Ancient Mayan civilization

The Maya built splendid temples and pyramids were accomplished artists and developed a sophisticated calendar, as accurate as any in existence in the world at that time.

Mayan people are excellent timekeepers. By following the movement of the planets, Mayan astronomers have calculated the yearly path of Venus around the Sun with an error of only fourteen seconds per year. 

The Maya built tremendous cities – Tikal, the most important Mayan political center, may have been populated by more than 100,000 people.

The Maya people were an agrarian people who cleared the dense rainforests, developed farming and built a patchwork of city-states.

Mayan warfare was a unique with a tremendous amount of religious significance. Days of religious would preceded a battle, and the King and nobility would actively participate in combat. The purpose of warfare was not to gain territory, but to acquire slaves, who were used in large scale building projects and farming. 

During the Classic period, dance performance functioned as a metaphor for civilization in three principal modes. It was image of divinity. It also structured society and played a key role on socialization and finally it was essential to the definition of the state, both representing and enacting royal authority.

The Maya speak as many as twenty-three different languages or dialects – regional variations that have different pronunciations from other regional varieties of the same languages.

The Mayan written language consists of glyphs. Unlike other language systems in ancient America, the Mayan glyphs are not just pictures of object. Many of them also represent specific sounds.

The Maya inscribed their glyphs on far more imperishable materials like stone stelae, staircase, door lintels, facades, and pottery.

The origin of Maya writing is intertwined with that of the neighboring Mixe-Zoqueans, who developed a script related to Maya writing during the Late Pre-Classic.

Like other pre-Columbian recoding systems, Maya writing was not static, but developed and changed over some 2,000 years of use.
Ancient Mayan civilization