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The Entire History of the Maya // Ancient America History Documentary

Mar 20, 2024
Here in the wilds of the Guatemalan highlands, a dense blanket of vegetation holds everything in its grip, thick bramble roots and

ancient

forests eliminating any kind of long-distance visibility. In this so-called green desert, the going is difficult even by the notoriously treacherous standards of the New World as a large team of Spanish conquistadors and their native servants attack the desert who, brambles and razor blades, advance into the deep forest beyond in Nar bramble. the language of many of the expedition porters the name itself means place of many trees, the year is 1576. and just 50 years after the initial arrival of Europeans to this part of the world, the Yucatan Peninsula and its mountainous areas of the south are still largely unexplored and unmapped, this is not just enemy territory that is unknown.
the entire history of the maya ancient america history documentary
The Europeans completely and like all the places on the edge of the map here will be monsters in that year Diego García de Palacio, a determined soldier and magistrate in the Governing Council of the colonial state of Guatemala, has decided to make another foray towards conquest and unknown glory. What he had very much in mind, following orders from King Philip II of Spain, was the mission of the palace to inspect and catalog the conquered provinces, embarking on a great journey so as not to be oblivious to the miserable deaths of comrades both by violence and by malaria attacks. until then, still a mysterious scourge of Central America in the centuries to come Palacio must have had an iron Constitution not to succumb during his long journey, in addition to his role as a conqueror, he was an educated man born around 1530 in Astorius, north from Spain, his interests included science and more. everything else navigation and personal navigation Ambitions varied far and wide, but above all, he had a grand vision for the expansion of the already powerful Spanish Empire, as the Honduras Palace was to be the key in a unique location among the colossal Atlantic Navy and the growing Pacific Fleet could achieve a means of crossing the isthmus of the land sought there; the rulership of the Philippines would surely be his and with it as many ships as he could muster for the exploration and conquest of even more foreign lands, but all the palace's lofty ideals for The indigenous inhabitants of the lands he traveled through lived in small villages scattered across the forest, forced to submit to the foreign rule of Beyond the Sea.
the entire history of the maya ancient america history documentary

More Interesting Facts About,

the entire history of the maya ancient america history documentary...

The Spaniard and his men were simply the latest in a long line of brutal warriors to invade the land of the trees. foreigner just on the other side of the current border of Guatemala and Honduras everything changed in the middle of the gnarled trunks and thickets one of the men saw something else sticking out of the forest floor thank you in a matter of minutes everyone was seeing it unmistakably carved stone structures by human hands elaborate buildings crafted by hand With snarling and confident bestial idols sneering in their gazes and in addition to large towering structures and mounds covered in dense foliage as high as the sky, men could only stare in amazement at what they were seeing, such Shouldn't Hieronymus Bosch paint in person who these Labyrinth instructors were of the size and sophistication to match anything in the old world adorned with hideous and powerful symbols and, most sinister, who them? had built, although Palacio was surely familiar with the reports from before? century of towns and cities destroyed by initial conquests, their predecessors often built their own settlements directly on top of previous ones, such as the Yucatecan colonial capital of Mérida and the Mexican capital, far to the north, new cathedrals etched into the stone of temples pagans and pyramids had surely paled in comparison to this place as was customary at the time.
the entire history of the maya ancient america history documentary
Palace wrote an extensive description of his

entire

trip through the provinces which was then sent to the king back to Europe and at the end of that story dated March 8, 1576. He wrote an 850-word description of those mighty ruins in the forest. Here was formerly the seat of a great power and a large population civilized and considerably advanced in the arts, as shown in various figures and buildings, but what had happened here and how had the place fallen into such ruin? Much of the masonry that the Palace saw, including eight large statues of men and women, altars, terraces and a large plaza resembling the Colosseum of

ancient

Rome, he told the King, was built with such skill that it could not have been created by a people as rude as the natives of that province and yet, although they had little knowledge of the

history

of the site, they were at least willing to share it, it does mention certain legends from the time of the conquistador's initial arrival, one or two generations earlier. stories of a great Yucatecan king who in ancient times had come to the region from the north to build a powerful city only to return from where he came after several years leaving desolate ruins in his wake.
the entire history of the maya ancient america history documentary
The palace's questions would remain unanswered and would never reach their destination. grandiose goals eventually end up on the coast of Mexico, a mediocre sea captain hunting and failing to catch English marauders like Sir Francis Drake; it is not known if the king ever read his account another document added to a growing pile of imperial archives at the court of the Habsburg King is like the mighty City forgotten for centuries today with the benefit of hundreds of years of accumulated knowledge that we can talk about with any Authority about those foreign ruins, although Palacio and his men went to the grave with little knowledge of what it was they actually saw, we now know that they were perhaps the first non-natives to explore a vanished world that reached its peak and It collapsed hundreds of years before the arrival of the Europeans, because they walked within the walls of the great city of Copan. classical Mayan civilization powerful culture that once dominated the region from sea to sea Guatemala had not always been a land of forests 800 years before the time of the palace almost the

entire

Peninsula had been stripped of trees Making way for vast elaborate agricultural estates networks of roads crisscrossing the land between towns and cities, home to a leviathan population of millions during the early Middle Ages, when Anglo-Saxon kings engaged in spas of hundreds of warriors, in Britain, on the continent Charlemagne ruled, there were very few towns to talk about.
State, although this was held together by little more than a personal charisma that crumbled into factions upon his death, foreign LRAs flooded into Christendom to wash it in one of the darkest centuries of its

