The Ancient Mayan Civilization

Historians have always agreed on the fact that there existed ancient civilizations which exhibited great cultural growth and development. One of the great ancient civilizations known to man is that of the Mayan people. The Maya were a Meso-American civilization who occupied the southern part of present day Mexico.

This Mayan Classic period civilization grew between 300BC and 1100AD, at about the same time that Europe was witnessing the disintegration of the great Roman Empire and the rise of the Holy Roman Empire (Vanden and Prevost 19). The Mayan culture was made possible by the agricultural conquest by the people as well as the complex political organization that ensured proper governance to the people.

The political-social organization of the Maya was hierarchical with a king, nobles and priests on top and the common people and slaves on the bottom (Vanden and Prevost 19). Kingship was mostly on a hereditary basis and as such, each king chose an heir among his sons.

The king ruled in an authoritarian fashion with the help of the nobles and in his decision making, he did not consult the masses. Despite this, the Mayans had good governance and grew stronger through military conquest. They also went on to develop what was at the time a very sophisticated and expansive civilization consisting of a series of city-states.

Religion

Religion played a very important role in Mayan culture and priests were held in high esteem. Maya priesthood drew its members from the elite class and the chief priest was in fact the Maya ruler (Sharer and Traxler 722). The priesthood performed a variety of public ceremonies which were meant to inspire awe and obedience from the people.

These ceremonies typically involved music, dancing, feasting and offerings. The Mayans greatly invested in prestigious temples for their worship. Ruins of these temples are present to date and their designs continue to astound man. One of the bleaker aspects of the Maya was human sacrificing ceremonies which were preceded over by the reverend priests.

Sharer and Traxler reveal that human offerings were at times intended as a means to divine future events since it was believed that the gods would talk to the priests on being offered with human sacrifices (Sharer and Traxler 754). In addition to this, human offerings were believed to nourish and sustain the gods who would in return be benevolent to the people. Most of the offerings for human sacrifices were usually captives who had been obtained from warfare.

The Mayan Calendar

The Mayan calendar is one of the most important relics from the Mayan civilization. One of the intriguing aspects of the Maya was that they were the first people in America to keep historical records (Haughton 151). It is widely contended that one of the greatest Mayan accomplishment was the creation of their intricate calendar system. Calendars were based on astronomical events such as the cycles of the sun, moon and planets.

This heavenly body’s movement established the seasons with priest-astronomers pronouncing the advent of each new period. As such, this calendar was the center of the life and culture of the Mayan people. Anderson articulates that the Mayans wrote accurately depicting the Earth’s rotation around the sun in 365.24 and in addition to this documented the movement of planets that were in that age undiscovered (81).

The Mayan people had three calendar systems which had different degrees of complexity and were used for various reasons. Of particular interest is their long count calendar which was based on a cycle of an estimated 5000 years. Ettington asserts that “This calendar is a massive and highly accurate list of astronomical events and seasonal occurrences such as solstices and equinoxes” (36).

It is advanced that the current long count calendar started counting down in the year 3114BC and will end in the year 2012 AD. At the same time that this calendar comes to an abrupt end, it is predicted that the sun will be aligned to the center of the Milky Way galaxy.

The Mayans and Agriculture

The greatest achievement that the Mayans made with regard to their environment was their exploitation of the lowland environment to produce food for millions of people for more than a millennium. Sharer and Traxler contrast this early exploitation of the lowlands by the Mayans to the present day scenario whereby the same lowland landscape has been exhausted after only a few years of growing crops (58).

Due to the rapid increase in population, the Mayans had to over cultivate their land so as to cater for the food needs of the people. Invariably, this over cultivation resulted in the decline in soil fertility which necessitated the Mayas had to come up with means of reversing this negative phenomena. Clearing and burning of the forests so as to increase soil fertility was practiced as a means of adapting to the environmental changes.

Marston, Knox and Liverman highlight that the Mayas practiced swidden agriculture which involved the clearing vast areas of forest, burning them so that the crops benefited from the nutrients in the ash and then abandoning the land while the forests regrew (336). This method was effective since the fertility of the land was assured. The cutting down of trees was followed by a season of afforestation efforts therefore negating the negative effects of deforestation.

The wetland areas that the Maya occupied provided major constraints to both settlement and farming. This is because the constant flooding made the land inhabitable and crops could not survive the waters.

