Maya civilization

Maya civilization - Origins: Encyclopedia II - Maya civilization - Origins

Archaeological evidence shows the Maya had started to build ceremonial architecture by approximately 1000 BCE. There is some disagreement about the boundaries which differentiate the physical and cultural extent of the early Maya and their neighboring Pre-Classic Mesoamerican civilizations, such as the Olmec culture of the Tabasco lowlands and the Mixe-Zoque– and Zapotec–speaking peoples of Chiapas and southern Oaxaca. Many of the earliest significant inscriptions and buildings appeared in this overlapping zone, and evidence suggests that these cultures ...

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Maya civilization - Writing and literacy

Maya civilization - Reference

Maya civilization - Origins: Encyclopedia - Maya calendar

The Maya calendar is actually a system of distinct calendars and almanacs used by the Maya civilization of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica. These different calendars tracked observable phenomena such as the solar year, the lunar year, and the synodic period of the planet Venus; others had a divinatory or ritualistic purpose without any known association to natural cycles. These calendars could be synchronised and interlocked in complex ways, their combina ...

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Maya calendar - Haab

Maya calendar - Wayeb

Maya calendar - Venus cycle

Maya civilization - Origins: Encyclopedia - Classic Maya language

The Classic Maya language is the oldest historically attested member of the Maya language family. It is the main language documented in the Pre-Columbian inscriptions of the Classic Era Maya civilization. Classic Maya language - Relationships. Classic Maya is split into at least two dialects, Ch'olan and Yucatecan. These dialects eventually evolved into the contemporary up into the Chol language and the Yucatec Maya language. Modern Ch'ol and Yucatec speakers can understand many words in Classic Maya. < ...

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Maya civilization - Origins: Encyclopedia - Chichicastenango

Chichicastenango, also known as Santo Tomás Chichicastenango, is a town in the El Quiché department of Guatemala, known for its traditional Maya Indian culture. Chichicastenango serves as the municipal seat for the surrounding municipality of the same name. Chichicatenango is a small and stucco-white town, lying on the crests of mountaintops at an altitude of 1,965 meters. It is located about 140 km and 2-3 hours drive northwest of Guatemala City and is home to what is surely the most colorful native marke ...

Maya civilization - Origins: Encyclopedia - Cival

Cival is an archaeological site in the Petén department of Guatemala, formerly a major city of the Pre-Columbian Maya civilization. The site flourished from about the 6th century BC through the 1st century, during the Maya Pre-Classic Period (see: Mesoamerican chronology). It may have had a peak population of some 10,000 people. The site is about 25 miles (40 km) east of Tikal, on a r ...

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Maya civilization - Origins: Encyclopedia - Chaac

Chaac (also rendered as Chaak or Chac) is an important deity in the pantheon of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization in Mesoamerica. In Maya mythology, Chaac was the god associated with rain and thunder, and was also significant in rites and observances associated with fertility and agriculture. Like some other Maya gods, Chaac was sometimes thought of as one god, and other times as 4 separate gods based in the four cardinal directions: "Chac Xib Chaac", Red Chaac of the East; "Sac Xib Chaac", White North Chaac; "Ek Xib Chaac" Black West Chaac", and ...

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Maya civilization - Origins: Encyclopedia - Diego de Landa

Diego de Landa Calderón (1524 – 1579) was Bishop of Yucatán. De Landa was in charge of bringing the Roman Catholic faith to the Maya peoples after the Spanish conquest of Yucatán. He presided over a spiritual monopoly granted to the Catholic order of Franciscans by the Spanish crown, and worked dilligently to buttress the order's power while converting the indigenous Maya. He left future generations with a mixed legacy in his writings which contain much valuable information on pre-Columbian Maya civilization, and his actions which destroyed much of tha ...

Maya civilization - Origins: Encyclopedia - Maya mythology

Maya mythology refers to the pre-Columbian Maya civilization's extensive polytheistic religious beliefs. These beliefs had most likely been long-established by the time the earliest-known distinctively Maya monuments had been built and inscriptions depicting their deities recorded, considerably pre-dating the 1st millennium BC. Over the succeeding millennia this intricate and multi-faceted system of beliefs was extended, varying to a degree between regions and time periods, but maintaining also an inherited tradition and customary obs ...

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Maya mythology - Bacabs

Maya mythology - The First Humans

Maya civilization - Origins: Encyclopedia - Augustus Le Plongeon

Augustus le Plongeon (1825-1908) was a photographer, antiquarian and amateur archaeologist who was made the first attempted excavations and photographic records of the ruins of Chichen Itza, a site of the pre-Columbian Maya civilization on the northern Yucatán peninsula, Central America. He wrote a lengthy history of Maya culture, going so far as to propose a theory that Maya had founded Ancient Egypt, a theory which has since been discredited by the scientific community. In general, his theories were considered to be somewhat outlan ...