history

in Central America, vast cities of 50,000 inhabitants and more extended in an open space. landscape of irrigated farms and settlements masters of writing advanced mathematics astronomy elaborate calendrical systems immense public works one of the most extraordinary civilizations the world has ever seen all achieved solely with human hands there are no domesticable pack animals in this part of the world and just before the collapse of the classical Mayan world at the end of the 8th century AD.
The total population outside the cities hinted at in recent years by lidar surveying technology may well have been in the tens of millions, in fact, Palacio had been right in some ways the Mayans of his days in the 1570s. They were very different from their powerful ancestors, given the Holocaust they had suffered in the meantime, losing up to 90 of their numbers alone to European zoonotic diseases spread by pack animals brought by the first settlers. Foreign surprise, although completely overgrown at the time of the palace, it is difficult to overstate how impressive the ruins of Kopan would still have been, unfortunately, like many Mayan cities, the place has suffered greatly in the years since much of she fell into the changing course of the adjacent river in 1936.
The Carnegie Institute had to intervene drastically to save the ruins. Since then, many other cities have been completely lost to growing urban centers and real estate developers, their secrets have disappeared on the black market and collections of private prejudices are generally foreigners, apart from a few local people who kept the secrets. of their ancestors away from the prayer ice it would be another 300 years from palace times before their existence was finally revealed definitively and in others such as the powerful capital of Kalakmul one of the superpowers of the Mayan world only investigated during the last few decades and even undiscovered centers will take much longer.
Today around 40 massive classical sites have been located and studied, all unique in their own way, adding their tails to the tapestry of the Mayan civilization, crumbling walls and palaces covered with the stories that fade from their foundations, like Kalakmal and Tikal, they must surely be the pinnacles of it all. Megasites packed with foreign historians, archaeologists, mythologists and art historians, but there were also many other great centers, such as Caracol bar Palenque Piedras Negras yakshilan and, of course, Copán, but even these impressive, almost unfathomably massive places often pale in compared to an even earlier time, an early preclassical flowering of Mayan society seen in places like Knack Bay and El Mirador during the first millennium B.C.
El Mirador may well have the largest pyramid in the world. the world, but these sites would have to wait until well into the 20th century to be rediscovered by The Wider World, many of their secrets still waiting to be discovered despite conspiracy theorists' claims to the contrary, there was never a true Mayan apocalypse. See the cities of Asic in the 9th century the Mayans did not disappear but changed their customs, a postclassical society developed with the same writing system and culture mostly intact, even the cities would re-emerge in the north of Yucatan going up and falling with the ebb and flow of Time until the arrival of the Spanish.
Today, the Mayans still make up the majority of the population in vast areas of eastern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and western Honduras. Clinging against all odds to the lands of their ancestors, several million of them still speak one of The 28 Mayan languages ​​are their primary foreign language and have maintained many of the Traditions, oral and written stories, rituals and dances of the ancestors to the greatest extent. part, although after a fight for survival that lasted some 500 years, they have only recently been invited to work. alongside archaeologists in researching its people, this is a story that is still widely told, apart from the first conquistadors of the 16th century, a story that features a colorful cast of explorers and scholars fascinated and obsessed by that long-lost world. time of the 18th century.
From barons to 19th century travel writers and early archaeologists, to the very kings and queens who ruled the great cities of the foreign forest and, of course, their descendants who still safeguard many of the ruins to this day, a philosopher, emperors and the birth of gods, continents in collision. and journeys to distant lands it is simply one of the best stories ever told abroad as always I am your host Pete Kelly I have been obsessed with the pre-Columbian Americas since childhood it is no secret that in the early 2000s Michael Woods the conquistadors One of the reasons I devoted myself to the study of history in the first place, I eventually wrote a college thesis on the ritual warfare of the Aztec Mishika before embarking on a parallel journey to the early Middle Ages and ancient Eurasia, but while So, the Americas finally called me.
February 2022 I was fortunate enough to visit Mexico and Guatemala on my own abroad, fulfilling a lifelong dream of following in the footsteps of the ancient Mayans, delving into the historic metropolises of that mystical land firsthand and after passing weeks traveling through the forest examining ruins and museums. I can say that it will take hundreds more years to fully excavate the region; There are probably many more cities and paradigm-shifting discoveries still waiting to be found. Epic tales of dynastic conflicts and philosopher kings waiting to be unlocked one day. The entire history of the Mayans lasts more than three hours and has taken me years to do.
I'll try to tell the whole story here, but there will also be plenty more individual stories on my other channel, Pete Kelly, so go and check it out. Here I am creating a complete series on the main Mayan cities and also some little known ones. I hope to continue adding for many decades. I would also like to thank Dr. David Miano from the World of Antiquity channel. For creating the initial script for this video, its length is more than doubled, as with my own dalliances, so consider it a fusion between the two of us, here are a few words from Dr.
Miano himself, thank you Pete David Miano, here from the world channelantiquity. If you want to know more about the Mayans, come and see our full series The Antiquities Travel Guide Series 2 in Yucatan, we explore some really fascinating sites and if you like ancient history in general, there is a lot to see and a lot of topics. Back to you, Pete, I really recommend checking out his content and of course my travel videos too now, before we get caught up in the whole history of the Mayans, the most ambitious project I've ever attempted. Here are a few words from our sponsor, the great Lords of the classical Mayan world did not have to worry about cyber attacks, they lived in a time of spiritual battles and magic.
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Pacal now knows that I have partnered with nordvpn to offer you an exclusive offer use my link in the description below and get four months completely free when you sign up for a two year offer. There is a 30-day money back guarantee. Visit nordvpn.com. and use the offer code historic time to get your free months now back to the Americas in 1517 three ships left Cuba under the command of a wealthy Andalusian nobleman named Francisco de Córdoba The expedition was an ambitious attempt at fortune that sought to sail towards the Setting Sun in search of new lands and riches for the Smash and grab raid carried out by professional soldiers and adventurers in search of Gold, Silver and slaves by this time about two decades after the initial arrival of the Spanish to Cuba and Hispaniola and both Islands completely pacified through an orgy of bloodshed provided an easy base from which to go elsewhere.
The restless man began to look further, this was the very beginning of the era of the conquistadors, but unlike the more famous later campaigns of Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro, this first of The expeditions to the continent of the new world were far from be a success after 21 long days at sea battered by storms and an Uncharted's existential fear of making landfall in the open sea finally became a reality. What happened next was later remembered in the Memoirs of Bernal Díaz del Castillo, then a young man. Soldier on one of his first adventures was the stuff of nightmares floating in an open bay.
The landing parties were greeted by pristine running tracks in Woodland, passing the Pearl White Sands and Beyond temples. Many other rising settlements were spied on from ships as they advanced. Along the coast, beyond the tree line, the white stucco walls of pyramids and temples rose above the beach, an advanced settlement comparable to that of the old world, one of the sites, though now lost, received the corresponding name Greater Cairo, perhaps near the island now known as Isla Mujeres, named after the female figurines once found inside the temples, tense meetings between the Mayans and the Spanish followed with the exchange of small items.
But fights finally broke out as they approached these strange structures, figures began to emerge, and they were far from impressed by the Spaniards' conversations about the priests covered in hair matted and stiff from recent sacrificial victims. desired, they fumigated them with incense and gestured for them to leave Córdoba and their men soon received the message and returned to the ships, not before seizing a series of artifacts, but the most important thing for them. They gold, emboldened by the discovery of gold, the expedition traveled west towards the continent, equally tree-lined and pristine, finally near the modern town of Champoton they camped on land, as was the need of their commander, they said mass , maybe they felt at home. some of the centuries saw it first maybe they missed it little could have been done anyway without warning the trees began to begin a huge army of Mayan warriors descending with fury on the newcomers in the massacre that followed 57 Spaniards lost their Almost every other member of the Expedition suffered arrow wounds, spear wounds, or both as the terrified survivors limped back to their boats, leaving their wounded and dying comrades on the shore, but now Díaz could see the victorious Mayans dancing with the clothes of the dead after days of agony plagued by Córdoba himself died during the return trip to Cuba with up to 12 wounds and yet, far from discouraging further attempts, it was the small pieces of gold that spoke of the city and just the following year another larger and better equipped expedition left, this time led by Juan de Gary Alva, nephew of the governor of Cuba, future enemy of Hernán Cortés, better organized and without taking risks this time, the second expedition also had board two Spanish-speaking Mayans to act as interpreters captured by Córdoba sometime during the last voyage. but now Díaz again participated by making landfall at first on the island of Cozumel and finally reaching the mainland at One Landing Place.
Thick mats of jungle broke up well-cultivated melpa fields created by slash-and-burn agriculture, a series of generally hostile interactions followed Juan. resulting in cannon fire clearing a Mayan city, but for the most part the expedition refused to stop continuing along the coast, they eventually landed near Champotan seeking revenge for the previous battle again, a soon arose great force of Mayans and Bernal Díaz remembers a horrible battle fought in Marsh. swamps infested with locusts and flies, we can imagine the confusion of the Mayans at the reading of the pre-battle requireo by the Spanish priests, a proclamation to the Mayans in Spanish of the Christian right to their lands unless they recounted their pagan customs.
Thus in the eyes of the Europeans justifying the conquest their own holy man perhaps working his own magic against the foreigners the fight was brutal but in the end it was the superior technology of the Europeans that won the day, specifically a series of small artillery pieces that amazed the Mayans. And yet, when Grado Alva returned to Cuba, aside from information he had little to show for his expedition, it would eventually turn out that, in fact, there was almost no gold on the peninsula, much less metals or even rivers, the rolling plain of the prehistory. The coral seabed that can still be seen there in the Rocks today is completely foreign to Europeans.
The gold found by the first expedition must have been traded from other places. Quite strange rumors about that land began to circulate. A powerful Empire to the north. The land of the Aztecs' third and final expedition to Yucatán would be an even more serious undertaking, it was time for it to be led by a young upstart soldier named Hernán Cortés, accompanied by the banal Díaz in search of gold, they would eventually head north. , to the Valley of Mexico. With the help of terrible pestilences brought by the Europeans and the support of a huge alliance of formally subjugated Native Americans, the entire Aztec empire would fall to its knees in just one year, forever changing the political and social landscape of the new foreign world, but Even so when the Spanish returned to Yucatán in 1526, this time under the command of Francisco Monteo, sailing with the permission of King Charles V, progress would again be slow, any semblance of conquest would not be achieved in the coming decades, subjugation The real thing would take centuries, if it was completed at all. characterized by a complicated series of back-and-forth conflicts between the three major civilizations of the new world.
The conquistadors in the land of the Mayans were by far the least fortunate and therefore the least known today, often operating as independent warlords and sometimes competing with each other. as well as the natives Francisco de Monteo and his bastard son Elmozo are the most famous who are still remembered in their former colonial capital of Mérida, but others also like Alvarado, the cruel one made footprints across the continent from the highlands of Mexico to Guatemala, murders and foreign destruction. As they advanced, the Narwhatal-speaking allies often pressed into service in the north, it was mostly up to Elmozo to do the job, often doing so in horrifically brutal fashion, in particular unleashing his lieutenant Gaspar Pacheco for him to torture, mutilate and destroy his way through the burning countryside. give life or feed these dogs of war to anyone who was unlucky enough to fall into their hands.
We are told that the beautiful young women were specifically targeted as a reminder to the Spanish not to breed with the Mayans. A particularly significant battle around 1535, a local king led his warriors in war with the once-mighty city of Chichén Itzá, then largely in ruins, having reached its peak some 600 years earlier, although it is still an important pilgrimage site, There you can clearly see the great palaces of their ancestors that the Mayans managed to inflict the impossible on the Spanish. They are crushing and humiliating foreign defeats after a series of retreats and hasty evacuations, we are told that the only Spaniards left on the peninsula were four Franciscan friars, of course, the soldiers would return in 1540, they began their attack on the city of Tihu, one of the most important centers in the north, it is still not clear what the Spanish thought of the place.
