Ancient Maya

Who were the ancient Maya?

The name ‘Maya’ roughly translates as ‘people of the corn’.

The ancient civilization of the Maya stretched four thousand years (around 2500 B.C. to 1500 A.D.)

That’s twice the time that has passed since Jesus of Nazareth was around!

The Maya settled a bunch of kingdoms in Mesoamerica – countries we NOW know as Mexico, Guatemala and Belize. There were other civilisations in the same area around the same time, but the Maya were the largest and the most advanced in astronomy, architecture, engineering and mathematics.

What’s so special about the Maya?

The Maya seem a bit of an engima to our modern minds.

• They built amazing temples and cities but apparently never got beyond using stone as a material (not iron or bronze).
• They invented the concept of a zero in maths, but never invented the wheel.
• Their society was complex and people had to cooperate to fit in, yet they also practiced human sacrifice.
• Their system for counting used numbers that can express massive sums – but only atoms and stars are counted in such big numbers.
• They were obsessed with astronomy and build entire cities which work as astronomical observatories to track the positions of the sun, moon, planets and stars.
• They invented a written hieroglyphic script (although they sort of borrowed from an earlier script that was probably invented by the Olmecs, an older civilisation). In all of human history writing has only been properly invented three times – the Olmec/Maya, the Mesopotamians and maybe the Egyptians. Everyone else either heard about or copied the idea. The Egyptians may have heard about it via Mesopotamia…we don’t know for sure.
• They had a calendar, the ‘Long Count’, which ends on 21 Dec 2012.
• And sometime around 900A.D. they began to abandon all those incredible cities they’d built by hand – and shrunk back to live as simple farmers in the forests and savannahs of Mesoamerica. Why?