Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
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 Maya civilization (/ ˈ m aɪ ə /) was a Mesoamerican civilization that existed from antiquity to the early modern period. It is known by its ancient temples and glyphs (script). The Maya script is the most sophisticated and highly developed writing system in the pre-Columbian Americas .
Classic Mayan material culture may provide possible indicators of social stratification within Classic Mayan society. Aspects of housing structure remain, such as the type of building material used during construction and the absence or presence of decoration on the outside of the structure, may indicate the occupant's social standing. [2]
Ancient Maya: The Rise and Fall of a Forest Civilization. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-53390-4. OCLC 51438896. Estrada-Belli, Francisco (2011). The First Maya Civilization: Ritual and Power Before the Classic Period. Abingdon, UK and New York, USA: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-42994-8. OCLC 614990197.
The Mayans would peak as a civilization between 250 - 900 AD. This included complex cities, social life, and politics. Mayan civilization began to decline after this time period, and remaining Mayans would revert to more of a hunter-gatherer society. These remaining tribes would eventually be conquered by Europeans in the 1500s. [citation needed]
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.
The Maya kings also offered their own blood to the gods. The rulers were also expected to have a good mind to solve problems that the city might be facing, including war and food crises. Maya kings were expected to ensure the gods received the prayers, praise and attention they deserved and to reinforce their divine lineage. [1]
Southernmost sites of the Southern Maya area. Maya scholarship long has considered the ancient Maya in a temporal and geographic sense to have come into being, thermometer-fashion – as things began to “warm up,” socially and culturally – at the “bottom,” that is, in Southern Mesoamerica, in the Early Preclassic period: events and processes coalesced on the Pacific coast of what is ...