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Maya civilization - Origins: Encyclopedia - Zaculeu

Zaculeu is a Pre-Columbian archeological site in the highlands of south western Guatemala, a short distance outside of the city of Huehuetenango. Zaculeu was the capital of the Mam kingdom of Maya civilization. Zaculew is the K'iche' translation of the Mam name for the settlement: Zac Tz'otz'. The K'iche' name was applied when K'iche' men conscripted by Alvarado participated in the siege of Zac Tz'otz'. Zaculeu was first occupied in the 5th century, and the buildings from this era show the influence of Teotihuacan. The l ...

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Zaculeu - External link

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Maya civilization - Origins: Encyclopedia - Chichen Itza

Chichen Itza is a large pre-Columbian archaeological site in Yucatán, Mexico. The city was built by the Maya civilization. Chichen Itza - Name and orthography. The name is often represented as Chichén Itzá in Spanish and other languages to show that both parts of the name are stressed on their final syllables. In the Yucatec Maya language (still in use in the area, and written with the Roman alphabet since the 16th century) this stress follows the normal rules of the language, and so it is written ...

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Maya civilization - Origins: Encyclopedia - Alux

In Mayan mythology, an alux [Mayan: ä lōōsh’][pl: aluxob: ä lōōsh’ə](sometimes spelled “alush”) is a tiny spirit that travel through the land. Aluxob are small, only about knee-high, and resemble miniature Mayans in traditional clothing. Aluxob are generally invisible, but can assume physical form for purposes of communicating with and frightening humans as well congregating together. They are generally associated with natural features such as forests, caves, stones, and fields, but can be enticed to move somewhere through offerings. They could be considered a Mayan version of lepre ...

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Alux - External link

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Maya civilization - Origins: Encyclopedia - Copán

The Pre-Columbian city now known as Copán is a locale in extreme western Honduras, in the Copán Department, near to the Guatemalan border. It is the site of a major Maya kingdom of the Classic era. The kingdom, anciently named Xukpi (Corner-Bundle), flourished from the 5th century AD to the early 9th century, with antecedents going back to at least the 2nd century AD. Its name is an apparent reference to the fact that it was situated at the far southern and eastern end of Maya territory. The nearby modern village of Copán Ruinas itself may ...

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Maya civilization - Origins: Encyclopedia - Glyph

A glyph is a carved figure or character, incised or in relief; a carved pictograph; hence, a pictograph representing a form originally adopted for sculpture, whether carved or painted. Augustan English scholars of the early 18th century, imitating French antiquaries, adopted glyph from the Greek word meaning a "carving." Compare the carved and incised "sacred glyphs" hieroglyphs, which have had a longer history in English dating from the first Elizabethan translation of Plutarch (who adapted "hieroglyphic" as a Latin adjective) ...

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Maya civilization - Origins: Encyclopedia - Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg

Abbé Charles-Étienne Brasseur de Bourbourg (8 September 1814 – 8 January 1874) was a noted French writer, ethnographer, historian and archaeologist. He became a specialist in Mesoamerican studies, travelling extensively in the region. His writings, publications, and recovery of historical documents contributed much to the later understanding of the region's languages, writing, history and culture (in particular, that of the Maya and Aztec). Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg - Early life and writings. < ...

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Maya civilization - Origins: Encyclopedia - Belize

Total (2003 E) Density 279,457 (July 2005 est.) 13/km² Belize is a small nation on the eastern coast of Central America, on the Caribbean Sea bordered by Mexico to the northwest and Guatemala to the west and south. The country is a parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy which recognizes Queen Elizabeth II as Sovereign. The nation of Honduras is a near neighbour, 75 km away (47 miles) across the Gulf of Honduras to the east. The name is derived from the Belize River which Belize Cit ...

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Maya civilization - Origins: Encyclopedia - 4th millennium BC

(5th millennium BC – 4th millennium BC – 3rd millennium BC - other millennia) 4th millennium BC - Events. Sumerian city of Ur in Mesopotamia (40th century BC); Sumerian hegemony in Mesopotamia, with the invention of writing, base-60 mathematics, astronomy and astrology, civil law, complex hydrology, the sailboat, the wheel, and the potter's wheel, 4000–2000 BCE. Naqada culture on the Nile, 4000–3000 BC. Epoch of the modern Hebrew Calendar occurred on 7 October 3761 BC. < ...

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4th millennium BC - Environmental changes

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Maya civilization - Origins

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