10 Interesting Facts About Mayan Civilization (You Never Know Before!!!) | Fireup Facts

The Mayan Civilization

The ancient Maya civilization was without a doubt, one of the most dominant ancient societies of Mesoamerica. The ancient Maya excelled at agriculture, pottery, hieroglyph writing, calendar-making, and mathematics and were one of the most impressive astronomers in the past.

They were a unique and advanced ancient culture and according to studies, the Maya were centered in one geographical block covering all of the Yucatan Peninsula and modern-day Guatemala, Belize and Chiapas and Tabasco in modern day Mexico.

Interesting Mariana Trench Facts:

• According to the ancient Maya, the world was created on August 11, 3114BC, which is the date their calendar counts from.
• The traditional view of the Maya was that they were a peaceful people, content to gaze at the stars and trade with one another for jade and pretty feathers. That was before modern researchers deciphered the glyphs left behind on the statues and temples. It turns out that the Maya were as fierce and warlike as their later neighbors to the north, the Aztecs. Scenes of wars, massacres, and human sacrifices were carved into stone and left behind on public buildings.
• The Maya were literate and had a written language and books. To the untrained eye, Maya books look like a series of pictures and peculiar dots and scribbles. In reality, the ancient Maya used a complex language where glyphs could represent a complete word or syllable. A Maya book is referred to as a codex (plural: codices). The codices were painted onto a paper made of bark from the fig tree and folded out like an accordion. The four books are as:

1. The Dresden Codex
2. The Paris Codex
3. The Madrid Codex
4. The Grolier Codex

• The Ancient Maya played sports. The Mesoamerican ballgame or also called Ōllamaliztli in Nahuatl was a “sport” practiced by all the major civilizations from the Olmecs to the Aztecs.  The objective of the ball game was to strike a rubber ball through the hoop using any part of the body except the hands. After the game, the outcome of which was predetermined to reflect the battle it represented, the captives were ritually sacrificed.
• The Maya were obsessive astronomers who kept very detailed records of the movements of the stars, sun, moon, and planets. They kept accurate tables predicting eclipses, solstices, and other celestial events.
• Each major city-state had a king, or Ahau. The Maya rulers claimed to be descended directly from the Sun, Moon or planets, which gave them divine ancestry. Because he had the blood of Gods, the Ahau was an important conduit between the realm of man and the heavens and underworld, and often had key roles in ceremonies. The Ahau was also a wartime leader, expected to fight and play in the ceremonial ball game. When the Ahau died, rulership generally passed to his son, although there were exceptions: there were even a handful of Queens of mighty Maya city-states.
• When talking about Ancient Maya culture, experts generally lament how little is known today and how much has been lost. One remarkable document has survived, however: the Popol Vuh, a sacred book of the Maya that describes the creation of mankind and the story of Hunahpu and Xbalanque, the hero twins, and their struggles with the Gods of the underworld.
• The Ancient Maya were incredible engineers, constructing incredible Pyramids and temples that match the ones in Egypt. The peak of La Danta—one of the world’s largest pyramids. According to researchers the Peak of La Danta is more massive than the Great Pyramid of Giza containing around 99 million cubic feet of rock and fill.
• There was a lot of talk in certain paranoid corners of the Internet that doomsday, as predicted by the Maya calendar, would come on December 21, 2012. The date came and went and the apocalypse never materialized, but any Mayanist could have told you that you had nothing to worry about. December 21, 2012 just happened to coincide with the end of a full cycle of 5125 years in the Maya’s so-called Long Count calendar. This calendar was impressive because it used zero as a placeholder—one of the earliest uses of zero as a mathematical concept in history.
• Now a symbol of American Thanksgiving, turkeys may have first been domesticated by the Maya. Turkeys weren’t just used for food; the Maya also used the birds’ parts like bones and feathers to create fans, tools, and musical instruments. Mexican turkey bones dating to the Preclassic Maya period were discovered at the archaeological site of El Mirador in Guatemala.

No One Knows What Happened to Them

In 700 A.D. or so, the Maya civilization was going strong. Powerful city-states ruled weaker vassals, trade was brisk and cultural achievements such as art, architecture, and astronomy peaked. By 900 A.D., however, the Classic Maya powerhouses like Tikal, Palenque, and Calakmul had all fallen into decline and would soon be abandoned. So, what happened? No one knows for sure. Some blame warfare, others climate change and still other experts claim it was disease or famine. Possibly it was a combination of all of these factors, but the experts can’t seem to agree.