The Mayans are an interesting people.
Known for their complex calendars, their ridiculous tendency to put hieroglyphs on virtually anything,
and for their mysterious disappearance in the 9th century, they have left plenty of
history for archeologists to uncover.
If you’re new here, I’m Darius Cosden and this is Vlogs of Knowledge.
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every single Wednesday.
And today, we’re talking about the Mayan Civilization.
Now, I’m going to assume that you’ve all heard of the Mayan Civilization.
I think we can all remember when the world was supposed to end on December 21st, 2012.
That came directly from the Mayan Calendar, because it was on that date that the calendar
stopped.
However, you have to be careful not to confuse the Mayans with the Aztecs, or the Incas,
both of which are totally different civilizations that not only lived in a different location,
but also in a different time period.
The Incas came much later in the 13th century AD in modern day Peru, and the Aztecs around
the same time in modern day Mexico.
The Mayans however, are said to have been the biggest and most influential civilizations
in what historians now call “Mesoamerica”.
Mesoamerica is a simple way to define the Americas before the Spanish conquest in the
16th century.
And this Spanish conquest is very important.
But we’ll talk more about that later.
Let’s start first with location.
The Mayans were largely centred in the Yutacan peninsula, part of modern-day Mexico, as well
as parts of Guatemala and Belize.
The tropical location allowed for agriculture to develop, most notably the growing of many
crops such as maize, beans and other vegetables, and for rivers to form, which was crucial
in allowing transportation by canoe later on.
Mayan history dates back to somewhere between the year 8000 BC and 2000 BC, which historians
have now called the Archaic Period.
During this time a group of hunter-gatherer people began to settle down, to develop agriculture
and to domesticate animals.
This radical shift in lifestyle gave rise to the very first villages and settlements
of the then-Mayan civilization.
These small tribes of nomads wandering around from location to location had finally learnt
the art of settling down, planting a crop and waiting for the harvest.
Towards the end of the Archaic Period, you had small local villages start to pop up around
the territory.
They included sacred spots and temples dedicated to the various gods of the time.
Keep in mind that there is nothing particularly interesting or remarcable from the Mayans
from this time.
They were, just like their neighbours across the ocean, in the process of developing their
culture into what was later to become a fully-grown civilization.
What follows is the next period in Mayan history: the Pre-Classical Period.
While they were already settled, cultivating their crops and living in small villages,
another civilization was rising to the west: the Olmecs.
The Olmecs settled along the Gulf of Mexico and began building great cities of stone and
brick.
Not only did they build great cities, but they were also one of the first in Mesoamerica
to create sculptures, which we now refer to as the “Olmec heads”.
These pieces of art suggest a highly sophisticated skill in sculpture and even point us to the
first indications of shamanic religious practices.
But they also posed a very interesting question to modern day archeologists.
Why are these sculptures so big?
I mean look at them, they’re huge!
Since they were so big, at first, we thought that these Olmecs might be giants.
I mean it’s a good guess, but later on we discovered that they were not.
The Olmecs are an interesting civilization because no one knows where they came from,
nor what happened to them.
The evidence doesn’t really allow us to be fully conclusive, but the Olmecs are believed to
have brought forth many traditions and rituals that would dominate the later cultures of
Mesoamerica.
They are believed to have been the first in the Western hemisphere to develop writing,
to perform human sacrifices with human blood, to develop the “long-count calendar”,
which we’ll talk about later, and to play the “Mesoamerican ballgame” that we found
to be a central aspect of Mayan culture.
That game, that the Mayans called "Pok-A-Tok", was a central
part in their culture.
I mean this wasn't just a game that people played for fun recreationally.
This was a game that had serious religious implications that often ended up in people dying
as a result of the score in the game.
Allow me to explain.
You can think of it like soccer.
You have two teams, a rubber ball, and a sort of net.
Now this net, is a little different. It was more like a basketball hoop, attached maybe on a wall somewhere.
The net could be as high up as 20 feet and the goal was to get the rubber ball through
the net.
Now here’s the catch.
You weren’t allowed to use your hands, nor your feet, which as you can imagine, made
it extremely difficult to score a goal.
As a result, games would often go on for days and as soon as one person scored, it was considered
the end of the game and that his team had won.
Now I said that the game involved sacrifice.
Historians are still unsure of who was actually being sacrificed, whether it be the captain
of the losing team, or the captain of the winning team, or sometimes even the entire
team, whether it be the winners or losers,
but at least they can at least all agree that usually, somebody was killed at the end of
the game.
This game represented the natural cycle and movement of life.
And for the Mayans, sacrifice was a central part of life.
They didn’t believe in the traditional “beginning of time” and “end of time”.
Instead, they believed that everything functioned in cycles, and that nothing ever died or ceased
to exist.