Few records remain based on what they would later call it. The ruins seem to have reminded them of the ancient Roman cities of Stromadora, so the place was renamed Mérida. Great temples and dismantled pyramids became cathedrals, foreign capital and largest city in the area, finally in 1546, when Tuttle Zoo, the most powerful chief of the Mani province in northern Yucatan, converted to Christianity. , the princes of the West soon followed suit. What remained then was the East, which took much longer and remained forever more rebellious. By then El Mosto and his father had already been surpassed by political opponents little richer than before all the fighting and the Massacre began.
Their fortunes were far from being amassed as they might have been. They wandered through what had all been for foreigners; On the other hand, at that time they had suffered immensely not only from military campaigns and indiscriminate violence but also from the ravages of European diseases, devastating pestilences such as smallpox, cholera, typhus and typhoid fever, for which they had no means. natural immunity such as As the Spanish had developed over 10,000 years of living alongside the animals from which these diseases that did not exist in the New World had initially emerged, the fact that the Mayans could even fight remains incredible, which It would have happened if the Mayans had been able to fight.
The Spanish arrived in the time of their powerful ancestors, not to a disease-ravaged post-apocalyptic environment, but such is the fate by then that the world had changed when John Lloyd Stevens made his way through the Guatemalan forests in 1839 in a diplomatic mission from the president of the United States. He was interested in much more than just politics, the region was embroiled in the latest in a complicated series of civil wars following the collapse of the Spanish Empire, he was entering an incredibly dangerous situation, all of his predecessors had died in the work delayed by The Bandits.
They are regularly hampered by wet and muddy terrain and, above all, ravaged by attacks of malaria, the as yet undiscovered disease that abounds in Central American forests. Stevens had a completely different agenda than his official foreign appointment that kept him enduring hardships and work on On this trip, Stevens was not only traveling alongside him, there was his former companion Frederick Catherwood, a British artist in this decade. Both had traveled to the great sites of the classical Mediterranean Jerusalem Egypt Istanbul spending a considerable amount of time delving into the ancient mysteries of the old world. and now they had their sights on the ruins of the new initial training as an architect.
Catherwood had drawn immensely detailed dioramas of Jerusalem and Constantinople during his stay in the east, he had developed greatskills and had accurately depicted complicated scenes. Stevens had written detailed letters to friends that eventually evolved into best-selling travel books, allowing him the wealth to travel independently in Central America. A diplomatic role for the US government that gave him the authority and means to undertake a series of voyages. The two men, a journalist and proto-national photographer for Geographic, explore the region in depth. inhabited by the Mayans who recorded in writings and illustrations the remains of a once bustling urban society.
In total they visited more than 44 sites, even discovering many that had never before been seen by western ice. His travels were recorded in two books. Travel incidents in Central. America, Chiapas and Yucatán and incidents of travel in Yucatán, the latter in two volumes, although photography had not yet been invented. Catherwood's experience as an architect allowed him to create much more accurate renderings than most and he also used a cutting-edge invention, the dagaweiro type, in his later Travels, the resulting illustrations demonstrating to both the American public and the world how beautiful and sophisticated he truly was.
Mayan art and architecture. Strange to say, the two men were amazed when they arrived in the city of Copan in 1839 and saw a Mayan city. for the first time would be a total understatement, even in its dilapidated and overgrown state, this was very different from the sights of the old world, exceeding his wildest expectations, although it would be in the city of ushmal, famous for its incredibly ornate carvings known as a pook style that would arguably have the biggest impression on the couple because it was here, in the shadow of Gods and Monsters, that their unorthodox ideas would be set in stone.
In those days, an especially popular notion in all circles of life was that the civilization of the Maya had an origin in the old world. It is speculated that its roots range from Egyptian, Hebrew, Norse, Roman, Chinese and even Atlantean. Most Europeans simply could not imagine in their wildest dreams that such advances could have been made by the people who lived there now, even after the first visits. to the mainland between 1517 and 19. In evaluating the idols and artifacts confiscated on the coast, the best mines of Cuba and Hispaniola could not comprehend a Native American origin, assuming that they were brought to the New World by Jewish settlers in the first century.
B.C. After the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans, Stevens and Catherwood preferred to see things as objectively as possible with their own eyes and had other ideas for themselves by having the rare experience of spending significant amounts of time in the ruins of both ancient world and the new, the evidence was simply insurmountable; Those mighty forest-born buildings were not the result of people crossing the immense Gulf from the old world, a feat that had only been accomplished by Europeans, but by Native Americans without any outside interference. It was a view that would eventually be proven to be unquestionably correct, but in the 1840s there was a long way to go before this became the norm.
It may have been a poor point. report written by an Irish adventurer named Juan Galindo that encouraged Stevens and Catherwood to head to Kopan first overseas, but they also had another important destination in mind, an equally majestic and iconic city that Westerners had known about for several decades now. situated on the other edge of the impenetrable forest in the heart of the foreign classical Mayan world its original name has been lost but we know the place as Palenque like many in the Western world Stephen's initial interest in the Mayans had probably been sparked by the publication in 1838 from a book by the eccentric Frenchman John Frederick Dewold bestseller who claimed descent from The Dukes of Waldeck Piermont if Waldeck is to be taken at face value, had been a monarchist and a revolutionary in his youth, having befriended the likes of Marie Antoinette and Robe Spear alike before. participate in the Napoleonic Wars and eventually make his way to the New World is a soldier of fortune artist and explorer who once claimed to have traveled by river from Peru to Mexico claimed that today it is quite easy to disprove claimed to have friendships with many of the most famous Figures of the time such as Lord Byron Fox Pitt and even King George III eventually died if their year of birth, 109, is to be believed, with few ways to validate their claims to one of the most prestigious barons of old Europe, it is difficult support any However, from his statements we know that in 1832 he spent an entire year living in the ruins of Palenque drawing and speculating as he pleased, but at the expense of Lord Kingsborough, an Irish baron who shared Waldex's ideas about the lost tribes of Israel, unfortunately Waldex drawings.
Although somewhat impressive they were far from accurate, they often looked more like the old world than the new, perhaps a little like the early draftsmen and describers of the Aztec capital of Tenos Tidlan, who compared the place to Moorish architecture for lack of an external frame of reference to continue. foreigner looking for evidence of the old world in the new waldek even entirely invented elements of his drawings, either consciously or unconsciously adding ghost elephants to the glyphs, after all, another common idea at the time was of Asian origin for the Mayans as soon as Palenque. had been rediscovered by The Wider World, in fact these wild theories had been absolutely the norm in the 1770s after it had been sent to carry out an official study.
Antonio Bernasconi drew remarkably misleading drawings of Mayan nobles in Spanish knee fractures and in the late 18th century. Antonio Del Rio working by order of the King of Spain to investigate the ruins of Central America decided that they were of Greco-Roman origin taking samples and causing much destruction and looting in the adolescent process 39 at the same time that Stevens and Catherwood began their Journey: it took place a parallel expedition to Palenque, this one from British Honduras, led by colonial officers Captains Walker and Caddy, after a grueling march through the forest where they lost one of their party to malaria in their unimaginative report on the ruins.
Hypotheses were made about Egypt's Indian origins and yet Walker and Caddy would soon be forgotten, as would Waldek, apart from those interested in their eccentric lifestyle. Stevens and Catherwood, however, as they endured world fame, their perceptions of a Native American Mayan civilization along with the beginnings of true archaeological research in the region would soon take off. Although there is an argument that Stevens was ultimately driven more by his desire to allow the new world to stand on its own and not be completely defined by the old, rather than a genuine respect and understanding of the Mayans, the result was undeniably powerful, as it allowed other freethinkers to further develop the real history of the region today with pseudoarchaeological ideas still in full force, it is difficult to overstate the impact of Stevens and Cathodewood;
However, many men of his time would attempt to move an entire Mayan city to the United States, along with many artifacts, he attempted to establish a museum in the states, which ultimately failed when the building containing these and Catherwood's dioramas, the work of his life, burned down, leaving Catherwood in ruins soon after they were both dead. Malaria finally caught up with Stevens. and Catherwood sinking the ship despite the terrible tragedy that ended hopes for a museum of the Americas, there is a good argument that they did this simply out of a desire to save the artifacts during a time when their views on the natives Americans were incredibly rare during This era before the Indian Wars had happened, the very beginning of the Wild West, Stevens and Catherwood thought that the natives were capable of such things and yet, at the time of their deaths, in addition to the architecture, almost nothing was still known about these places and legends.
There were many undiscovered cities in Cal and many more would soon be discovered as well. The story was just beginning today, almost 200 years later, other travelers, scientists, adventurers and researchers from foreign lands have discovered much more about the Mayan civilization to this point. where most outsiders now know and appreciate their importance, the Mayans were a people of great achievements in the fields of mathematics, astronomy, calendars, architecture, sculpture, painting, writing and political organization, The more we learn about them, the deeper our respect becomes. Foreign discoveries such as the city of Kalak. The shopping centers were recently built and there are still more waiting to be discovered.
Foreign Europeans who arrived on the North American continent often did so by accident in 1511. High on the raised decks of a fast, high-tech, faired caravel Captain Juan Hernández Valdivia headed from the newly conquered coast of Panama to Hispaniola (then everything was thought to be part of the Indies), somewhere between Europe and China. He and his men had participated in the conquest there, but were now heading back to the governor of Hispaniola to file a complaint against the arrival that passed through the shallow waters of Uncharted off Jamaica, however, the unthinkable happened: the ship began to break and finally sent ten thousand gold crowns and untold lives to the depths of Poseidon, only 18 survivors managed to board the lifeboat of the unsold ship. and there were not enough oars to turn around, 16 men and two women were left helpless, slowly moving from Jamaica towards the Open Sea without them knowing it to Yucatán.
Beyond, without food or water, seven more died in the damned drift because they were finally deposited unceremoniously on the island of Cozumel. It was foreign for more than ten thousand years when the priests and priestesses of the Moon God Ichshell saw The Castaways that the sea ​​had given them that day, they should have rejoiced. Cozumel was a place of pilgrimage for travelers coming from across the region and beyond. from as far away as Nicaragua and western Mexico to seek the blessings of Medicine's resident patron, so the shrine's custodian, far from assuming that the malnourished Europeans were gods, took the miserable-looking guests to the foot of the letter as gifts from the bounty of the sea of ​​Very soon, Captain Valdivia and four others were taken to the temple where the gathered crowds rejoiced one by one.
Her breasts were spread open, still beating. Sacrifice was a deeply ingrained part of Mayan society, a way of continuing prosperity, ensuring the survival of the universe itself and all of humanity. Self-sacrifice by rulers was the most common practice, elaborate rituals in which aristocrats shed their own blood for their people living in a different world. metaphysical reality that we this was a completely normal and necessary part of life, as it was at one time in almost every society on Earth, the seven survivors were kept in a cage, their fate would fatten them up for a later festival, a particularly difficult prisoner had his head split open with an axe, he survived, if you can call it that, he held out for three more years before a foolish clown, that the court of a local chief for the others was gradually growing in strength in preparation for his imminent sacrifice, luck finally was on their side.
Managing to escape, they eventually fell into the possession of a most merciful ruler on the continent called a quincus, apparently content to allow them to continue living as his slaves for years to come. The relentless work of grinding corn into flower and disease wiped them out. all but two men, the fate of each was very different: a priest named Gerónimo de Aguilar would finally be rescued by Hernán Cortés in 1519, when he had almost forgotten the Spanish and seemed like a hermit in which he would play a vital role. the conquest of Mexico As a foreign interpreter A soldier of fortune named Gonzalo Guerrero resolutely refused to return after having gained the favor of a local Nachenkan king, he had risen through the ranks as a useful war leader and when Cortés sent him to fetch him already there was a wife, children, tattoos and, as would happen many more times in the following centuries, he had fully integrated into Mayan society;
