Lifeways

The Maya were influenced by the OLMEC culture before them. The Olmec are sometimes called the “mother civilization” of Mesoamerica. But the Maya carried the Olmec cultural traits to new heights of refinement.

The Maya world, like that of the Olmec, revolved around ceremonial and economic centers in the tropical forest. More than 100 such Maya centers are known. They are often referred to as city-states, because each population center had its own rulers.

The center consisted of many stone structures, including pyramids topped by temples, shrines, platforms that served as astronomical observatories, monasteries, palaces, baths, vaulted tombs, ball courts, paved roads, bridges, plazas, terraces, causeways, reservoirs, and aqueducts.

Each city-state had distinct social classes. The priests were the keepers of knowledge. The Sun Children were in charge of commerce, taxation, justice, and other civic matters. There were craftsmen, including stoneworkers, jewelers, potters, clothiers, and others. In the countryside surrounding the central complex of buildings lived farmers, in one-room pole-and-thatch houses. They cut down and burned trees to make fields and used irrigation to water their crops—corn, beans, squash, chili peppers, cassava, and many others.

In addition to their architecture, the Maya are famous for their arts and crafts. These include jade carvings and masks; ceramic figures of deities and real people, and other colored pottery; wood carvings, often mounted on buildings over doors; cotton and feather clothing; jade, pearl, alabaster, and shell jewelry; among other objects.

The Maya also are known for their scientific knowledge. They developed intricate mathematical, astronomical, and calendrical systems. The number system used bars, dots, and drawings of shells as symbols; it included the concept of zero. Their writings about astronomy and their calendars were expressed in the form of painted hieroglyphics on the bulk paper, with pictures representing events and units of time. But in addition to pic-tographs the Maya had glyphs representing words and sounds.

These writings are now being deciphered by scholars, expanding or altering earlier notions of the Maya. For example, the Maya have had a reputation as the most peaceful of the Mesoamerican civilizations. They definitely were not as warlike as the later TOLTEC and AZTEC peoples, who founded their empires through far-reaching military campaigns. Yet it now appears that Maya city-states made war on one another and that captives were sacrificed to their deities. Their ball games were especially violent, with captives playing for their lives and with human heads sometimes used instead of rubber balls. Also, Maya aristocrats mutilated themselves to please their gods and to demonstrate their dedication to the commoners.