Maya Religion Explained

When did the world begin? Bishop James Usher is famous for marking the first day of creation according to Genesis as exactly October 23, 4004 BC. C., the ancient Mayans, however, believed it to be a little younger, they marked the dawn of the human era exactly on August 14, 3114. BC, didn't they also say something about the end of the world in 2012? Well, not exactly in this video we will examine the classical Mayan

religion

, what the Mayans believed about God's ancestors and the extremely complicated calendar of him, but first who the classical Mayans were, the word Mayan actually. refers to a diverse collection of ethnic groups from areas around Mexico Guatemala Belize Honduras and El Salvador The word Mayan itself was created after the arrival of the Spanish based in the Yucatecan city of Mayapan, but scholars collectively refer to These ethnic groups are called Mayans because they speak similar languages ​​and share certain cultural and artistic traditions.

The first Mayans probably came from the Kuchimatan Mountains in southwestern Guatemala and spread from there around 2000 BC. Today the Mayans who live in this area often use more specific names for their own languages ​​and local ethnic groups. That's right, the Mayans never disappeared today, there are millions of Mayans living throughout the Mayan region and in the United States. United, therefore, when we talk about the Mayan

religion

, we must be more specific about which Mayan religion, which specific Mayan group and at what time. At what specific time many viewers may be familiar with Mel Gibson's film Apocalypto, but it compresses features from several different time periods, although it is set at the time of Spanish contact in the 16th century, we are focusing on the classical period that lasted around 250 to 900 AD. and we will focus on the central region called the southern lowlands, which at the time was dominated by speakers of the Mayan language we call classical Chaotian.

We will focus on this region because it was the most populated during the classic period and therefore has the greatest amount of information about its society and culture. A final note before continuing the word Mayan is used both as a singular and plural noun to refer to the group. ethnic as in the classical Mayan phrase as well as an adjective to refer For things related to the Mayans, such as the Mayan religion, scholars use the term Mayan with an n only as a noun or adjective to relate to the language as in the Mayan language, as well So with all that terminology out of the way, let's enter the classical period.

It took place before any contact with Europeans, but the Classic Maya did not live in a vacuum, in fact, they interacted widely with other Native American peoples. The cultural region stretching from northern Mexico to Costa Rica is often referred to as Mesoamerica as one of many Mesoamerican groups. The Mayans shared religion and culture with others in this region and integrated into a broader political and economic sphere. Attentive viewers of this channel will notice many similarities between the classical Mayan religion and that of the Aztecs, another famous Mesoamerican group that we covered in a previous article. video the aztec empire rose and fell centuries after the classical period we are examining today it was also located in central mexico northwest of the

maya

n region during the classical period central mexico was home to another powerful empire based in the great city ​​of teotihuacan teotihuacan had a huge influence on the classical

maya

ns and in fact an important mayan god originated there, the war serpent washock lahoon ubakan, but today we will focus on the mayans themselves, as opposed to the aztecs or the people of Teotihuacán, the Mayans of the classic period.

They did not belong to a single empire, but were divided into many small independent kingdoms, each with its own ruling dynasty and local traditions, including each with its own religious customs. Some of these kingdoms eventually became powerful enough to dominate others through strategic wars, alliances, marriages, and economics. exchange, but even the most successful Mayan kingdoms did not become an empire; In other words, they did not incorporate their subordinates into larger territorial units, but rather the Mayan political landscape remained fragmented. Another important feature of the Classic Period was the flourishing of Mayan hieroglyphic writing which had first developed in the latter part of the earlier period creatively called the Preclassic Period.

The rise of legible texts during the Classic Period gives us a window into religious beliefs. Mayans that remain invisible during earlier periods simply due to lack of evidence other than these carved monuments we can learn about classical Mayan religion through archaeological excavations and works of art depicting Mayan religious rituals. Additionally, we can gain some insights by examining Mayan religious practices in later periods, such as after contact with the Spanish, but we must be careful when using these sources because the Mayan religion, like any religion, changed over time using these sources of evidence. . Today we will focus on three important aspects of classical Mayan religion, the gods, the ancestors and the calendar.