He even appears to have helped orchestrate effective resistance against the Spanish, but first in the late 1520s, by giving misleading reports to Alonso Dávila and Francisco de Monteo about thethe other's whereabouts, delaying his movements until 1531. And later, with a royal military campaign in 1535, his mangled body is said to have been found amid countless native allies shot down while leading a massive fleet of 50 Walker News to Honduras. to fight. the Spanish there in the mid-16th century only one generation had passed since that time and the old traditions Die Hard the Mayans isolated themselves from the outside world to develop in isolation since the last ice age existed in a different reality foreign to their days .
It began with the darkness of the evening that marked the beginning of the time of spirits and demons. Theirs was a society amazed by the wild world around them in tune with it and, at times, that beautiful but far from peaceful and tranquil world demanded sacrifices from the 1540s onwards, when mass conversions to Christianity began. The fusion of the Two Worlds had unusual results, idiosyncrasies and syncretisms often tolerated by Christian priests as a means to an end, as a result elements of the old Faith remained in the new, for example in many areas alongside Christ the Father and the Holy Spirit.
The cross itself was worshiped as a separate entity as early as the first half of the 16th century, a certain priest named Chilum Anbal was burned alive for the crime of proclaiming himself the son of God, thanks and in about 1560, a generation after the conquest . There is also talk of stranger events at that time, prophecies had begun to spread across the land. There is talk of the return of a great storm that had devastated Yucatán in the 15th century for the illiterate masses, still largely unChristianized, born in a world where the Divine and the supernatural.
There was a lot of negotiating, it was obvious what had to be done to appease the rain. God in the Church of Satuta, two children were sacrificed by having their hearts torn out, two others suffered the same fate apparently for the benefit of the mortally ill or the chief. of the Juan Kokom community, those responsible saying the following words, Lord, mighty God, these Hearts we offer to you and we sacrifice these boys to you so that you can give life to our governor. The crucifixions were carried out as a sacred sanitase. In some cases, the victims were thrown in while they were still alive. and nailed to the cross, others were killed first and then thrown, some had their hearts torn out.
Juan Kokom's brother, Lorenzo, was a notable leader of this partial return to the ancient gods, personally sacrificing Three Children by throwing them alive into the Sacrificial Pit in Chichén Itzá again we are told of references to Christianity the figure of Jesus Christ is seen and We offer to our Gods the hearts of these we have sacrificed to let these girls die crucified as Jesus Christ did. It is not difficult to see how the teachings of Christianity became intertwined with the religion of the Mayans, the idea of ​​blood sacrifice at the center of Faith is the very reason Christianity took off in the New World and for many Christians whose teachings emphasized above all the merits of a good death, martyrdom or dying for something was revered as the best path to follow.
It could be said that Christianity would not exist without martyrdom. Having gained faith, his power and support during the early centuries, emulating Christ, was thought to have guaranteed a place in Paradise, therefore, if he suffered like Jesus and dying for God was an achievement, then why What not to sacrifice, especially if it could also satisfy the older gods? Without wanting to offend any of the deities, there even seems to have been a preference for making sacrifices during the Christian Holy Week, thanks to the citizens. The inhabitants of Satuta and its surroundings undoubtedly believed that what they were doing was for the good of their people.
Spain's retribution would be swift. The perceived retreat towards paganism would ultimately end in one of the greatest tragedies of the entire Conquest. Enter Diego de Landa, one of the first Franciscan friars who arrived in Yucatán in 1549, at the age of just 25 years old. Lander took it upon himself to save the souls of those with whom he came into contact and personally walked throughout the peninsula to preach in the most remote villages, fearlessly entering the depths. In barely conquered lands where anti-Spanish sentiment was often still fierce, he came into contact with the ancient faith. His biographer López de Cogaludo recorded one incident in particular.
Where he encountered a crowd of 300 people about to sacrifice a child, enraged, Delander embarked on what he saw was the only solution, destroying idols and preaching. . 1561 by then, a veteran ecclesiastic, when Delander learned of the events in Satuta, as far as he was concerned, there was only one thing for it Governor Diego Kawada accepted the Inquisition as it had happened and would continue to happen in the religious wars that They burn throughout Europe. Diego de Landa was given special powers to prosecute and interrogate heretics outside the law, much of what we know about the The events that followed come from his own writings upon learning of the approach of the Spanish Lorenzo Cacom committed suicide thousands of others would not be so lucky in the orgy of publicly executed mass violence that followed.
Four thousand five hundred and forty-nine men and women were paraded through the streets before being tortured at mass in the town square, a total of 6,330 were fined, all meticulously recorded for posterity, some suffered up to 200 lashes, several died from their wounds, others were hung naked upside down with heavy stones tied to their feet. Still more suffered the unbearable agony of being tied to the burrow or wooden frame while priests and inquisitors prowled the infernal scene dripping hot wax onto the naked bodies of their captives while presenting parchment and ink to anyone willing to confess, perhaps . Most gruesome of all was a technique reserved for individuals deemed particularly guilty: the victim's mouth was held open while gallons of water were poured, the torturers then jumped onto the outstretched belly, and then a gruesome mixture of blood and water was spilled. of the mouth, nose and ears, it is not known exactly how many died as a result of the torture that day, but probably around 200.
And yet, there was still more tragedy to come, because when the confessions inevitably began to pile up, the purge would begin after enduring the worst of Delander's torches, one of the city's high-ranking men, Juan Kokom, finally admitted to having three idols in his possession, this was not enough for the inquisitors and finally, after a even more unbearable agony, he admitted 20 more only after Juan admitted. It is still unclear what exactly these idols were, but in Delanda's own writings he describes the total Hall similarly drawn from the city's leading figures, Hayden, since the Spanish conquest. 13. large carved altar stones 22 smaller stones 197 ornate varsis and most important of all 27 darling leather papers of hieroglyphic writing prior to the conquest of Priceless in 1562 in the square in front of the church where the pyramids once stood and the temples, everything was destroyed, the idols shattered Maya of Priceless The books were kept secret since the conquest was burned.
Delanda was not without its critics. The situation became so controversial that he was eventually ordered to travel to Spain to account for his actions, although they were ultimately deemed justified. The persecutions and purges would continue. The tragedy in Manny was just one example of similar purges that took place over hundreds of years, resulting in many areas in a complete severing of Mayan connections with their own past in time, including the Traditional ornate patterns that often have hidden meanings and symbols that could not be identified. It would no longer be tolerated when Cortés first arrived in Yucatán in 1519, he had seen with his own eyes many manuscript papers written on long sheets of paper made from the inner bark of a variety of trees, testimony to a literary tradition that was once flourishing, but as the years passed, its very existence would be forgotten for hundreds of years, only in the 20th century, with the World in general, remember that the Mayans even possessed writing, today only three or four Mayan codices survive and, without However, Diego de Landa is a savage.
A paradoxical figure, the book he ultimately wrote is by far our most complete source on the 16th century Maya. As much as he worked to destroy their pagan culture, he often spoke of them with respect and did more than anyone to record their culture as he recorded it. to history at the same time, he was horrified but curious and this curiosity led him to accurate descriptions of the original layouts of Mayan cities such as Tahu and Itsamal, both of which became Spanish colonial centers, the only reason we have information about them. . According to the tradition of Stevens and Catherwood, he even surmised about the Mayans of old how their cities had been much larger in the past in the early 20th century, although much had changed for the better, most scholars were of the opinion that, although the Mayans certainly recorded astronomical phenomena in their texts it was unlikely that they recorded history;
Instead, his writings were esoteric priestly language and were never intended for general use or mass consumption in normal society. This had not been the view of John Lloyd Stevens in recording his thoughts in the usual florid prose markers that historians say were populated. by Savages but the Savages never read these structures The Savages never carved these stones that rise as they do in the depths of a tropical forest silent and solemn strange in excellent design in sculpture rich in ornaments all their history so completely unknown with hieroglyphics that explain all but perfectly unintelligible Champollion has not yet brought them the energies of his inquiring mind.
Who will read them? His words were prophetic because as the 20th century progressed his hunch would prove to be correct. The Mayans actually recorded their stories writing meticulously about kings and queens, marriages, genealogies, alliances. and conflicts the path of decipherment has been long and undertaken by thousands of people for hundreds of years and is still in process, but great advances have been made abroad it was the writings of Diego de Landa that laid the foundations for the recounting of The events in Yucatán contained many interviews with Mayans during the period immediately after the conquest, including literate scribes who provided vital information about Mayan hieroglyphics, but most important of all, it recorded their calendar drawings of the signs of the day and the month, as well as the then-indecipherable alphabet that, ironically, dates back to the Mayan calendar along with a written book known as the Chilean balam dating from shortly after the conquest would form the starting point for successful attempts to decipher the Mayan writing in the Decades after the Stevens and Catherwood expeditions, with the help of Delander's work and sources such as the Chillum balam, many scholars attempted and failed to translate the Mayan writing system, a major problem was the supposed link with Egyptian hieroglyphs, translated with success by Frenchman Jean-Francois Champollion just a few decades earlier, only when the old world rule book was completely discarded.
Scholars begin to realize that they had been reading the scriptures backwards. Finally, in the second half of the century, progress began to occur. Notable pioneers of the decipherment of mathematical and astronomical symbols were Ernst Forstermann, a philologist and director of the Dresden Library, who interpreted the month. signs and many numerical symbols, including zero and the Mayan Long Count and J. Thomas Goodman, a Nevada journalist and friend of Mark Twain who found the correlation between the Mayan calendar and the modern Western calendar. The single-color glyphs were deciphered by Edward Seller and the names of the deities by Paul. shelus By the early 20th century, the astronomical and calendrical records of the Mayans were so well understood that scholars even repudiated phonetic approaches to the Mayan writing system; in fact, as late as the 1950s it was still argued that Mayan texts contained entirely logography. no historical information it was at the Asuma River Center deep in the wilds of Guatemala where one of the great advances of the Mayan Code would be made as Guatemala itself is a wattle word Nar that is believed to have been named after Los Mercenarios of Alvarado the Cruel in the mid-16th century in his time it was a largely unpopulated land that had been abandoned by city builders some 600 years earlier, but during the height of the Classic period this had been one of the most densely populated regions and powerful from all over the Mayan world. large cities like yakshilan dos pilus and naranjo dominated and competed for water traffic along with many other smaller sites that they fought for during theirlong stories.
It was in one of these Piedras Negras powerhouses that a young scholar of Russian descent worked in the 1930s among crocodiles. infested waters and overgrown banks Tatiana Proscoriakov first had the idea that the stellers and monuments found at sites like this were actually recording historical events, mentions of foreign rulers with corresponding dates, when later in her life, along with others Scholars such as Heinrich Berlin, were able to demonstrate If this was true, Berlin noticed in 1958 that certain glyphs seemed to refer to cities or ruling dynasties. One of the first big surprises in a long line was that the paradigm would change completely.
Until that time Mayan writing had been interpreted semantically, each sign was seen as a logogram containing some meaning, but the work of scholars such as Yuri Kosarov and David Kelly finally established that many Mayan glyphs had to be read phonetically because, like the Mayan writing systems, of Old World script, this is a syllabic script, foreign work has only continued since then and today about 80 percent of the most common glyphs have been deciphered. The pace of progress has increased as more and more scholars devote themselves to Endeavor. An advance that sometimes generates a chain of decipherments. A major boost in the understanding of Mayan history came when a team of scholars reconstructed the royal dynasty of Palenque, identified the names of the rulers beginning with Pacal the Great, sometimes referred to as the Alexander of the New World, others elaborated other references in the texts such as rituals, dates of deities and ancestors, the result was that an incredibly detailed Chronicle of the History of Palenque could be revealed. but more on that later, another team led by Linda Shell and David Stewart discovered some of the history of Copán and in 2000 the group Simon Martin and Nikolai published a historical book titled Chronicle of the Mayan Kings and Queens which provides the dynastic history of no less than 11 major classical Mayan kingdoms a work that Stevens and Catherwood could only have dreamed of today a wealth of information is known about the ancient Mayans staggering amounts perhaps even more than most of the 16th century Mayans themselves did not Only his decipherment of the Mayan writing revealed the history of the ruling dynasties but much about their cosmology religious beliefs astronomical science calendars and rituals but where did it all begin?
Where did the Mayans come from to answer these questions we must go back to the beginnings of archeology in the New World and Meso

