Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Mayan languages are spoken by at least six million Maya people, primarily in Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. In 1996, Guatemala formally recognized 21 Mayan languages by name, [1] [notes 2] and Mexico recognizes eight within its territory. The Mayan language family is one of the best-documented and most studied in the ...
The Maya area within Mesoamerica. The Maya (/ ˈ m aɪ ə /) are an ethnolinguistic group of indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica.The ancient Maya civilization was formed by members of this group, and today's Maya are generally descended from people who lived within that historical region.
The Maya also believed that their pyramid temples were sites at which these worlds could be transversed. Maya kings, by undergoing ritual and trance , could open portals which would allow the gods - inhabitants of the sky and under worlds, to communicate with Middleworld.
The use of the Pacific Ocean communication route during the late preclassical, is also inferred from the Izapa estela-smooth altar and its similarity to the steles and smooth altars found at the sites of the Pelillo and Metates sites of the Costa Chica, Guerrero; as with the "barrigones" of Monte Alto, Guatemala and the full-bodied "barrigon ...
The Mayan calendar’s 819-day cycle has confounded scholars for decades, but new research shows how it matches up to planetary cycles over a 45-year span
The splitting of Proto-Mayan into the modern Mayan languages slowly began at roughly 2000 BCE when the speakers of Huastec moved north into the Mexican Gulf Coast region. Uto-Aztecan languages were still outside of Mesoamerica during the Preclassic, their speakers living as semi- nomadic hunter-gatherers on the northern rim of the region and co ...
Soconusco was an important communication route between the central Mexican highlands and Central America. It had been subjugated by the Aztec Triple Alliance at the end of the 15th century, under the emperor Ahuizotl, [44] and paid tribute in cacao. [21] The highland Kʼicheʼ dominated the Pacific coastal plain of western Guatemala. [37]
Maya households interred their dead underneath the floors, with offerings appropriate to the social status of the family. There the dead could act as protective ancestors. Maya lineages were patrilineal, so the worship of a prominent male ancestor would be emphasised, often with a household shrine.