The classical mayan word for god was the classical mayan who worshiped many gods, each of whom. They could take on different local traits in different kingdoms. Today we know the names of many Mayan gods, but even just 40 years ago they were much more mysterious. This ambiguity led scholar Paul Shelhas to create an index of Mayan gods in 1910 labeling each god. or god as with a letter of the alphabet in his work depiction of deities from Mayan manuscripts These labels are still used for some of the less understood gods, but in most cases, once we know the god's proper name, we use that name instead of the label shellhouse in many cases the Mayan gods were identified with natural phenomena, for example, some of the most prominent gods of the classic Mayan pantheon include the initial of the sun god, the rain god Choc, the god of the lightning wheel and the god of the labyrinth ishim, the goddesses venerated by the classical mayans. as well as especially the goddess of the moon, but the goddesses were represented and mentioned much less frequently than the male gods.

The Mayans wove mythical narratives about these gods that are represented on painted vessels carved in stone and described in hieroglyphic texts. Some of these narratives we can reconstruct others. They are fragmented or unknown. A myth, for example, includes the death and resurrection of the god of the labyrinth, as we can reconstruct it. the god of the labyrinth died and was buried. His soul traveled to a watery underworld in a canoe that was governed by the god we simply label god the. The twin sons of the labyrinth god then traveled to the underworld to find his father, where they resurrected him as a labyrinth plant.

Together, the god of the labyrinth and his twin sons publicly humiliated the god by kicking him and stripping him of his clothes. All said, this mythical cycle seems to be an allegory of the life cycle of the corn plant, its grains are planted in the ground and then carefully cared for and grown as a new corn plant, since in all Mesoamerican cultures the The Mayans relied heavily on corn, squash, and beans for their subsistence and the presence of the god of corn in their mythology shows how important corn was to the Maya during the classic period.

Mayan rulers compared themselves to the characters of these myths when undergoing ceremonies of personification of the god. These ceremonies involved wearing the mask and insignia of the god and involved entire mythical ritual dances. Scenes could be recreated using different courtiers to play the relevant roles, for example, in this scene from Palenque, the ruler wears the appearance of the god that scholars simply designate g1, while his courtier personifies a god we call the main deity bird. Together they depict a scene in which g1 is crowned lord of his kingdom and in doing so simultaneously crowns the living king.

Imagine the political and social significance of your ruler literally personifying one of your gods. The identities of the classic Mayan gods were fluid at times. were depicted with more animal-like features, sometimes with more human-like features, some scholars have proposed that, like the Aztec concept of tayot, the Mayan word for god does not actually mean god in the traditional sense, but rather It refers to a kind of impersonal natural energy from which maya is differentiated. The gods were mere manifestations, other scholars have noted, however, classical Mayan hieroglyphic inscriptions treat this word as a noun referring to specific beings rather than a more abstract divine principle, so the debate continues in many cases, These individual gods were supernatural patrons of certain communities, not unlike the patron gods of the ancient Mediterranean world, Athena for the city of Athens, for example, and although different kingdoms often recognized similar or identical patron gods, each had their own own unique combination, the effigies of these local patrons were housed in temples fed with incense, food and drink and ritually bathed and dressed by rulers and priests, this temple in Palenque, for example, today known as the temple of the cross, was in actually a temple to the patron god of Palenque g1 the pyramid-shaped platform represents a mountain, while the structure here at the top contains a small inner sanctuary called pibna or underground house here g1 was believed to sleep between ritual occasions other inscriptions from palenque They describe how g1 and his fellow patron gods received periodic gifts of clothing and ornaments.