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n culture in the first place one day at the end of 1850 the exact year a farm worker who was clearing a field in the southern Veracruz he came across something unusual in the ground among the rocks and roots scattered among the bushes of the Hacienda Huayapan his shovel hit something hard and unexpected He was urged to continue his work and unearth what he and his boss suspected was a large iron cauldron from the colonial period.
Much to the man's surprise, it wasn't long before a large colossal eye looked back. The deeper excavation revealed an entire gigantic head crafted from a volcanic stone and hidden in the ground for thousands of years, the discovery was the first in a series of immaculately carved Goliath heads that would be found in the coming decades and are believed to represent to the kings or shamanic chiefs of a civilization long gone, some 2,500 years later. After their fall, the Olmecs had reemerged almost forgotten until that day. It can be proven that they once existed. Not even their stories survived. with the descendants of that once Great Society separated by eons because it was here, along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, that some of the first sedentary agricultural cultures in Meso

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flourished and, although the situation is now believed to have been much more complicated, the Olmecs are still considered by many archaeologists to be the best candidate for a Mesoamerican mother culture from which all others emerged, such as the Mayan.
Centuries of study have shown that between 1150 and 900 BC. C. the Olmecs rose to prominence by destroying a low hilltop ceremonial center known today as San Lorenzo surrounded by wells -organized farmlands and sedentary settlements because at that time the basic Mesoamerican agricultural package of corn, beans, and squash It was already in full swing. The monumental construction of San Lorenzo required hundreds of workers to level the top of a hill, so it was probably accomplished by a partnership. With social stratification, the carved stone monuments at San Lorenzo are of the same type as at many other sites in the region, including the famous variety of colossal carved stone heads, some incredibly realistic that appear to represent specific character traits of the rulers. , undoubtedly represent a unified culture over a relatively wide area that existed for hundreds of years, another important Olmec site was found in Levanta, located on a salt dome surrounded by swamps, in the middle preclassical era, between 1,000 and 500 BC C., the island of Laventa became a large and complex settlement complete with architecture and monumental structures representing elite individuals and religious symbols such as the Mayans, rather than a singular state, the Olmecs appeared to have been organized into a series of chieftaincy representations of their rulers sitting in caves or niches that symbolized the threshold between the physical and supernatural worlds. an indication of their authority as administrators of religion, perhaps as well as secular affairs that appeased the forces of the supernatural, as their people sometimes appeared to adopt animal traits in shamanic rituals while mediating and traveling in the spirit world.
The idea that the Olmec culture was the source of all later civilization in Mesoamerica was accepted for more than a century, but in recent years, as knowledge of the preclassical era developed, it became increasingly evident that, While the Olmecs certainly represented an especially important and influential society, leaving behind distinctive and impressive artifacts, we can no longer say that they were the Mesoamerican mother culture from which all others emerged. Today, evidence shows that many complex Mesoamerican societies emerged. side by side but independently in the middle preclassical era, beginning towards the end of the second millennium BC. C., each adapting to their own unique environmental settings as time passed, these early societies began to interact with each other through trade and other relationships, so no one culture influenced all the others, but each one had its own innovations that would later be adopted by its neighbors.
The Olmecs were certainly innovators of important practices as early as the 2nd millennium BC, including the building of freestanding monuments dedicated to rulers and perhaps also writing, although this is still a matter of debate, thank you, although it is important to remember that other cultures contributed to it in these early days in the At the end of the second millennium BC. C. the beginnings of a clearly mud style can be found. Styles that will persist for a surprising period of time, first developing in mass centers such as nakbe El Mirador and kamino Ju and later, after their decline in classical sites. postclassical the ups and downs for thousands of years in recent years the incorporation of new technologies such as terrestrial surveys lidar has completely revolutionized archeology entire cities and vast temple complexes have been discovered without having to excavate at all an aerial server using lidar revealed the ruins of an immense ceremonial center at Aguada Phoenix built on an artificial plateau 1400 meters long and about 15 meters high with nine causeways protruding from it in all directions, built between approximately 1000 and 800 BC.
It is the oldest. The monumental Mayan construction never discovered and paradoxically one of the largest in its existence casts doubt on the theory that the Mayan civilization developed slowly over several centuries. Generally, when archaeologists and historians speak of Mayan civilization, they refer to a complex society, essentially referring to the urban Development. Markers of complex society include significant population expansion and trade networks intensive agriculture craft specialization record-keeping systems large-scale public works carved monuments and unequivocal evidence of organized warfare early in the first millennium BC all of these emerge in just a few centuries far surpassing the Olmec Society in terms of size Complexity and absolute grandeur Foreign civilization emerged in two areas of Mesoamerica, the southern Mayan area along the Pacific coast and the Highlands, shortly after , the Mayan lowlands in the north, although these regions are separated by geographical distance and obstacles clearly shown by the multitudes of different Mayan languages ​​and dialects interaction between the regions stimulated their growth and development by bringing goods and ideas from distant lands.
This process of transfer of goods and ideas, which is not unique in the world, began in the middle preclassical period, between 1,000 and 400 BC. C., when certain individuals through a variety of opportunities were able to acquire resources that others did not have access to, leading, as in the ancient Near East of China and Africa, to social stratification and political control by part of a ruling class that gradually grew in power until they were considered divine. Competition between these communities for resources eventually led to increased warfare. The most attractive regions, those with prime soil, the best resources or sacred status, are where the most people wanted to live and that is where the cities grew.
These political capitals were built. Public squares were built followed by monuments. Elite residences and ceremonial enclosures This is where the rulers had their power bases and were the centers of religious, economic and funerary activities until recently the largest known architecture of the Middle Preclassic was seen in places such as Leblanca and Chalchuapa in the southern area Los Mangales is a site where you can find examples of ancient tombs discovered by the important 20th century Mayan Michael D Coe; However, on the outskirts of Guatemala City, between 400 and 100 BC. C., Amina yulu grew to become the largest and most powerful political entity in the southern area, controlling the The enormous jade and obsidian trading site that once covered more than five square kilometers, including several irrigation canals, its hills of earth are all that remain of the plastered adobe platforms that once supported wooden thatched and mud plaster buildings, although they are generally considered one of the largest archaeological sites. discoveries never made in the New World today, a small portion survives in an archaeological park, the rest was swallowed up by Guatemalan real estate developers in the 20th century, meanwhile large developments were taking place in the sea of ​​​​trees of the lowlands of baten, where the kalak shopping center was later located.
It would arise first in the city of Nakbay, considered one of the first Mayan cities, and then in El Mirador, where archaeologist Richard Hansen has worked for decades. An immense architecture dominated here. The largest temples that the ancient Mayans ever built were built in El Mirador. with great causeways through the Hinterlands connecting the place both spiritually and economically with its subordinate satellites. The striking group of structures at El Mirador is dominated by the enormous Triadic Temple of El Tigre, still partially excavated and little understood, but even larger by its mass is the ladanta. Temple of the Eastern Group rising to a height of 70 metres, it is the tallest ancient structure found to date in Mesoamerica, just slightly taller than even the Sun Temple at Teotiwakan, still covered in trees and bushes.
Today, it is considered by many. Archaeologists consider it to be the largest pyramid in the entire world, it is built at such an early stage in my own history, it baffles the mind like in Ancient Egypt, the power of those first rulers is absolute, it is still not clear if El Mirador and kamino liuju represent the first Mayans. State systems, other centers that still exist in both regions, in particular, historical inscriptions or names of any ruler have never been recovered from any of these preclassical sites for a long time, the world of him would come to an end.
Something happened in the terminal preclassic that sent the Mayans. civilization in decline, economic and political disruptions of a nature we have not been able to determine, saw the fall of kamenally yuju El Mirador and other powerful centers and the complete abandonment of others perhaps caused by overpopulation, environmental degradation, pestilence, war or a combination of everything butthis. did not end the Mayan civilization there was still much land to be taken where people would relocate preclassical fall Paving the way for the resurrection of a series of new political entities at the state level in the period that would follow the people some returned to the forest others They moved away to neighboring centers to start again.
Forty-eight foreigners, a small group of adventurers made their way through the dense forests of northern Guatemala, heading north from the remote island settlement of Flores. According to their names, they at least had Mayans among their ranks, their leader Ambrosio. Tutt, whose name was Mayan, was the governor of the town, although unfortunately due to his inability to read or write, it is his companion Colonel Modesto Mendes, chief magistrate of Flores, to whom we must turn to learn the history near the center of the patan. , the land was then quiet. The extremely inhospitable Flores was an island of calm within the vast green desert and yet out there, in the expanse protected from visitors for a thousand years, was a great City of the Ancients, unlike Copan, there were no myths. locals who talked about the place where they were. completely forgotten as something foreign and yet it was here that perhaps the greatest of all Mayan cities once stood;
Nowhere else is there such evidence of the immense pride felt by the city's elites, confident in the perpetual continuity and celebration of their achievements that the foreigners T and Mendes had rediscovered. The city of Tikal, of all the Mayan cities, this is the only one that is constantly cited as the most important in both size and splendor, today takal still stretches for miles and miles around skyscrapers rising wherever it goes. look Foreign city in a land of metropolis, the only rival superpower to come. Close to their Supremacy was the Serpent Kingdom of Kalak Mall, but that would not be discovered for more than a century.
This city was not from the world of El Mirador and Nakbe that came before, but a new one, very different in some ways. Surprisingly similar in others, the gods of those early powers had failed and individuals would now arise from equally great centers. The god-kings who now write the stories of this new classical era speak of Star Wars where the usual ritual skirmishes to search for sacrificial victims were set aside in favor of all-out battle, they also speak of contacts with the outside world. Warlike newcomers who came down from the Valley of Mexico to the north, from where in later centuries the Aztecs and other neighboring peoples would emerge to the jungles of the Coast.
Rich in the first signs of an increasingly Cosmopolitan Earth open to foreign Travelers and Invaders, it is possible that references to a great City in the forest made by a certain priest called Alvanado were lost in the forest for several weeks during the subjugation of Flores in 1696 .might have referenced Tikal, but even after its rediscovery in the 1850s, it took decades for word to slowly filter out and even longer for archaeologists to move in in the early 1880s. British explorer Alfred Maldsley came to investigate the site, but it was the Austrian archaeologist Tierbert Mailer who first thoroughly examined it in the 1890s and 1900s along the eerily unpopulated Usama Sinta River, one of the largest rivers in Central America, where also He rediscovered the orange tree cities and transformed the immense diversity of classic Mayan sites into sacrifice. had become evident as the river port of Yakshilan terrorist two stacks and of course extended to Cal.
These were the centers of the classical era, the pinnacle and apogee of the Mayan civilization, but how did it all begin between around the 200 and 600 AD. after a brief pause? A major growth phase took place throughout the Mayan world in the lowlands after the collapse of El Mirador. A series of powerful independent states arose perhaps because they were freed from the domination of that great city by former foreign dynasties who could now increase their own dynasties. authority that takes full control of its resources and people, driven by competition with its neighbors. One of these states was Tikal, formerly known as Mutual.
Today it is one of the largest and best documented Mayan cities, fundamental in our understanding of the early classical period and now thanks to written inscriptions found on monuments throughout the site, we can even tell some of its history around the year 100, when the ruling dynasty of Cal was founded by a shadowy figure named Yash ebsuke. Interestingly, there are indications that he had come to takal from kaminal juyu as well as in the kalak trade center, home of the snake dynasty, where there are some indications of links with El Mirador on the north-south axis of the northern Acropolis, A richly furnished tomb was found in Takal in 1962.
Burial 85, as it is called, contained the headless skeleton of a very tall man some believe that these are the remains of the great progenitor of the Royal House of Tikal Yaksh Ebsuke buried so many centuries ago in the Central Acropolis of Takal is the Royal Palace of Shack talk ichac the first sometimes known as Poor Jaguar who ruled in the late 4th century, a good example of the architectural style of this period, the remains of Estella were found representing the lower half of shaktak ikshak. His legs are almost visible. He carries an ax shaped like a poor jaguar and stands over a bound captive.
Curiously, this could be one of the last orders executed by the king because from the north in the valley of Mexico a leviathan approached the great city of the Mesoamerican world showing his muscles. The inscription bears a date corresponding to 376 AD. two years later Shack spoke it Shack the first was killed in a violent takeover led by a certain fire breaks out a warlord referring to himself as Lord of the West probably indicating the direction from which he had come as was the lack of a leader From the Victorious War, Fire is Born took the throne for himself before beginning a new campaign of expansion.
At this time, a central power in Mexico, the largest pre-Columbian city the New World had ever seen, was beginning to spread its influence. in the Mayan area in an effort to more directly control trade routes. in cocoa, cotton, jade and other commodities, of course, this was the era of the teoti wakhan known to the Aztecs, who could not understand that the mighty ruins of their own era had been the work of mortal men when the place of the gods Foreigners established a colony. In Montana, which dominated trade in the central part of the Pacific coastal plain for over two centuries, its influence on certain Mayan cities can be seen in the architecture built during this period which clearly displays Teotihuacan artistic styles and Tikal is one Of these sites, it may be that the fire was born from Teotiwakan or at least from an allied power that worked on its behalf.
There is a great deal of archaeological evidence linking the Mayan world to that great northern city, for example several specific Mayan trading quarters have been built in the city. In the coming decades, with the help of Teotihuacán, we know that Tikal was able to increase its power to eventually impose its authority over other powerful centers, including Washaktun Río Azul and Kopan, where new rulers would be enthroned. Subordinate status was achieved from this time on.Takal kings are often depicted wearing military clothing derived from central Mexico, such as these rain-worn bulging eyes. God tallock the city solidified his control over other political entities through military conquests and royal marriages designed to ferment the Alliance during the reign of Siash Chan Kawil II. who ruled from 4 11 to 456.
The first phase of Tikal's history reached the height of its power, but times were changing, that great king had chosen to return to the traditional Mayan customs of yesteryear by associating with the original dynasty founded by Yash ebsuke some 300 years earlier a fascinating document from his reign Stella 31, as archaeologists call it, was discovered. This magnificent monument depicts Sias Chan Kawil in all his splendor on the front, but on the reverse is an extensive hieroglyphic text recounting the entire early history of the city. The city's historical texts of this type are extremely rare further south in what is today Honduras.
