The Ancient Maya Essay -- essays research papers

The Maya of Mesoamerica, along with the Aztecs ofMexico and the Incas of Peru, made up the highcivilizations of the American Indians at the time of theSpanish conquest. Both the Aztecs and the Incas were latecivilizations, between 1300-1533 AD, but the Maya of theYucatan and Guatemala exhibited a cultural continuityspanning more than 2,000 years, 1000 BC-AD 1542.Many aspects of this culture continue yet today. TheAncient Maya in their time had actually refined writing.They had an extensive written language, which was bothphonetic as well as ideographic. One of only fiveindependently created writing systems in man history.Maya words were in hieroglyphs, each picture with its ownmeaning. Unlike other ancient Central Americancivilizations, the Maya could write in words, sentences, andeven stories. Arranging some(prenominal) pictures together in a logicalform would create a story. The Maya covered their citiesand buildings with hieroglyphs carved into the stone. Mostof the Maya coul d read some hieroglyphs, but the priestsand nobles were the only peck who actually hadknowledge of the entire language. The Maya would alsouse quills made of turkey feathers to write in books madeof soft bark taken from a showcase of fig tree. Religion was thecenter of the Mayan life. Mayans believed that there weretwo levels of the world. The first level was the physicalworld and the second was the spiritual world, whichconsisted of the old dead ancestors, ...