The patron gods at Palenque and other sites were brought to light for important occasions such as political events and calendar rituals and were taken into war to divinely protect the army, sometimes these patron effigies were even captured by enemy armies and returned for be adopted by the victors, the patron deities could be adopted in other ways and neither were they. need to be captured in war it seems that sometimes my rulers simply introduced new gods, often in times of political change or conflict, this practice meant that over the course of the classical period the Mayan kingdoms gradually gathered patron gods into increasingly local pantheons. great, the best example.

Of this can be seen in Copan a kingdom that gradually accumulated dozens of gods that spanned from the 5th century to the end of the 8th century a true collector kingdom of gods in addition to gods the classical Mayans also venerated their ancestors often dead relatives were buried inside the house, rather than in separate cemeteries, the homes of most common Mayans consisted of several platforms and houses arranged around a central courtyard. When an important individual died, a grave was dug on one of the platforms. the house, the platform itself was expanded and a new one was created. wooden structure built on top over time each home would accumulate several tombs of its most important ancestors.

Imagine living literally above generations of your ancestors this would intimately link your living family to that home location and, on a social scale, serve as a reminder to the entire community of your home's ancestral rights to that land and its resources. The Mayan rulers followed a similar practice, but on a much larger scale. Dead rulers were also buried under stone platforms, but these platforms were often step pyramids. Some of these funerary pyramids contained the tombs of various rulers that accumulated over time, while in other cases recently deceased rulers were given new pyramids close to large cities, therefore huge multipyramidal necropolises were developed where burials were carried out. his ruling lineage.

A great example of this is the northern acropolis of Tikal, a large terrace that was the site of royal burials for hundreds of years was home to dozens of pyramid temples dating back to the early days of the Tikao dynasty as well as building tombs for Deceased ancestors the Classical Mayans also gave offerings. This style of black stones shows the living ruler offering incense to his deceased mother in the tomb below. We also know that Mayan rulers sometimes opened tombs and performed rituals with bones, although we don't know exactly what these practices entailed. On this tikal altar we can see the king and another nobleman performing a ritual with the skull and bones of a deceased ancestor, probably after moving her tomb for political reasons.

We know very little about the classical Mayan commoner belief in the afterlife, as can be seen in all this monumental architecture, most of the material that is accessible to us today comes from the religion of the elite, so we might be seeing a somewhat biased view of thereligious reality of the classical Mayans, but we do know that Mayan rulers believed that their deceased ancestors were looking down on them, sometimes multiple ancestors. They merged as a single supernatural entity looking down from the sky. In other cases, the royal ancestors were represented in the guise of the god of the labyrinth, the god of the sun and the goddess of the moon.

This hulmul sculpture in Guatemala shows the deceased ruler probably under the guise of the sun god. He is accompanied by two star deities who offer him tamales glyphs inform us that the star god on the left represents the common people while the figure on the right represents the nobility in other words the entire body politic has been reborn in the heavens and now let's talk. About that calendar, one of the most important features of the classic Mayan religious ritual was the observation of special rites to mark the passage of time and we don't have time in this video for a complete description of the very complex Mayan calendar, but there are some important ones.

Aspects that we must highlight first, the Mayans, like all Mesoamerican groups, recognized a ritual cycle of 260 days. This cycle was defined by the permutations of 20 repeated day names and 13 numbers repeated each day. It was believed that the combination of numbers had a special meaning that affected the fortunes of that day, In addition to this 260-day ritual cycle, Mesoamerican groups, including the Mayans, marked the passage of a 365-day solar cycle divided into 18 months of 20 days each plus five additional days that often they were considered unlucky days, the underlying rhythm of each. of these cycles is a period of 20 days that the classical Mayans called winal or winik which means 20 but also means person as you may have already guessed the number 20 forms the basis of all Mayan mathematics and numerology, including the calendar innovation we know as counting. long, although the long count first appears in preclassic texts that are probably not even Mayan, it was Classic Maya more than any other in the first place.

