01 Do you know the Maya?
When it comes to maya, how much do you know?
What did the Mayans look like?
What was the Mayan civilization?
Did it really exist? Why did the Mayan civilization suddenly disappear?
With these questions in mind, I opened the Three Thousand Years of the Maya.
Book author Sylvanus. Morley was a well-known American expert, archaeologist and aspironist of the Mayan civilization.
Over the past 20 years, he has gone deep into the rainforests of the Yucatan Peninsula to excavate Mayan ruins, and he has made great contributions to the study of the Mayan civilization of the pre-Columbian period.
"Three Thousand Years of the Maya" is a comprehensive summary and deepening of the Mayan civilization by combining the research conclusions of Maya researchers in different fields.
He uses four parts to interpret the Maya in detail.
The first part deals with the areas inhabited by the Maya, the branches of the Maya people, and the physical and psychological characteristics of the Maya.
The second part introduces the history of the Maya.
The third part, the customs and culture of the ancient and modern Mayans.
The fourth part tells the reader how to understand the true meaning and essence of Mayan history.
If you are deeply interested in the Mayan civilization, this book will be an authoritative work not to be missed.
02 Where did the ancient Mayans live? Why do they prefer low foreheads and "cockfighting eyes"?
To be precise, the area occupied by the ancient Maya included the states of Yucatán, Campeche, the eastern half of Tavasco and Quintana Roo in mexico, as well as the entire of Guatemala except for the Pacific Coastal Plain.
The Maya lived in three natural divisions, the mountains and the central plateau, Guatemala's inland basins and adjacent outer valleys and hills, and the limestone plains of the northern part of the peninsula.
The unique geographical environment not only gave the Maya a unique physiological characteristic, but also nourished their historical civilization.
The agricultural system on which the Maya depended was born in the highlands of Guatemala, and their highly specialized culture originated in the inland basins, and the revival and eventual decay of the Maya occurred in the northern part of the peninsula.
The Mayan agricultural system included corn, staple foods, vegetables, fruits, black beans, red beans, pumpkins, chayote, breadfruit, cocoa, and various tubers.
Guatemala's highlands have a pleasant climate and are a treasure trove of "milk and honey" that provides the Mayans with an abundance of food, clothing, medicines and other useful materials.
What did the ancient Maya look like when they survived in a place of abundant products?
A set of data is interesting:
The Maya were short in stature, with broad shoulders and thick chest, long arms, and small hands and feet.
The average height is 5 feet 1" for men and 4 feet 8 inches for women.
They are one of the largest peoples in the world.
The head index was 85.8 for men and 86.8 for women.
The Mayan teeth are very good and there are no caries until the age of 20.
In addition, the basal metabolism of modern Mayans is 5-8% higher than that of the average American.
The pulse rate was 52 beats/min, and its average person's 72 beats/minute was 20% lower.
The maya had a copper-brown complexion, and women had a darker complexion than men's.
The Maya hair was straight and rough for both men and women.
Four or five days after the birth of a child, a wooden plank is tied to the forehead in order to flatten the forehead, because the ancient Maya believed that a low flat forehead was a sign of beauty.
Not only that, but what is even more absurd is that mothers will also hang small balls made of resin between their children's eyes, trying to turn their children's eyes into estroverted eyes.
The Maya's ears, lips, and nasal septum were punched and they were decorated with gold, copper, jade, or ornaments of wood, shells, or bones.
03 How did the modern Mayans live?
The book argues that the Yucatan Peninsula is inhabited by descendants of the ancient Maya, the modern Maya.
They are naturally active, energetic, have a diet extremely low in protein, and their staple food is corn and corn products.
Modern Maya people who work on American farmers' hemp (hemp: fibrous fabrics made of hemp rope) plantations do not like to work as executive leaders, preferring to be ordinary workers.
Their house was thatched and full of turkey, dog and goat droppings.
The living environment is indeed not clean, but it does not affect the Mayan concern for their own hygiene.
Men, women and children, take a bath at least once a day.
They were conservative and backward, and to this day the language of communication is Mayan, not Spanish.
