The Maya

The Mystery of the Ancient Maya Civilization

Chichen Itza

Properly speaking, the Maya were not urban people. Their urban centers were meant to be religious centers instead of a place to live. The experts think that their rural tradition is the main reason for the Maya culture and social traditions to avoid extinction; they say that, as the invaders (whether they were Spanish or just other native tribes) always tried to control urban centers, they were fairly safe living outside the cities. The decline of those urban centers, however, led to several religious changes.

Their impressive creativity has made the ancient Maya one of the most documented ancient civilizations that we know about. Thanks to many drawings, we can corroborate several stories that have been told from fathers to sons through generations of oral tradition. The largest cultural development of the Maya Indians took place on south Honduras and Guatemala, as well as in the Yucatán peninsula, in Mexico.

Mayas were fond of tropical forest. In fact, there were only two known ancient civilizations that developed an urban culture in the rain forest, and one of them was the Maya. That is why many Maya buildings remained covered by vegetation until discovered: when the people abandoned a city, the forest invaded it.

The main city on the region we know today as South Guatemala was Tikal, but the Mayas extended their domains even more to the south. The southernmost city of the Maya (Copan) was found in the northern region of what is today Honduras.

In the Yucatan peninsula, the Maya built urban centers too. There we can find the cities of Uxmal and Chichen Itzá, two of the most visited Mayan centers nowadays. Some experts believe that the cultural development that took place amongst the Yucatan Mayas was independent from the one of the southern tribes.

The Mayas lived on agriculture and as they lived in a tropical rain forest, they had to burn entire areas of woods in order to work the land properly. They also “helped” the land by offering, as the Aztecs, sacrifices to their gods.

Their achievements in astronomy were superb. They developed the Mayan Calendar, which is actually a set of several different calendars. Their legacy also consists on a very complex writing system, maybe the most difficult one of the ancient world. The Maya disappeared for reasons that remain unknown, but Maya traditions are still present in the population of Mexico, who still wear clothes colored like the ancient Maya clothing, and who have incorporated several pagan deities into their unique view of Catholicism.