Mesoamerican group that used this system to mark the passage of time for reasons that are still unknown. The Mayans believed that August 14, 3114 B.C. The gods created the earth as we know it today The Mayans believed that the gods also did many other things before this date, so it was not the beginning of time itself, simply the beginning of the human era, in fact, there are still Some debate over the exact day in August, not because the Mayans were unclear, but because scholars are still debating exactly how the Mayan calendar was created. it aligns with our own calendar and for the scholars and super fans in the audience here we are using the correlation 584286 or the gmt plus one advocated by scholars simon martin and joel skidmore source here on the screen now you know that time was divided into units of different sizes the smallest unit was the day 20 days made a month or a weenique 18 months made a year or a plate 20 years made a winning cob also known today by scholars by its postclassical name katun and 20 winnikabs made a bak In A period of 400 years, the Mayans used the long count to measure time from date zero, so by counting back in time using the Mayan long count we arrive at the creation date 3114 BC.

C. It was on this date that the Mayans believed the earth emerged from a dark body of water sometimes called the primordial sea. A decade ago there was much talk about the meaning of the year 2012 and the Mayan long count calendar, some speculated that the Mayans They believed that 2012 was some kind of doomsday like in the disaster movie 2012. Others thought that the classical Mayans predicted the dawn of a new era of some kind. The reason this date is special is that December 24, 2012 represented the end of the thirteenth bok tun from the date of creation in 3114 BC.

C. and when the Mayans wrote about that ancient creation date, they referred to it as the completion of a previous cycle of 13 baktuns; In other words, the long count is simply a very long cycle measuring 13 bucktunes long that theoretically repeats itself if the classical Mayans believed the world as we know it. was created at the beginning of the last long count cycle; some have wondered if they believed something important would happen at the end of this long count cycle. In fact, there are only two Mayan inscriptions that mention the date 2012 and both are quite vague. so we don't really know what might happen according to Classic Mayan thought, there's no evidence that they thought the world would end or any of the other popular theories that circulated in 2012, but there's no doubt that if Classic Mayan society had persisted without changes.

In the 21st century, they would definitely have marked the end of the 13th bactun as an extremely important ritual occasion, no doubt, and in fact many modern Mayans celebrated it ritually at several ancient Mayan sites. We know that the classical Mayans would have done the same. The same because they frequently celebrated important dates on the long count calendar, they were especially interested in the ending of cycles every 20 years on these dates we call period ends. Mayan rulers dedicated stone monuments in the presence of patron gods, ancestors, and human subordinates. These monuments generally Rituals associated with these late period included wrapping stone pillars and cloths and burning offerings of incense on stone altars.

The Mayans recognized many other calendar cycles besides these, for example, they routinely recorded them. a nine-day cycle and a lunar cycle We also know that in the postclassical period they kept almanacs of planetary cycles and were even able to predict when eclipses might occur, although no classical books of this nature have survived from the period, it is very likely that the Mayan priests also had similar practices in that period, so why were the classical Mayans so focused on these cycles and calendars? The Mayans believed that each season of each cycle governed what could happen on that day, including things like political weather events and how well crops would grow or other types of fortunes or misfortunes.

When recording historical events, Mayan scribes were careful to contextualize them. Within these cycles looking for parallels with past and future events is how the Mayans made sense of the seemingly random and unpredictable nature of daily life in human history by ordering it within multiple and overlapping time cycles, until now. We have talked about three types of Mayan religious practices: the veneration of the gods, the veneration of ancestors, and the marking of time cycles, but many of you have probably also heard of their practice of human sacrifice, of where does this come from in the apocalypto movie? makes it seem like the Mayans sacrificed people on a massive scale, terrorizing the countryside for the sole purpose of feeding their gods.

