Protected by difficult terrain and heavy vegetation, the ruins of few ancient Maya cities were knownbefore the 19th century, when explorers and archaeologists began to rediscover them. The age andproliferation of Maya writings have been recognized since about 1900, when the calendrical content ofMaya hieroglyphic inscriptions was deciphered and the dates correlated with the Christian calendar. Formost of the 20th century, only the extensive calendrical data of Maya inscriptions could be read, and asa result, Maya scholars hypothesized that the inscriptions were pure calendrical records. Because littleevidence of warfare had been recognized archaeologically, the Classic Maya were thought of as peacefultimekeepers and skywatchers. Their cities, it was thought, were ceremonial centers for ascetic priests,and their artwork anonymous, without concern for specific individuals. More recent scholarship changes the picture dramatically. In 1958 Heinrich Berlin demonstrated thatcertain Maya hieroglyphs, which he called emblem glyphs, contained main signs that varied according tolocation, indicating dynastic lines or place names. In 1960, Tatiana Proskouriakoff showed that thepatterns of dates were markers of the important events in rulers’ lives. The chronological record turnedout to serve history and the perpetuation of the memory of great nobles. Subsequently, majorarchaeological discoveries, particularly at PALENQUE and TIKAL, confirmed much of what the writings said,and examination of Maya art has revealed not only historical portraiture but also a pantheon of gods,goddesses, and heroes–in other words, Maya religion and mythic history. HISTORY OF THE ANCIENT MAYABy 5000 BC, the Maya had settled along Caribbean and Pacific coasts, forming egalitarian fishingcommunities. Certainly by 2000 BC the Maya had also moved inland and adopted agriculture for theirsubsistence. Maize and beans formed the Maya diet then as today, although many other foodstuffs–squash,tomatoes, peppers, fruits, and game–were supplements. The word for maize–wa–is synonymous with fooditself, and the maize god was honored from early times. Preclassic PeriodDuring the Early Preclassic (2000-900 BC), civilization began to take shape in parts of MESOAMERICA. By1200 BC, the OLMEC of the Gulf Coast had risen to preeminence, dominating trade routes that extended fromthe modern Mexican state of Guerrero to Costa Rica, passing through Maya regions. At COPAN, Honduras,and Cuello, Belize, around 1000 BC, local Maya leaders began to imitate Olmec styles of pottery and jadesand adopted orthodox Olmec religious symbols for their own use. Identification with the dominant cult inMesoamerica helped support the emergence of social strata among the Maya, particularly where the Mayacame into contact with the Olmec. Archaeologists have recently shown that the Maya began to develop intensive agriculture and sophisticatedwater management during the Middle Preclassic (900-300 BC), which may have helped support the populationexplosion of the Late Preclassic (300 BC-AD 300). During this same period, writing was invented inMesoamerica, probably by the ZAPOTECS of Oaxaca. Although writing was in use along the Gulf Coast and inOaxaca, the Maya began to use it only during the Late Preclassic. During the Late Preclassic, Maya village life everywhere gave way to stratified society dominated by asmall elite. The fruits of intensive agriculture and the profits of long-distance trade began to beconcentrated in the hands of a few. Lowland Maya groups at El Mirador, Cerros, Lamanai, UAXACTUN, andTikal cleared small villages and replaced them with planned communities centered around massiveceremonial structures featuring enormous mask facades of a newly codified pantheon. In the highlands, atIZAPA, Abaj Takalik, El Baul, and KAMINALJUYU, other Maya groups erected stone stelae on which Maya lordsand deities were portrayed, sometimes in association with dates. Although they did not invent the “longcount” calendar, the Maya were its greatest exploiters, and they used it to record history in their ownlanguages. In