They are another important city of this era. The evidence from Copán suggests that the Takal established a new political entity here in the early 5th century seeking to extend their reach into the southern borderlands. To ensure access to valuable resources such as jade and obsidian, this lens is interesting. Credence of the history of the visit to the palace in the 16th century of a great king who came from the north to found the place, although there were previous rulers, the dynasty founded here by Tikal. began with the rise of chinch yak cookmo, the beneficiary of an orchestrated takeover in 426, may have been related in some way to the dismissal of his Tikal-born because he also assumed the title of lord of the West or perhaps had secured his authority when marrying.
A royal woman is born from fire, the family appears to have been an elite Lord in Cal before assuming authority in Kopan. A unique font from the site is Alter Q, which represents the kings of the Yakshukmo dynasty, 16 of them around the four sides, one image depicts. The great founding King handed the royal scepter to the current King on the 16th, although it has not been 100% established that it is his. A tomb found in the honorable structure of Copán probably contains the remains of that re-founder of Kopan's greatness during Here was found the skeleton of a man estimated to be between 55 and 75 years old.
His teeth were notched and inlaid with jade discs. He wore a teoti wakano style platelet helmet. His body had suffered many injuries, none of which were the cause of death due to these injuries it has been hypothesized that he could have been a ball player as well as a warrior the tomb was sealed a series of funerary temples superimposed on it Over the years were built on top of it the most famous of the structures at Kopan is the hieroglyphic staircase completed during the reign of the 15th king, the largest of its kind found anywhere in the New World, the text on the stairs records the history of the northern dynasty, meanwhile, the tin or snake dynasty was on the rise and soon became the most powerful. ruling house throughout Mesoamerica thanks as we have seen the snakes may have originated in El Mirador before moving elsewhere the Avars list the first rulers of the dynasty they refer to a man called skyraiser may have been the founder or re-founder of The ancient grandeur now centered on zebanch to the north is seen in records from cities as far away as Belize, where the former ally Caracol ruled, the serpents steadily grew in power as rivals to decal a monument at zebanch is the Temple of the captives built in 464.
It features a hieroglyphic staircase that lists captives taken in a battle by Yuksom Chen, king of Zebanch at the time when Teoti Wakan withdrew his support for Tikal and other Mayan cities in the 6th century, and eventually collapsed by complete in short order in a maelstrom of violence, the serpents had the perfect opportunity to capitalize on Cal's weakness by establishing a substantial series of alliances with other lowland kingdoms that eventually nearly surrounded takal on April 29, 562, the witness Zabanch's King Sky accompanied by forces from Orange Snail and Halmall crushed Cal in a decisive battle. another world captured, its king was probably sacrificed on one of its own altars, as this was the era of the so-called Star Wars, it was fought entirely for conquest rather than a ritual battle for sacrificial victims.
Witnesses of heaven can also be found at the cormorant temple in sibanch. his skull riddled with scars shows that he was a veteran of many battles shortly after the Khan dynasty decided to move to a new location the great Royal Center for a great dynasty the city of Kalak Mall in the south of Yucatan its existence rediscovered only in later years century During the next century this place would be the dominant power in the region growing to immense size its allies also growing Powerful after the collapse of Tikal Interurban competition was a key feature of Mayan politics Mayan states were defined by war the objective That, being for acquiring and expanding resources, labor and prestige raids were often used to gain loot and tribute, when victorious armies took large numbers of captives, they were added to the workforce and the more they could take, the more it would add to the prestige of the state.
Why are there so many monuments that show accounts of the taking of captives? These practices reinforced the centralization of authority and the stratification of society. Success in battle was achieved mainly by attacking the subordinate cities of a stateenemy instead of going after state capitals. But as time passed. and various powers attempted to outdo each other, the size and intensity of the wars could not help but increase, and yet on other occasions we are told that wars could be fought entirely on the ball court, representatives of rival powers they play for the continued prosperity of their countries.
The most important meetings in the cities were usually led by the king himself, who was carried in an elaborate palanquin flanked by effigies of foreign protector gods. If an army could capture one of the effigies of the enemy's protector gods, the capture was considered a notable achievement in most cases. The destruction of an enemy King would not even be attempted, but in the most momentous battles, the so-called Star Wars or Star Shell Wars, when both Kings were present and the objective was to conquer the other state completely, taking the ruler and the capital city in the other side. was necessary, and yet, although these conflicts were particularly bloody, even though a defeated king would be dishonored and even sacrificed on occasion, the States of Concord would not join the winning side, as far as we can tell, Mayan ideology tended to protect above all the continuity of royalty.
Dynasty elites perhaps simply did not want to risk their own authority by showing that a dynasty could be overthrown or perhaps this was simply inconceivable due to the semi-divine status of the royal houses, so they would look for someone else from the same dynasty to take the lead. place of the defeated King, forced to become a vassal or subordinate to the Victorious King, therefore, after the defeat by kalak mall, Tikal was never annihilated, although it did considerably reduce its population and importance. The monumental projects stopped for a while, of course, it would arise again. Power was achieved.
Its peak during the reign of Yuknum the Great, who ruled from 636 to about 686, was achieved through a series of victories against Tikal and its allies that extended the city's influence further than it had ever been, but takal had not yet been had appeared since the reign of Joshua. Chan kawil who took the throne in 682 Tikal began to renew its power and prestige through a program of cultural revitalization with emphasis on the glories of the past finally in 695 jasor Chan kawil marched his forces against the serpent ruler Yuknum Yuchak there after of a The undisputed serpents of the 19th century were finally defeated.
Takal's forces captured a huge effigy of a Kalak Mall. God's armies apparently carried images like these as a form of divine protection on the battlefield and if an enemy could capture one, it was considered an important trophy and a religious act. . victory foreign wooden lintel found in the Cow Temple One depicts Joshua Chan kawil celebrating his great Triumph he is seated on his throne and at his feet is the captured deity of kalak Mall the remains of a stucco panel on one of the buildings of tikal structure 5D 57 shows the great jasso king Chang kawil with a bound captive before him before being sacrificed at Cal.
The unfortunate Kalak Mall prisoners of war from this battle were displayed for all to see a clear indication of the changes in fortunes of the city, although it was jasor Chan kawil who started it. the process of restoring Cal's fortunes it was his son who finished the job 7 36 two years after taking the throne, he again defeated Kalak Mall in a great battle with the Serpent Kingdom reeling, he followed the victory with a series of defeats over Kalak Mall. the allies broke up the confederation, the cow once again stood on top, the position it would hold until the collapse of both cities about a century later, this Final Phase of the classical era was when many were built of the largest and most elaborate temples. the fall in the countryside where immense expanses of forest had already been cut down to make the lime necessary to cover the increasingly larger pyramids and temples that supported the increasingly higher ruling classes, the cracks were already beginning to show in the jungles of Chiapas. the monkeys scream the trees dance the ancient Mysteries call 46.
Father Antonio de Solis arrived here with his brothers, their wives and a whole tribe of sons, daughters and nephews in search of land to farm and a new beginning as they began to wander around the southern end of New Forest Home. From Mexico, at the tree line they began to find ruined houses built of stone long ago covered by dense vegetation, some destroyed by Massive Vines. It had been a long time since anyone had lived here as they continued to explore. It wasn't long before. huge pyramids rose from the trees. They were the first known inhabitants of the old world to set foot in this city of the new dead for almost 1,000 years, as word slowly spread about Palenque.
Three official government expeditions were sent between 1784 and 1807. Even so, it would be a surprisingly long time before news of the place reached receptive ears in Europe. Communications with the outside world continued to advance at a glacial pace, the forest and the deeply conservative Spanish Colonial Administration keeping everything under their control for some 200 years. would pass before intense modern archaeological investigations began, this time carried out not by a European or an American but by a Mexican Alberto. La Julia arrived in Palenque in 1949. She would not finish excavating there until almost 10 years later, at which time perhaps the single largest find in the entire history of Mayan archeology actually took place.
It all began with clearing the undergrowth around the large monumental structure known as the Temple of Inscriptions, noting that the lower wall did not actually end at ground level. and his team began to excavate beneath the valley floor, descending several meters to a stone opening and a vaulted staircase. The piles of rubble that filled the Gap excavations would have to wait until the beginning of the fourth season in 1952, year after year. Step Lahulier and his team were working towards the largest discovery yet seen in the Americas, eventually the staircase reached a corridor with boxes of Cinnabar Pottery and Jade shells an early indication of what might contain Within the Jade, the most sought after of all Mayan goods, represented death and the afterlife.
Until this point, unlooted Mayan tombs had never been excavated, surviving burials were especially rare. Finally, the corridor ended in a large vaulted room, its walls covered with decorated stucco reliefs, traces of pigments that showed that they were once painted in colors and in the center. Out of the room was a huge carved block of decorated stone, an ornate slab now famous throughout the world, any resemblance to aliens, of course, just a coincidence. Upon removing the slab, much to the team's delight, a skeleton was found inside the face covered with an ornate death mask. of jade, shell eyes and obsidian, her body adorned with all the material of pendants, diadems, rings, bracelets, ear and neck ornaments, all made with jade, the most precious material in the Mayan world, symbol of life, death and immortality.
The second coffin contained six other bodies believed to have been sacrificial victims perhaps aiding the king on his path to godhood, as visualized by the surrounding stucco and sculptures buried beneath the forest floor for over a thousand years, Since the cow tomb had re-emerged from its slumber, it is difficult to exaggerate the importance of the discovery of that deceased king that ultimately changed everything in Mayan studies, the pyramids instead of being completely external monuments could play a funerary role, even containing the tombs of long-dead rulers and, in the case of Pacal, by the time his story could finally be told, he had become the most famous.
Mayo, ruler of all of them, came to power when he was only 12 years old. Pakal resided during an extraordinary era for Palenque waging wars and politicking with other powers in the region such as Piedras Negras and Tanina and engaging in a massive series of construction projects during his long reign. It is one of the most impressive the Mayans ever built and However, no matter how extraordinary, Pacal was just one in a long tradition of dynasties that ruled this influential Kingdom because, like much of the rest of the world, the most important social and political entity. In Mayan society the ruling house was those at the upper levels who possessed a heritage of hereditary wealth, both material and intangible, they maintained power over a specific place for many centuries, often for the entire life of a city, these houses were defined by common origins, kinship, marital alliances, religious beliefs. and the desire to keep power and status restricted to their group, thanks to a particularly interesting facet of these elite groups is that the ruling dynasties were not only ruled by lineal descent through patrilineal and matrilineal descendants, but also through lines of succession.
Descendancy of power and property; In other words, a ruler might not be genealogically linked to the ancestral founder of a dynasty, but simply through inheritance, he and in some cases she would still be considered descendants of the ancestor, regardless of lineage, perhaps allowing certain individuals able to be promoted through Merit rather than simply by inheritance, we can let it be said that the most famous ruler of the city of Ekbalam was one. such a figure, you can watch my video here in that city for more information; However, the position of Monarch still tended to be reserved exclusively for members of the ruling house, which was identified with a specific emblem glyph.
Real power in Mayan society was based on an elaborate ideology. including a complete vision of the world, dictated both the behavior of the people and the behavior of the ruler, first of all, the legitimacy of the Mayan king was due to his superior military prowess, the ability to protect the people, collect tribute from defeated enemies, The accumulation of taxes led to economic benefits. success, we do not know exactly to what extent the kings managed the production and distribution of food and other necessities of life, but we do know that they did manage the production and trade of prestige goods.
They also had a considerable workforce dedicated to the work owed to them. Of course, the people these rulers tended to monopolize wealth most easily displayed in the sumptuous palaces they built and resided in isolation from the rest of the people. The actual physical differences between elites and communists are often profound and are also seen in the archaeological record by height. differences showing clear disparities between the protein-rich foods that only the elites had access to and the rest, slightly malnourished, there was even a conscious effort made to make the groups look different from each other. Elites use cranial deformation to stand out. as a separate people touched by the divine, but there were times when both commoners and nobles would gather during festivals when rulers often engaged in self-sacrifice by piercing their bodies in painfully elaborate ways to shed blood for the common good and in the constant ball game in Mayan cities and neighboring cultures as far north as Arizona and as far south as Costa Rica, where similar games and ritual displays were held, probably for all to see, foreign courts are a constant In Mayan cities, they are usually moderate in size, but sometimes resemble Chichén Itzá.
They are absolutely huge and seem too big to play a real game, but they are just the right size for rituals and festivities. park to park the world's oldest ball game, a version of which was played in the second millennium BC. C. is still played today in Many areas of Mexico and Guatemala have a national team, although the rules have varied over time and space at a basic level, not much has changed. I play as a team with the objective of putting the rubber ball into the hoop using only my hips to do so. and yet, much more than a simple game to those who watched this was a ritual of life and death, perhaps representing certain elements of religion and the birth and continuation of the universe, players often died during the game, as in an account just after the conquest of Diego Durán. and sometimes the losing or winning team would be sacrificed afterwards, as in the ancient Greek Olympic Games; it may have also had a festive element, a gathering for social good, the people who would be at those games seeking sponsorship perhaps where both the communists and the elite something like that could even be at the very heart of civilization itself;
What happens in places like Poverty Point in the US and ancient henges in Neolithic Europe might nothave been very different from the ball The game has been played since there have been societies in this part of the world, as we have seen, the Mayans were never politically unified in a single state, their world was organized in a system of independent kingdoms, some large and other small ones, over a period of time. 2,000 years from approximately 600 BC. C. until 1500 AD. C. Many Mayan political entities rose and fell, some surviving for several centuries, others for much longer. The city of Lamini was able to survive for 2,000 years, but such success was a rarity.