This is an exaggerated and sensational description, however, the classical Mayans did practice it. Ritualized violence and murder, the most common type of classical Mayan blood sacrifice is called self-sacrifice or bloodshed. In this ritual, a practitioner used some type of sword to pierce his or her own body, collect the blood, and burn it as an offering to the gods and ancestors, as shown on this yash jilan lintel, although the Mayans did not frequently depict the act. of bloodshed, we know from archaeological evidence that rulers used obsidian blades and stingray spines and bled from their genitals. Depictions of female bloodshed are even rarer, such as this yoshilan scene. showing a queen passing a thorn-studded thread across her tongue.

The Mayans referred to this act as ji'ab, which means penance and was an important part of a ruler's ritual duties. Conceptually, jiab was linked to the power of the ruler as caretaker of the gods and the begetters of children, rulers defeated in battle were described as without penitence, a shameful state of ritual helplessness. There is also evidence that the classical Mayans killed people as part of religious rituals. Evidence of this practice includes human remains found in ritual deposits and rarer depictions and descriptions. of acts of sacrifice this image is probably the most explicit in its representation of ritualized slaughter it shows a sacrificed human being on top of an altar and a decorated stone behind it this event would probably have taken place as part of an end of period ritual not There is evidence that human sacrifice on the scale depicted in Apocalypto took place among the Mayans of any period, no mass graves nor descriptions or depictions of large scale sacrificial rites have ever been found, so who were the unfortunate victims who were sacrificed among the classical Mayans as in other Mesoamerican societies enemies captured in war are the most likely candidates due to their fragmented political system classical Mayan warfare was common and would have been a danger frequently faced by common people we have evidence that sometimes Entire communities were destroyed in military campaigns and Mayan kingdoms took measures to fortify themselves against attacks.

Descriptions of Mayan warfare universally include the taking of captives and the most important captives, such as kings and nobles, were subjected to public display and humiliation by the victors; However, unlike the narrative presented in Apocalypto, the purpose of these wars was primarily political and economic, the Classic Mayan War was not carried out for the sole purpose of acquiring victims for sacrifices; In fact, we know that some captives were rescued and allowed to return home, others were probably enslaved, and others died in more ritualized ways, for example the ruler was the king. Kopan was captured and then beheaded by his vassal, the ruler of Kirigua.

From this point of view, we should probably view most examples of Classic Mayan human sacrifice as a ritualized form of political conflict. To summarize, in this video we have highlighted the important aspects of Classic Mayan religion, including gods, ancestors, and calendar rights. , we have also tried to dispel some common misconceptions, the Mayans did not disappear, they still exist today, they did not belong to an empire, they did not predict the end of the world in 2012 and their ritual violence was not on a massive scale. All of these aspects of my religion can be understood as part of the social and cultural forces that shaped its dynamic society during the classical period.

Hello everyone, thanks for watching, this video was a huge task. Some videos are easy. do because I am a scholar of early Christianity. I like to make videos about ancient Mediterranean religion because it is easy for me to write those episodes and some videos are easier to make because there are many images and videos available online that can help. accompany my presentation this was not the case with the classic Mayan. I don't know anything about this topic, so I needed to collaborate with two incredible scholars of the Mayan religion. Shout out to Dr. Joanne Barron for helping me with all that pronunciation.

The classic Mayan word for god is. so we have inich, we have the taiyo war snake. I can't make glottal stops and I'm sure I still messed up the pronunciation. Sorry, and as for the visuals, this video forced me to spend hours tracking down obscure Mayan artifacts. I was reviewing all the footage to make sure I was showing classical era ruins on screen and not post-classical era ruins, so all this to say, this channel is a labor of love. I am fascinated with the religions of the world and I want to share that fascination with the general public, but most importantly I want to try to boost religious literacy for everyone and the best way to support that mission of religious literacy is to join our community in the patreon advertising revenue being made this month to month, which makes it very difficult to budget hard to plan for the future, but our Patreon community is a community of amazing viewers who help smooth out these precipitous drops in Google Adsense, so if you want to support the channel and our mission of head of religious literacy.

Visit patreon.com religion for breakfast and consider making a monthly donation. Thank you all and see you next time.