The Mayan Civilization

     When traveling the Mayan ruins you can expect to see many unique things. You will see many ancient pyramids and ancient monuments. You will also see many ancient architectural structures. As you are surrounded by forests, there is a beautiful, serene prescence of the whole area.
   Similar to the Olmec, the Mayans settled in one place and began agriculture and cultivated crops like maize. Many small villages began to join and create larger cities until eventually, incredibly large cities like Tikal came to exist. The main reason for the decline of the Mayan Empire is a major drought. This drought was caused by the mass deforestation by the Mayans to expand their cities.
     The Mayans were a very large civilization with many contributions to later societies. They perfected the use of zero nearly a thousand years before the Europeans. The Mayans invented chocolate, herbal medicine, and they might have possibly invented basketball. The Mayans also had astronomers who tracked all visible celestial objects correctly. The Mayans also managed to build massive pyramids and cities with only primitive tools.
     Ancient Maya government was formed on the basis that rulers were thought to have been god-like, which to some might suggest one unified state. However, the consensus amongst anthropologists supports that each major Maya city remained its own independent and sovereign entity with its own unique struggles for political power. The Maya belief in god-like rulers also made it important to keep the line of power in the family, which would occasionally include a woman ruler. The rulers would make all important government decisions.
   The economy of the Mayans was heavily dependent on trading. The Mayans had about 72 major political units. These cities did not all exist simultaneously. Researchers believe that about 50 cities existed together at one point. The 72-city figure doesn't include the smaller, less politically stratified units, however. Because these cities would trade with each other as well as non-Maya cities and were independent from each other, the Maya civilization is seen as an internationally trading civilization.
     The Mayan religion was Polytheist, and they worshiped more than 165 Gods. The Gods were human-like. They were born, grew up and died. Gods would do other human like activity that were deemed acceptable behaviors. This included: creating, planting and harvesting maize, performing divination, conducting business, fighting wars, forming alliances and intermarrying. This behavior led to the Gods having interrelated jobs within their hierarchy. The Mayan religion believed that most peoples souls’ were vanquished to spend their afterlives in the underworld. Even the rulers souls’ ended up there. Only those who died at childbirth or were sacrificed would have escaped the underworld. Sacrifice was conducted using blood-letting (ritualized cutting) performed by the community, but run by the priest. The underworld is filled with with evil Gods, represented as jaguars, the symbol of the night. The jaguar was also shown on the Kings helmets.
     Mayan art was primarily focused on religious themes. At this time, the Mayans depicted such activities as human sacrifice, warfare, daily life, and religious rituals with startling realism. All of the great Mayan cities created great sculptures. Sculpturing embellished Mayan temples, monuments, and buildings. Sculptors produced amazing images of mythological creatures, deceased rulers, deities, and supernatural animals. Mayans also created  ceramics. The Mayan ceramics are considered to be the most beautiful pottery made in ancient Mesoamerica. They were primarily decorated in animal deities, grotesque monsters, nobles and priests, and scenes of human sacrifice, in the colors of orange, yellow, and red.