Each Mayan political entity had a capital city and usually some Dependencies form a hierarchy of multi-level administrative centers. The closer a center was to the capital, the higher its ranking because power was defined by territorial extent. The more settlements under the control of the capital, the more formidable it would be. There is still disagreement between Scholars question how centralized power really was, but it would seem that, like the early Greek polis and the Italian city-states of the Renaissance, there was diversity in organization, political structure, and society in the period. Late Classic, most of the Mayan lowlands were filled with humans. settlements including major cities, towns and thousands of rural communities, the greatest concentration of populations tended to be near water and, at best, agricultural land which often occurred in the form of cenotases, natural sinks in the soil and, less commonly, next to rivers that are not In the northern region, as we have seen, there were two basic classes in the elites of Mayan society and in everyone else, although the dividing line between them is not so clear, being Some social mobility was possible, groups were differentiated by the access they had to Resources were often seen in where their residences were located or how they were buried when they died, unsurprisingly, elites were distinguished by the wealth they had. right mainly by rank of inheritance or marriage.
Elites tended to live near the city centers that contained the temples. palaces, playing fields and other public buildings, as well as the most desired and best protected residences, artisans were housed near the center so they could participate in market activity, agricultural workers lived in the countryside. The consensus on the size of these populations has varied considerably over the centuries. A recent estimate indicates that Tikal, one of the largest political entities, had a total population of approximately 92,000 inhabitants, of which 11,300 lived in the city center, just over 50,000 lived in the periphery, and thirty thousand in surrounding rural areas, but additional LIDAR studies could bring this to light. considerably larger number Mayan trade existed at local, regional and long-distance levels Diversity in environment and culture led people to develop their own craft and product specialties, thus fostering the growth of trade networks to distribute goods , resources and services.
They were traded over long distances, that is, to various neighboring parts of Central America, they included agricultural products, basketry, dyes and pigments, condiments, ceramics and textiles, these are items that all the Mayans traded, but each had its own local characteristics. . The lowlands specialized in cotton flint, lime, salt, tobacco, cocoa. opal and jaguar skins the highlands specialized in grinding stones obsidian volcanic ash Cinnabar jadeite pyrite and serpentine the coastal areas meanwhile specialized in things like balsam sugar fish shells shark teeth and turtle shells, although it is difficult to determine this by alone From the archaeological record, it appears that the merchant class had developed in the classical period.
Professional peddlers and traveling merchants and, no doubt, other members of society were also involved in part-time commercial activities, as in the rest of the world. Trade networks were not only a conduit for goods but also for People and ideas, towns, cities and rural areas were interconnected by elaborate causeways known as Sac Bay or white roads. The city of Cobar in Yucatán to neighboring Yaksuna traveled about 60 miles. The explanation of such paths was often given more to myth than to history. having been thrown by a dwarf magician in a single night, as the world inhabited by the Mayans always teetered on the precipice between the terrestrial Earth and the divine in 1525.
Victorious from his conquest of the Aztec empire, Hernán Cortés moved south with an elite force of warriors, just a few hundred men who had taken down a civilization of millions of foreigners using a substantial force of native allies, the key to their success and a large baggage train of horses and pack animals that were They headed to southern Honduras to subdue rebel subordinates and seize new lands. Cortez and the officers dined heartily on pork and beef, but most had to live off the land along the route. They stopped to resupply at one of the largest bodies of water in Guatemala.
Lake Flores, today is a regional capital of Party Town and a backpacker hotspot, but 500 years ago. Here stood a large Mayan city along the shore of the lake, but mainly on an island just offshore, its name was Tire Sal. The inhabitants had no choice but to entertain these strange foreign guests. Once inside the city, it became clear that some members of the Expedition had to leave behind Cortés' horse Morsillo, a veteran of countless battles that had always been at his side since he landed in Mexico six years earlier, and could no longer continue. . The Cordoban stallion had reached the end of his journey, reluctant to kill his old friend in a fit of unusual sentimentality.
The Conqueror's dowry asked his hosts if he could leave such a creature in their care before the citizens enthusiastically accepted and when the Spanish moved on, Mozillo was treated with the utmost respect with a diet reserved only for the highest levels of society. , unfortunately for the stranded horse. In a strange world, that diet consisted exclusively of turkeys and flowers when Europeans arrived here again, nearly 100 years later, in 1618. In the form of two Franciscan missionaries, Abruiter and Funicellida, they found among the carved deities of the Central Plaza an unusual sight has all the characteristics of a horse, but is depicted sitting on the ground in a human pose, quite foreign to equines.
Mozillo had become a god, they called him Jimin Chan, which means Tapir Rain God and it seems that he had become one of the main deities. The city father, Obita, was so horrified that he destroyed the statue in anger. He was almost lynched on the spot. If the furnace had not intervened a leader in 1622, another priest, Father Delgado, and his men were accepted with enthusiasm and joy in the city. the Central Plaza where their hearts were torn out for all to see only in 1692 would the city finally be subjected to the last Mayan Kingdom to undergo conversion, at which time we are told that the Itza lords of the lake apparently ruled with an iron fist . kill any man over 50 years old for fear that they would become wizards.
Desperate measures had to have been implemented for the place to have survived as long as it was thought in a Mayan police state controlled by a hereditary priesthood after the fall of In the city the Spanish spent nine hours breaking idols and in the Canex palace they found many copies of sacred books of prophecies and history it is unknown what became of them and some argue that this could have been the origin of the codices now found in Europe in Dresden. and in Paris, although in all likelihood most, if not all, were probably destroyed, although many like the Lakhand of the Mayans escaped into the forest to live remote lives away from European invaders, the last independent city had come to an end and With it perhaps the largest of the postclassical kingdoms were those of the Itzá, who once ruled far from Chichén Itzá, but there was also another great kingdom, this one in the southern highlands of Guatemala, one that also preserved its pre-Civil traditions. the conquest with roots that go back to the past.
We know them as the Kiche, but unlike almost all other Mayan regions, some of their sacred books survive to the present. Today, the number of Kiche is close to a million, they occupy most of the territory of their ancient kingdom and it is thanks to them that the Mayans. The creation story remains alive, providing an unprecedented window into the pre-Columbian Mayan world. Foreigners first arrived in Keech territory in 1524, led by the vicious warlord Alvarado. The Cruels found themselves facing the most powerful state in the highlands after the fall of Chichén Itzá. Some 500 years earlier two successor states had emerged, foreign tributary powers that ruled their neighbors with an iron fist, all worshipers of the feathered serpent, a warrior god revered by many during those difficult days in the north, Mayapan had been a great power. by itself.
The right, although ultimately defeated by a coalition of their subjects in the mid-15th century, one of their ruling houses would found Tyre, another kingdom in the south survived until the Spanish conquest. This is what Alvarado faced. in 1524. Aiming for a hammer blow right at the heart of Keech's power in the capital of Uttaglan, Alvarado's sword, clad in steel armor, singled out one of the Mayan commanders, Tekum Umam, dressed in little more than cloth feathers and carrying an obsidian sword, attacking him. in single combat, tekum umam was brutally murdered in front of all his warriors after more fierce fighting, outgunned, overwhelmed and astonished by spanish weapons, the city fell and christianity arrived and yet relatively out of the way, without Much notice from the authorities, the Keechs kept their secrets here, the old ways would survive abroad when a local priest named Zimines was brought into the inner circle of Keech leadership.
He was shown a remarkable book, a man with farsightedness and a deep respect for the Mayan culture. Jiménez translated the work into Spanish, from where Little by little it would reach a wider audience abroad. For years, in times of uncertainty, the ruling families of the Highlands had consulted this book to make sense of the world of wisdom of the ancestors. They knew it as the Book of Council or Popple View. According to legend, the work had been given to them. on a pilgrimage to the distant - off the Atlantic coast some called it the light that came from the sea, others the dawn of life and others our place in the shadows the work is intense a masterpiece of mythology, an epic poem of More than 9,000 lines, the rival The Iliad and Rig Vader is generally considered the largest surviving work of Mayan literature.
Those who wrote the version of the Purple Vu we know today do not give us their personal names referring to themselves simply because they teach people, but we do know that the work dates back. from the post-conquest period created in secret using the alphabet of the conquerors as the other great series of Mayan books of poetic prophecies known as the Chilean balam which means jaguar priest as well as the rabinal Achi one of the few Mayan plays that exist It could not have been recorded without foreign Latin, probably written and composed by the great Lords of the Keech people, as the work of St.
Germanus of Aux Air in Britain subraman. The Purple Vu sometimes appears to describe images, perhaps murals and tapestries that once existed in the capital of The most interesting parts of the Purple Vu is the version of the Mayan creation myth it records, although it is a late text that definitely shows the Spanish colonial influence. No doubt it also contains oral traditions dating back centuries to the Mists of the ancient world at the beginning. The creator gods created several worlds before the present, but each experiment proved fruitless. The created beings had to be destroyed. The main protagonists of our story are the mythical heroes.
The twins hunapu and shiblanca, said to have been the first humans and the children of the labyrinth god, hunampu. He is said to have visited the underworld of Jebalba to challenge the gods of death in a series of deadly ball games, perhaps symbolically recreated during the games in the ball courts of Mayan cities, but despite Shebalba's best machinations , time and time again the twin heroes emerge victorious finally to escape the gods of death having exhausted all other options, the twins sacrifice themselves by jumping into a pit of foreign fire to ensure they would never return. The gods of death crushed his bones by throwing the dust into a river, but in those waters the hero.
The twins were resurrected when the gods of death confronted them once again, the twin heroesThey demonstrated their powers by decapitating each other and resurrecting themselves. When the gods of death demanded the same trick be performed on them, the twin heroes also cut off their heads. but this time by refusing to bring them back to life, the twin heroes identify themselves with the sun and Venus, celestial bodies that regularly recreate their resurrection by setting themselves below the horizon and resurrecting. The basic concept of resurrection was immensely important to the Mayans, closely linked to the The story of the corn harvest and the practice of sacrifice also highlights the dualism that was a large part of the Mayan belief system, good versus evil, the life against death and day against night, the forces of good bring rain and make crops grow, the forces of evil bring famine and misery, and of course the purple Vu contains only one version of the story of Creation , variations of it found throughout the Mayan world and in all different eras.
The Temple of the Cross in Palenque contains a version of history that records the birth of the first gods, first mother and first father in the previous world and the beginning of the current one backed by a cycle or era dated precisely August 14, 3114 BC. C. the Palenque Triad it is said that the three children of the first gods were born in 2360 BC. C. today they are simply called God one, two and three due to their uncertain identities. It has been proposed that God is also koil, the God of lightning, and God three is kinich ajor, the god of the sun.
God one is not yet identified. Kawil is usually depicted with his snout up. A snake leg and a smoking ax or pipe on the forehead adorned the scepters of the Mayan kings and that is why, like Odin or Zeus, he is often interpreted as a patron deity of kings. The Sun God Kinich Ajor is often depicted with crossed eyes. Shaped upper teeth and snake-like curls at the corners of the mouth. He was also often associated with rulers, perhaps because they promoted the belief that they were manifestations of the sun deity, and also commonly used the name kinich as a title, a version of the creation myth.
Vu purple is even seen in architecture during the preclassic period at El Mirador, where a carved panel was found depicting the twin heroes swimming to the underworld to retrieve their father's decapitated head. Others have also been found in the form of a mural in San Bartolo and Estella in Knack Bay dating back to around 200 BC. C., about 1700 years before history was written, suggesting that Mayan mythology and religion were already well established at this early point in history. The architecture of the city itself is also immensely important. with huge pilgrimage roads bordering the center and peripheries of the city and certain areas only used for ceremonial purposes.
Pilgrims from distant places only increase the splendor of the city with offerings, as well as commercial goods and information; In fact, almost all Mayan cities seem to have been built according to a specific conception of the universe; In other words, the buildings were established as symbolic representations of the cosmic order, although as time passed and more structures were added, the original representations often became obscured; The purpose of these associations was probably to offer a sense of security that people lived in a sacred and properly ordered society. The Mayan conception of the world was very different from that of today's modern, scientifically oriented societies.
They saw the Earth as composed of several layers, the three main ones being the domain of the people, the celestial Kingdom of heaven where the upper Gods lived and the underworld were the lower Gods who dominated the Mayans, the terrestrial Earth was a very ordered kingdom. controlled by otherworldly deities who had no clear distinction between the natural and the supernatural, they believed it was an invisible sacred quality called Kerr inhabited all physical objects, including humans and animals, many of the gods would manifest themselves visibly. in things like the sun, the moon, the stars, lightning and rain.
The gods could also take human or animal forms, both humans and animals possessed something called a why. generally interpreted as an invisible spirit companion often associated with a wild animal of the forest or night, one of the most powerful is the jaguar, which is why it controlled its destiny so that the illness or death of one was reflected in the other , but they also seem to have believed in a life force or soul whose essence existed in the human breath in art. This is depicted as a scroll coming out of their mouths and sometimes as a flower or jade carved in front of their faces, something foreign to later accounts written shortly after the Spanish.
Conquest The Mayans believed that departing souls went to a place where there was no pain or suffering and there was an abundance of food and drink. Those who went to this paradise were automatically rulers. Priests. Those who had been sacrificed. Warriors killed in battle. Women who died in childbirth. and those who committed suicide by hanging themselves, alien to Christianity, are intense, which perhaps explains the confusion between sacrifice and martyrdom in the 16th century, both constitute the so-called good death in this paradise of the afterlife, the sacred saber tree grew under the branches in where people could rest. their labors in the shade a giant saber the tree of life is also said to have grown in the center of the world holding up the sky widely believed to be a representation of the corn god hunapu, a benevolent deity who had brought life to the world in the Although the celestial bodies in the night sky were believed to be deities, the Mayans knew that these Sky Wanderers, as they called them, had predictable movement patterns, that is because the job of these gods was to maintain world order and the cycles of the time, they would just do it;
However, as long as humans behaved appropriately by performing appropriate rituals without modern instruments, the Mayans were able to achieve great precision in measuring the cyclical movements of the heavens. bodies, he did this by obtaining clear lines of sight to points on the horizon from hilltops or tall buildings such as observatories such as the caracal at Chichen Itza. Strangely, these Mayan protoscientists calculated that the solar year was 365 days, even realizing that this number was not exact, but as far as we know, they did not correct this with leap years or another system, as far as we can tell, the Mayans were the only pre-columbian american society that used a fixed point in time from which to count their chronological records that had a highly precise mathematical system the romans had never learned the concept of zero their entire numerical system counted up from one, the

