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In the ancient Maya cities, all sorts of offertory items including sacrificial implements were also stored and buried in deposits (caches) below architectural features such as floors, stelae, and altars; in these cases, the intention may often have been a dedication to a specific religious purpose, rather than an offering to a divine recipient.
Although Jenkins suggests that ancient Maya knowledge of this event was based on observations of the Dark Rift in the Milky Way as seen from Earth (this dark rift, it is said by some Mayan scholars, was believed by some Mayans to be one of the entrances to Xibalba), others see it as evidence of knowledge imparted via ancient contact with ...
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.
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 ...
The writings of 16th-century Bishop Diego de Landa, who had infamously burned a large number of Maya books, contain many details of Maya culture, including their beliefs and religious practices, calendar, aspects of their hieroglyphic writing, and oral history. [115]
In 1967, an underground cistern known as a chultun was discovered near a sacred body of water at Chichen Itza, an important ancient Maya city on Mexico's Yucatan peninsula. Skeletal remains of ...
The building was connected to the cult of Kukulcán, a serpent deity, according to officials.
Coe/Kerr, The Maya Scribe and his World. Craine and Reindorp, The Codex Pérez and The Book of Chilam Balam of Maní. Houston and Inomata, The Classic Maya. 2009; Jones, The Conquest of the Last Maya Kingdom. 1998. Klein, Cecilia, Eulogio Guzmán, Elisa C. Mandell, and Maya Stanfield-Mazzi, The Role of Shamanism in Mesoamerican Art: A ...