However, the Maya developed methods for growing crops in these particular areas by building raised fields which made the crops safe from the flooding while taking advantage of the rich soils that the wetland environment provided (Marston, Knox and Liverman 336). By doing this, the Mayas adapted to their environmental condition favorably and were able to produce enough food to sustain the population.

Writing Technology

The development and use of writing by a people is considered to be one of the hall-marks of civilization. Unlike other civilizations of their time, The Mayans had a well developed writing system which made use of phonetics and ideograms. Ancient Maya writing system was somewhat elaborate and some historians hail it as one of the most significant achievements of the Maya people (Sharer and Morley 597).

The Maya were able to keep permanent records which allowed for the transmission as well as the accumulation of knowledge from generation to generation. The most elaborate writings by the ancient Maya were the seasonal and astronomical information which was recorded over long periods of time. However, most of their written works perished with the decline of the civilization and the subsequent invasion by the Spaniards.

Architecture

The Maya civilization showed great advancement in their building technology and to date, the ruins of their stone architecture and monuments still continue to amaze us. During the Classic period which was the period when the Mayan civilization was at its peak, the Maya lowland forests were covered with clusters of ancient Maya house groups, villages and centers.

These centers varied in size from minor ceremonial complexes which had few masonry residences and shrines to epicenters which had superimposed temples and palaces (Demarest 89). The major epicenter architectural complexes were the administrative and economic cores of Maya kingdom (95). Goods and produce were therefore exchanged at these centers and the periodic gatherings and rituals also occurred at these architectural complexes.

The temples of the Maya people were especially elaborate, rising to great heights and decorated with stone images of gods and other sacred symbols (Demarest 95). This elegant buildings required craft skills and techniques that could only be provided by skilled artisans.

The specialists who engaged in carving, production of fine plaster from limestone and other crafts were engaged in these projects. Demarest reveals that “archeologists have discovered that the epicenter of ruins of Maya sites had several clusters of architecture connected by plaster coated stone which were used for ritual processions between the temple and the palace complexes” (95).

Decline of the Mayan Civilization

While the exact reason for the decline of the Mayan populating remains controversial, Penna advances that major climate shifts from wet to dry that lasted for more than a century were the causes of the decline of this agriculture based civilization (283).

For many centuries, the Mayans were able to use technology and social organization to adapt to the harsh physical environments that their land presented. However, due to an increase in the need for food, the Maya could no longer afford to leave the lands idle as they had done in the past. This led to large-scale deforestation which not only resulted in regional climatic changes but also brought about soil erosion and a marked decline in soil fertility (Marston, Knox and Liverman 336).

The Mayas demand for more resources resulted in the rapid environmental degeneration. Vanden and Prevost out rightly accuse soil exhaustion by the Mayans from over farming as the major factor that led to the rapid decline of the Mayan civilization in 900 (20).

Conclusion

The Mayan people were able to build a great civilization as a result of their complex government system, religious practices and agricultural exploits. By adapting to their environment and using technological innovations to enhance their society the Maya were therefore able to survive for hundreds of years on land that would otherwise have been considered hostile and harsh.

The discussions presented in this paper have demonstrated that this civilization was able to flourish for hundreds of years during which they build great architectural sites and built great cities. By adapting to their environment that the Mayas were able to conquer the constraints that natural environmental posed.

However, the Mayas eventually overexploited the environment therefore leading to adverse effects which resulted in their demise. By offsetting the delicate balance that they had created with their environment, the Maya were driven into ruins. From this, we can learn that maintaining an ecological balance is necessary to ensure the survival of the human race in these modern times.

Works Cited

Anderson, Nina. Worse Than Global Warming: Wave Technology, The Imminent Threat to Civilization As Told by the Prophecies. USA: Safe Goods, 2007. Print.

Demarest, Arthur. Ancient Maya: the rise and fall of a rainforest civilization. Cambridge University Press, 2004. Print.

Ettington, Martin. Prophecy: A History and How to Guide. USA: Martin Ettington, 2008. Print.

Haughton, Brian. Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries. Career Press, 2006. Print.

Marston, Sallie Knox, Paul and Liverman, Diana. World Regions in a Global Context: People, Places, and Environments. 3rd Edition. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2008. Print.

Sharer, Robert and Morley, Griswold. The Ancient Maya. Stanford University Press, 1994. Print.

Vanden, Harry and Prevost, Gary. Politics of Latin America: The Power Game. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. Print.

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The Ancient Mayan Civilization

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Introduction