Compared to the Navajo Indians of the Southwestern United States, the Maya were more sociable and hospitable to strangers.
Modern Mayan women marry at a very young age, women between the ages of 17-20, and the average Mayan woman has 7-9 children.
The reason for having so many children is because of the high mortality rate of their babies.
However, Mayan women were extremely fertile, and the race as a whole was growing in population and physical health.
The Maya were not devout Christians, they had their own set of beliefs.
For example, the Mayans believed that if a person dreamed of floating in the air or suffering pain in the process of extracting teeth, then his immediate family would die.
If you see a green snake with red eyes, or hear the call of an owl, you will definitely encounter misfortune.
They worship numbers and especially like "9" and "13".
Some people think that the Maya are very intelligent, and some people think that they are average in intelligence, and in any case, the Memory and Observation of the Maya are indeed quite good, which is not questioned.
04 Historical development of the Maya civilization
When it comes to maya civilization, it is necessary to mention Mayan history.
Mayan history is divided into three eras:
Pre-Maya, 3000 BC to 317 AD.
Ancient Mayan Empire, from 317 AD to 987 AD.
New Mayan Empire, 987 AD to 1697 AD.
The Maya civilization is mainly based on corn agriculture, and what we call the Maya civilization refers to its heyday, about two or three thousand years ago, originating in the province of Petten in Guatemala, and it is also believed that it is in the plains of the Costa de La Cruz in Mexico.
There are two criteria for judging the Maya civilization: the earliest hieroglyphs and the stacked arches.
The earliest evidence is the Leyton Card and the Wahakton 9 Stone.
The Leyden medal is a small jade object in the shape of a stone axe, inscribed 8.14.3.1.12 (320 AD).
On the 9th stone stele of Wahakhtun is inscribed the Mayan 8.14.10.13.15 year (328 AD).
The meaning of these times refers to the date on which the item was actually carved.
In addition to stone carving, architectural forms are also the embodiment of the Mayan civilization.
Stylistically, the earliest buildings in the Maya were the stucco-covered E-VII sub-pyramids, which at this time did not yet have the typical stacked arch style.
The book analyzes the various reasons for the decline of the ancient Mayan Empire, and some scholars believe that it is caused by the decline of agriculture, the Maya abandoned the forest in order to grow the staple food corn, the agricultural development lagged behind, the food was insufficient, and could not keep up with the increasing rate of population.
On the other hand, the ensuing social unrest and government marriage contributed to the rapid decline of the ancient empire.
The birth of the new Mayan empire was inseparable from the ancient Maya importing from the center of the ancient empire to the north of the Yucatan.
The Mayan civilization also migrated.
In the 5th and 6th centuries AD, the Mayan civilization moved from the southern part of the Yucatan Peninsula into the northern part of the peninsula.
The new Mayan Empire existed for more than 700 years, during which it suffered hurricanes and plagues, but it was the Spanish Iron Horse that really brought its demise.
In 1526, a Spanish expedition traveled to yucatan in an attempt to establish a Spanish colony by violence and impose Christianity.
The unyielding Maya rebelled against them for more than a hundred years.
In 1597, the last Mayan city-state was wiped out under fire by the Spaniards.
Later generations can only follow the broken pottery, stone tablets, and buildings to rediscover the lost Mayan civilization.
05 Conclusion
To this day, more than 2 million descendants of the Maya still live in the Guatemalan lowlands, as well as in Mexico, Belize, Honduras, and the eastern islands of the Pacific.
Maya 3,000 Years (exquisitely illustrated version; demystifying the invisible fifth ancient civilization; Mayan civilization research institute ¥53.7 purchase
Many people can still speak Mayan, but the essence of Mayan culture, such as hieroglyphs, astronomy, calendars and other valuable knowledge, has long disappeared in the torrent of time, and has not been left to future generations, which is a great loss of human civilization.
Fortunately, this "Three Thousand Years of the Maya" can also help us fully and systematically understand the development process of the Mayan civilization and take us back to those glorious and mysterious historical time and space.
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Text/Fish White
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