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Dance in Ancient Maya Civilization. University of Texas Press, Austin 2009. Bruce Love, 'Yucatec Sacred Breads Through Time'. In William F. Hanks and Don Rice, Word and Image in Maya Culture. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press 1989. Bruce Love, The Paris Codex: Handbook for a Maya Priest. University of Texas Press, Austin 1994.
The peoples and cultures which comprised the Maya civilization spanned more than 2,500 years of Mesoamerican history, in the Maya Region of southern Mesoamerica, which incorporates the present-day nations of Guatemala and Belize, much of Honduras and El Salvador, and the southeastern states of Mexico from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec eastwards, including the entire Yucatán Peninsula.
As the Maya civilization developed, the ruling elite codified the Maya world view into religious cults that justified their right to rule. [339] In the Late Preclassic, [ 343 ] this process culminated in the institution of the divine king, the kʼuhul ajaw, endowed with ultimate political and religious power.
During the eighteenth century, speculations about the origins of ancient Maya civilization sought to associate Maya history with Biblical stories of Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel, and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. This included speculation about legendary culture heroes such as Votan and Quetzalcoatl. [9] [10]
Map of the Maya region showing locations of some of the principal cities. Click to enlarge. Until the 1960s, scholarly opinion was that the ruins of Maya centres were not true cities but were rather empty ceremonial centres where the priesthood performed religious rituals for the peasant farmers, who lived dispersed in the middle of the jungle. [11]
This category and its subcategories are for articles relating to the belief systems of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization of Mesoamerica, including aspects such as mythology, religion, ceremonial practices and observances.
The social basis of the Classic Maya civilization was an extended political and economic network that reached throughout the Maya area and beyond into the greater Mesoamerican region. [54] The dominant Classic period polities were located in the central lowlands; during this period the southern highlands and northern lowlands can be considered ...
The Aztecs abandoned their rites and merged their own religious beliefs with Catholicism, whereas the relatively autonomous Maya kept their religion as the core of their beliefs and incorporated varying degrees of Catholicism. [6] The Aztec village religion was supervised by friars, mainly Franciscan. Prestige and honor in the village were ...