The Religious And Political Purposes Of The Maya Civilization

Starting, the homelands of the Maya civilization stretched to southern Mexico to northern Central America. We see lowlands that includes the dry scrub forest of the Yucatán Peninsula to the dense jungles of southeastern Mexico which included northern Guatemala. Furthermore, the Mayas took Olmec inspiration. Alas, Maya culture bursted into a proper and thriving civilization in 250.
Within the walls of Tikal and Copán, they ruled by a god-king and were considered independent city-states, serving religious ceremonial and trade purposes. Continuing, Mayan cities would uniquely contain ball courts which were composed of a stone-sided playing field; the game was played for religious and political purposes. Finally, Mayans believed that these ball

The Mayans had belief with gods of corn, death, rain, and of war; these gods were rather morally ambiguous in their ways. To continue, Mayans would believe each day was a god itself of which their behavior could be manipulated with calendars. For their religious practices, they'd make offerings of their food, flowers, and incense prayers; some were devoted far enough to offer blood and flesh to the gods. This was due to the belief that human sacrifice pleased the gods in a sadistic manner, keeping balance to the world. Thankfully, this sacrifice method never went as extreme to the

The core reason the calendar was constructed was to keep track of which god ruled the day currently, making a 260 day per year system; thirteen 20-day months. This led into a system we are familiar with; the 365-day solar calendar was made with eighteen 20-day months, including a separate period of 5 days at the end. The way the Mayans would base their calendar was off of close observation of the planets, sun, and moon.
For the times, the Mayans would also compose the most advanced writing system for the ancient Americas. As we see, this writing system consisted of 800 hieroglyphic symbols that stood for whole words, similar to Kanji scripture; other glyphic symbols would represent syllables. The Mayans would go on to use this writing system to record important historical events within a codex, made of bark-paper. And now, the most famous book of the Mayans is the Popol Vuh of which it recounts the Highland Maya's version of