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ns, On the other hand, they mastered zero very early by possessing immensely advanced mathematics, perhaps the most famous example of this is the Long Count or great cycle, a numerical record counted from the presumed date of the creation of the current world counted precisely as 3114 BC. until its end on December 21, 2012.
Far from being an expectation that the world would end at the end of each Long Count rather it was widely thought that there had been many cycles before the world of the Classic Maya and that there would be many after it. each one will last exactly one million eight hundred seventy-two thousand days. It is a very old system. The oldest Long Count has been found. already in the middle preclassical and the last in the city of tonina coinciding with the collapse there were also shorter cycles that dictated more regular daily affairs just as the Long Count dictated the Matters of God the melody lasted 144,000 days the cartoon lasted 7,200 days the melody 360 days and the winner 20 days at all levels of Mayan society a variety of rights and ceremonies were performed.
Archaeological evidence suggests that families performed bloodshed rituals and made offerings to the gods that were believed to be full of the punch they had. The ceremonial festivals burned incense and venerated their ancestors, but in their communities it was the shaman who was believed capable of reading the will of the gods and communicating with them through divination. Shamans had knowledge of the calendar and the ability to predict the coming of the gods. the rainy season so that farmers knew when to plant and when to harvest more often the shamans had knowledge of diseases and could appeal to the spirits to cure the sick, some of them seem to have been attributed the ability to leave their bodies and undertake journeys into the spirit world using narcotics, hallucinogens and other psychotropic substances to induce altered states of consciousness as part of these divination rituals.
Its religious practitioners existed long before the Mayan states and long after as well, as the states formed the religion, became more formalized and structured, and a state-sanctioned priesthood developed. priests now performed rituals on behalf of the state, while shamans continued their roles as non-elite religious specialists. The priesthoods were autonomous, their members came from the nobility. The priests appear to have been literate and composed a body of esoteric literature that codified and systematized their knowledge. The rituals that the priests performed for the state included the burning of incense and offerings that sometimes included the blood of the priests and occasionally human sacrifices and other ceremonies to inspire the entire people with music, banquets and dances.
The ruler of the political entity was considered the chief priest and they would have participated in many of these ceremonies, including the offering of his own blood. Real women did this too. Blood was important because it was thought to be a powerful source of blood and since the greatest offering of blood was life itself. Ultra important rituals. They may well involve human sacrifice, the usual sacrificial victims were prisoners of war, specifically those of the upper class were favored with these types of sacrifices, they were relatively rare and only carried out on special occasions, such as the inauguration of a new ruler, the dedication of a new temple or the designation of an heir to the throne on very special occasions a captured king could be sacrificed his murder is usually carried out by ritual beheading Human sacrifice appears to have become more popular in the postclassical period a time of great changes and cataclysms when the Mayans fell more influenced by the people of central Mexico to reaffirm their supernatural connections during their reigns and to show that they were personifications of the cycles of time.
Kings would perform special rituals at the end of major calendar periods, public occasions that included banquets, dances, and entertainment. During these events, the ruler would remember the original creation of the world by the gods back in 3114 BC. but, of course, everything must come to an end in the year 1502 of our calendar. 25 men and women packed into an open-air canoe made their journey. Eastwood path along the Yucatan coast, carved from a single solid mahogany or cedar tree trunk. The boat was eight feet wide in the middle and very long in the middle, under a palm-covered building sat the owner and his family, a rich merchant from EK AB carrying a cargo of ceramics, dyed clothes , copper axes and bells, a foundry, wooden swords carved with obsidian and, of course, the currency of the Mayan World.
The cocoa beans also in the cellar were vital. Provisions for your long trip. Cornbread and corn porridge for the ship he was bound for. the distant Honduras, the island of the guanaco, the rowers who rowed in unison for their lives were slaves and one day, as the sun's rays lazily shone on the blue ocean, impossible sights began to blur into view. In the distance, in the horizon, the mountains rose above the water and grew larger and larger, we don't know exactly what happened, but given the completely strange sight before them, the paddlers may well have stopped dead, barely believing what they were seeing. , because it soon became clear.
The mountains turned into ships before long a strange encounter occurred between the two ships, some of the crew were even invited aboard by the newcomers who seemed in a trance not knowing if they were dreaming or waking up soon enough, although their world would change irrevocably there was no way to go. Now he had returned because this was the flagship of European explorer Christopher Columbus on his fourth voyage to the new world, his four ships full of gold-hungry sailors, now mentally and physically exhausted by the persistent storms. Columbus was still searching for a passage to distant Cathay or Japan, where his fortune would also be made for him.
The encounter with the Curious had been completely unexpected, surprised by the ease with which the Indians were brought aboard his flagship. He was pleasantly surprised when of suddenly objected to inspections of their clothing to protect their modesty assumed despite their wild appearance they could be good Christians indicating that they hadComing from the west where lands of great wealth could be found many members of Columbus' crew would return but not yet their destination then was Honduras seeking to find a passage across the continent to China and the Spice Islands Beyond, ultimately, would fail, abandoned and ruined in Jamaica in 1506, he was dead, as for the Mayans, some were taken by the Spanish as curiosities, others no doubt followed their path, changed forever the news of that strange encounter by the sea slowly spread in 1518, several more.
European ships had traveled to the Americas in the wake of Columbus, but the continent was still largely a mystery and its existence was not yet fully confirmed. In May of that year, during Juan's voyage to Gryalva, a crew member named Juan Díaz recorded what he saw on the continent we followed. The shore day and night and the next day towards sunset we perceived a city or town so large that Seville would not have seemed more considerable or better. We saw there a very large tower on the shore. There was a large crowd of Indians carrying two standards that went up. and they came down so that we could approach them, the commander did not want if the news had already reached the settlement, we do not know, but we do know the possible candidate for the town, one of the most important of his time due to its proximity to Cancún and the main tourist centers is one of the most visited in the 21st century, we know the place as Tulum and at that time, when Tulum spread along the coast at the height of its majesty, the inland lands of the Mayan world were already They didn't exist.
No longer as important as they once were are the flourishing sea trade routes that now connect Yucatán from Tabasco and the north to Honduras and beyond in the south, forging unique artistic styles in this sphere of the Gulf of Mexico, seen in places such as Jaina Island with its interesting statues were foreign and yet, despite Díaz's description based on archaeology, Tulum was small and we had a tradition of building temples, creating murals and even using hieroglyphs, the city itself probably only had a population of around a thousand people arranged around a single street protected by a border wall compared to the colossal majesty of the classical cities, the situation becomes very clear not far from Tulum, the tyria forests of western Yucatán, lies the power station that once ruled this land abroad, its many lagoons in its heyday, the once powerful city of Cobra had been home to 50,000 people.
And although it was still inhabited at the time, only completely abandoned around 1550, a mere fraction of its population still sheltered in the massive ruins containing temples and worshiped in the ritual spaces of their ancestors. Cobra was mostly a ghost. religious sanctuary city of those with long memories and compared to its old enemy Chichén Itzá Cobra was comparatively fortunate the rival city having been completely abandoned hundreds of years before even before the arrival of the Spanish the Mayan world had suffered an immense decline archeology is irrefutable from the Pacific coast to the Atlantic beginning in the southwestern lowlands and gradually expanding to other areas beginning in the 9th century AD. each Mayan state experienced drastic decline.
Many different theories have been proposed for this collapse in the so-called terminal classical period, but it seems that no single reason can fully explain the cataclysm, most likely there were several trends at play, all contributing to some extent perhaps to the so-called collapse of systems, although some have suggested a single catastrophic event or a series of them, such as a pandemic or earthquakes. Conclusive evidence is lacking, others have pointed out problems within Mayan society citing overpopulation or increased competition between states, which led to more power struggles and wars, thus undermining the concept of divine kingship. We know that larger political entities had a tendency to fragment into smaller states. and by the year 900 in most areas the practice of erecting monuments had ceased perhaps the rulers had simply lost their Divine status their subordinates were no longer willing to worship their power it is not clear but the temples, the palaces, roadways and playing fields were simply no longer built. and the distribution of luxury goods practically disappeared.
Archeology tells us that environmental problems such as deforestation, soil erosion and drought were almost certainly occurring contributing to the decline with little food to eat or water to drink, the population drastically reduced survivors forced to migrate to areas with better conditions . land and more resources, but the decline was not uniform or equal everywhere, the collapse of the classic Mayan centers during this time of social and economic change coincided with the rise of Mayan groups on the margins, for example the disgrace of Cobra It had been Chichenitza and then Tulum. Winning just as the jungle reclaimed Tikal and Kalak Mall, other cities to the north entered their golden age.
The foreign regions in the lowlands were in the northwestern portions of the Yucatan Peninsula, however, the people had adapted to their environment here by accessing the cenatase waters and building cisterns. Some of the best-known classical terminal cities are from this area. Emerging between the 1800s and 1900s, sites such as ushmal khabar Sail flourished at the same time as cities further south descended into turmoil, apocalyptic death in these places rulers reestablished traditions of authority in imitation of earlier Mayan states, but also They seem to have learned from the mistakes of their predecessors in avoiding total centralization, there was less emphasis on a single King and a greater degree of power sharing, but as the terminal classical period closed perhaps as the era- old problems with the environment resurfaced, even these cities would come to an end, and yet a new political order emerged in that area at the moment when a violent order was forged in the collapse that marked the beginning of the period we call the postclassical, the power dominant in the region.
At that time it was the Chichén Itzá system of government that reigned supreme from the terminal classical until around 1100. At its peak it was the largest and most powerful of all the Mayan cities and a great cosmopolitan capital that adopted many elements from the distant Valley. of Mexico with The royal invasion of the Toltecs was once a popular theory, although now questioned by many archaeologists. The Toltec and non-Toltec architecture and art of Chichén Itzá certainly combined that of the traditional Mayan heritage with other styles from throughout Mesoamerica, especially from the Gulf Coast and central Mexico. by a single Divine ruler but by a decentralized Authority that included a Supreme Council composed of elite Lords holding specific positions.
They promoted a religious cult based on the worship of the Feathered Serpent God, Kakul Khan, known and worshiped in central Mexico as Quetzalcoatl, the ideology of the religion. It was a clear departure from the cult of the Divine ruler of times past, transcending all the linguistic and ethnic divisions that had characterized the old order and promoting an exchange of ideas throughout Mesoamerica, and yet before long even Chichén Itzá would fall again, although From the Ashes another state would emerge. They emerged forged by leagues of foreign ruling elites. This was the era of Mayapán, perhaps the last of the truly great cities of the Mayans in 1461.
The Cacombe Rolling family had been demanding tribute for decades. Finally, the Jewish hostages gathered a force to defeat them. It was a blood feud that would continue for centuries, the city was abandoned joining the already crumbling metropolises of the South, leaving only relatively small centers like Tulum still intact and to say that the people in general were necessarily worse off just because they now chose to live in Los Smaller groups no longer submit to the whims of increasingly important elites, but, of course, much worse was to come, as the Spanish brought much more than weapons and the Christian God aboard their ships brought all kinds of diseases, smallpox, diphtheria, cholera, bubonic plague, typhus and In Mesoamerica, typhoid fever had no pack animals and therefore no longer had silent immunity to diseases of pigs, cows and sheep, so that when people like Cortés crossed the desert in 1525 with large numbers of pack animals, he may well have brought death in his wake, as other conquistadors did before and after, all that was needed was for one community to be affected by these plagues, they would spread one by one to the others.
It is believed that in total up to 90 percent of people in the new world may have died from such diseases. those who survived lived in a post-apocalyptic landscape with its forced conversion and destruction of their old ways. It was a world without memory, history or meaning. No wonder it seemed impossible that they would have built the great cities of yesteryear after hundreds of years of slavery. In 1761 the underlying tensions finally exploded as the colonial city of Valodalid was devastated by a Mayan army from the Hinterland. They were prohibited from possessing weapons instead they fought with shovels and with their own hands much of the city was destroyed its population massacred. to the foreigners ER of the Rebellion calling himself kanak after the old man is a king he was finally captured by the Spanish, the intense reprisals imposed against the Mayan population at first he was tortured mercilessly, then he was hanged and, while he was still alive The tensions of the 19th century exploded again and when Stevens and Catherwood made their Journey through the Yucatan, a full-scale war known as the Reparto Wars broke out which only ended more than 50 years later, in 1901, with the capture of the Mayan capital Chan Santa Cruz, by which time some 250,000 people had lost their lives, many of them Spanish settlers.
A large percentage of the total population continued until 1933. The foreign IST Sylvanus Morley arrived in Tulum in 1922, it was not long after that a saint or witch settled there to The Mayans finally free from Spanish rule were again able to practice the customs of their ancestors. The cult of the talking cross is heretical to hardline Catholics and has immense importance. Today there are many autonomous communities of Mayans throughout southern Mexico that date back to the days of their powerful ancestors. Having every chance of surviving the test of time, foreigner Giles Healey moved to Mexico in 1944, the modern world was in full catastrophic apogee.
Mass death technologies implemented around the world during the Horus of World War II compared to the forests of Central. America must have seemed like a different planet, like stepping back in time to ancient times, graduating from Yale in 1924 with a degree in chemistry before embarking on a career as a cartographer-photographer, eventually by the 1940s archaeologist who worked for the powerful United Fruit Company and commissioned him to make a film. In his name, Healy delved deep into the Chiapas jungle west of the La Kahana River in search of an elusive town seemingly lost in foreign time for the next two years.
Not only would Healy find the lake at Don Maya, but he would also befriend them and bring them many gifts of hunting rifles. ammunition, clothing, food and medicines in exchange they guided him to the sacred sites of their ancestors, many of whom, like yakshelan and bonimpak, treated and continue to treat them with immense respect, believing that they were the abodes of their gods and that they still frequent them today to make offerings incense and keeping their ancient Traditions alive by 1946 Healey had explored and mapped around 20 sites, it was only then that the lakondant decided to show him one of the most striking of all, Bonham Park, where white men had previously been denied access.
Ely ascended to the main As he approached the temple complex to a building on the lower platform of the temple, he could see three separate entrances, all leading to individual rooms. At first, the strangers entered one of the rooms, everything was dark, but when the light of the torches illuminated him, he could hardly believe that his eyes around him covered the walls. exceptionally preserved foreign murals, it had been hypothesized that such things must have once existed, given the small fragments left elsewhere, hints of paint that give only a small idea of ​​what glories might have existed turned to nothing by persistent forest moisture, but here in Bonham Park because of the unusual conditions inside that building and perhaps reverence for the place, meaning it was left untouched.
Completely unique and unprecedented in their state of preservation, elaborate frescoes dating from the heyday of theclassical period between about 790 and 800. A.D. The work is believed to have been accomplished during a single session conducted by a genius artist, perhaps a Mayan Michelangelo. They illustrate the realities of real life during this time. The first room shows the presentation of an heir to his people and the celebration of his acceptance. complete with naked sacrificial victims arranged around blood oozing from their extracted nails when the Mayans were widely thought to have been a peaceful theocratic society, a philosopher, astronomers, and calendar priests.
The reality that human sacrifice and war were not only accepted but were integral parts of society came as a great shock to many in the countryside. Foreign archaeologist Sylvanus Morley, one of the giants of his time who had named Bonampak in the first place simply refused to believe it, but as the years passed the evidence continued to mount, the Mayans were knocked off their pedestal like any other culture. in the history of the world. After all, they were human warriors and philosophers, astronomers and attachment to blood sacrifice, in the words of the French philosopher Claude Levi Strauss, it is the demand of the knee that constitutes the species or in other words, those of the 16th century priest Bartholomew De Las Casas.
The world is human, and yet even today wild theories abound, such as those of ancient aliens and ancient supercivilizations, which argue that the Mayans could not have built their civilization on their own. In the years after Stevens and Catherwood there was a major regression in public opinion about Native Americans, a regression that still continues to this day in the late 19th century the first photographer of the ruins and respected archaeologist Desiree Charney thought that They were of Asian origin, the first researcher who visited Palenque Ramón Agriar went even further by deciding that the place had been built by the voter Quetzalcóatl Legendary hero of myth after receiving the Divine mandate to abandon Atlantis and lay the foundations of Central American civilization.
During a century of research and discovery, despite pseudoarchaeological claims to the contrary, evidence of Mesoamerican contact with peoples from across the foreign ocean has never been found. of the Spanish at the end of the 15th century, however, large amounts of evidence concretely indicate a purely indigenous cultural development, wearily independent of the old world. Native Americans developed technologies for hunting, agriculture, irrigation, pottery, metalworking, writing, urban planning, political systems, step pyramids, and monumental architecture, even if a street fisherman or traders landed on American shores at one time or another. These events simply would not have been sufficient to affect the overall trajectory of cultural development.
Any evidence of this is completely missing when we study the Mayan civilization. Therefore, we are dealing with a culture that was formed from its own internal processes, certainly shaped by contacts with neighbors, but these were local interactions, not distant foreign ones, so when we look at the Mayan people of today, About 6 million of them, we can be sure that we are looking at the descendants of the people who built those magnificent temples, observatories, religious and political structures and technologies, the fact that their lifestyle has changed over the centuries. centuries should not deceive us into believing that they were incapable of such an achievement or even that their current way of life is inferior to the previous one. lived in the past Despite the immense changes of the last 500 years, many of the ancient traditions have survived to the present, including beliefs about marriage and kinship, the cultivation of crops, crafts and the production of goods, the beliefs, the rituals, the dances and perhaps most importantly, their spoken language.
Elements of Mayan society notable for their cohesion date back directly to the ancient past, unlike most other indigenous groups that ended up dispersing over the years after the arrival of Europeans. The Mayans remain a largely homogeneous group found in one region, the Yucatan Peninsula. Belize Guatemala the western parts of Honduras and the Chiapas and Tabasco regions of Mexico an uninterrupted area the lands of their ancestors in the past it was common for Europeans to look down on the Mayans as well as other indigenous Americans denouncing their pagan practices and rituals religious as barbarians. Often to justify conquest, colonialism and conversion, Christian priests and missionaries accompanied each Spanish expedition to the new world because the legal and moral justification for the conquest came from Christianity during the long and violent takeover of Yucatán by the Spanish, which included the extraction of countless indigenous peoples into slavery Christian missionaries strove to convert local populations as we have seen, although some Mayans enthusiastically accepted the new faith, many resisted, some members of the clergy resorted to harsh measures, even burning Mayan sacred books irreplaceable abroad due to the difficulty of transporting the Mayans.
Far from their indigenous religious practices, Spanish elites began to argue that the Mayan people needed to be converted by force. In 1550 and 1551 an important debate occurred between Juan Guínez and Sepúlveda, who argued that Mayan crimes against nature, such as human sacrifice and self-mutilation, were necessary. be suppressed even by war if necessary and Bartolomé De Las Casas, one of the first humanitarians who argued that the Mayans were fully capable of reasoning and should be convinced through persuasion and not force, no clear winner of the debate was determined. , but the Spanish continued their efforts to Christianize the population, while the Mayans, even as they accepted the new faith, often clung to many of their own traditions and symbols, it is important to note that although today we consider human sacrifice as immoral in the same period that the Mayans practiced it in In Europe, thousands of people were being burned alive on stakes for heresy, suffering all kinds of torture and prolonged executions in the name of religion, executions that would only become more common with the witchcraft trials of the 17th century, as we have seen that Europeans also downplayed Mayan achievements as insignificant or insignificant.
They simply denied that the achievements were theirs. There are many today who continue to do this, claiming that a more advanced culture from elsewhere was responsible for the greatness of the Mayan civilization and that the indigenous people simply imitated the ideas of these older visitors, adapting them in a simple way. or in an uncomfortable way after everything that has happened to them over the centuries, this is a great insult to the Mayan people. Over the centuries, researchers have gradually come to understand that the Mayan civilization is no more fantastic or mythical than any other and is a complex one.
Ingenious and remarkable society that developed over long periods of time in the same way as other ancient societies, no matter what continent they were on and, like the rest of the world, credit and criticism should be given where it is due, fortunately today Today there are many misconceptions about Mayan society are being corrected, mysteries about their past are being solved and more and more hard evidence is being collected to shed light on this fascinating culture. Only time will tell what more riches there are waiting to be found. You've been watching history. As always I'm your host Pete Kelly, if you want to know more why not watch my full Mayan video series where I visit first hand the fantastic sites of this incredible people.
It's a playlist I will be adding to for many years to come, I still have many more cities to visit, please like and subscribe if you liked the video and why not leave a comment to help the algorithm, thanks for watching and see you soon Next time.

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