Sacrifices were seen as simply passing on to the next phase in the cycle, whether it
be going through the underworld and ascending through the 9 levels found there, or possibly
trying to get to heaven, but having to pass through the 13 levels to get there,
the Mayans had absolutely no problem with offering human sacrifices.
Their religion involved several aspects of nature, astronomy and rituals.
Most Gods represented a form in nature, for example, the Sun God, or Maize God, which
came directly from the Maize that was a central part in Mayan diet.
They were polytheistic, and worshipped somewhere around 165 different gods.
The years went by, and slowly, these small villages and communities turned into larger
urban centres.
After the turn of the millennium, around the year 250 AD, we enter the period known as
the “classical period”.
And this is the period that most of us think about when talking about the Mayans.
The villages that had been built in the previous centuries were now turning to massive cities
housing tens of thousands of inhabitants.
Just like the Egyptians, large pyramid structures were built, and the Mayan cities that have
marvelled modern-day archeologists for so long, had finally been created.
These pyramids were built mostly for religious purposes.
One purpose was to serve as a place to offer sacrifices to the gods.
Another one might have been to represent the Mayan aspiration of reaching heaven
by building vertically.
Now, when looking at these buildings, perhaps the most obvious thing one can see is the
fact that hieroglyphic script is everywhere.
It’s no secret that the Mayan culture was heavily artistic.
And their hieroglyphs are the key to us understanding their history and their ideologies.
For the longest time, these hieroglyphs were thought to be indecipherable.
We thought we had too few remaining texts, too few remaining examples to properly identify
what these writings mean.
But, in the 1980s, some very smart people slowly began to crack the code.
We realized that the Mayans were big believers in documenting their own history.
Large carvings found in front of temples have been deciphered to reveal the long history
of the different rulers of the temple they were representing.
You literally had each ruler’s date of birth, the day they ascended to the throne, their
important life events, and their eventual death.
Having made these discoveries, archeologists were then able to build a sort of dictionary
with hieroglyphs that would help them decipher even more of these carvings.
We’ve learnt about their culture, their religious beliefs, their daily rituals, and
we were finally able to decipher the famous Mayan calendar, which has confused people
for many centuries.
The discoveries that we’ve made about the Mayans tell us that they were a very advanced
civilization, capable of great mathematics and astronomy.
When we realized that their calendar ends on December 21st, 2012, it’s normal that
people got scared about a potential end of the world scenario.
The end date, contrary to the paranoia that happened in 2012, and as we’ve discovered,
does not indicate the end of time.
It in fact indicates the end of a cycle and the beginning of a new one, which fits perfectly
with the idea that cycles were the primary aspect of the universe in Mayan culture.
So no guys, don’t worry, we’re still stuck here on Earth.
At least for now.
For about 700 years, they thrived and advanced.
They were able to predict solar eclipses, to calculate the precise position of Venus
at all times, and for the most part, left a very thorough written record of all of their
advancements.
But, this civilization has something strange to it.
In the 9th century AD, most of their big cities were abandoned.
The Mayans simply decided to leave.
Now we don’t know why exactly.
Perhaps it was the deforestation that they caused, or a drought that made agriculture
very difficult, which some evidence might suggest, or it might simply be a religious
reason.
We don’t know.
The truth is that we probably would’ve known why, and also generally we would’ve known
a whole lot more about the Mayans than we do now, had it not been for the fact that
most of their texts and books were burned by the Spanish in the 16h century AD.
When Spain came to the new world, they saw the Mayans and other cultures as inferior
people that could be “used” and most importantly, people that could be converted to Catholicism.
Catholicism was the Spanish religion and they were very adamant on converting people to
it.
And if you know a little bit about Spanish history, this was in the middle of the Spanish
Inquisition, which, well you know was horrible.
They came, they burnt their books, and converted them to Catholicism and pretty much destroyed
most of their vast, rich culture.
Although some of it survived and went underground, it underwent a profound transformation.
It’s hard to keep your religion and culture when you have Spain, who is more sophisticated
and dangerous, dedicated to making sure you lose it.
The Mayans still remain today, still perform some of the same rituals of their ancestors,
but you can definitely see the Spanish influence.
Their culture has become a sort of mix of both, washed down and transformed throughout
the years.
It is unfortunate that this happened, but it did.
The only thing we can do now is work with what we have, and try to keep discovering
this interesting civilization.
And now I want to pass the question onto you guys.
What do you think of the Mayan civilization?
What do you think about the fact that Spain came and litterally destroyed everything?
Please do leave me a comment I would love to read and answer them all, and bonus points
for you if you do leave a comment, as always, you get a chance to be featured in next week’s video as a fan of the week!
Now as you know, and say at the end of every video, I haven’t talked about everything regarding
the Mayan civilization.
That’s ok.
I'm actually doing this on purpose to get you guys to go out and research more on your
own.
Because I believe in research and I believe in getting you guys educated on a subject.
It’s the whole reason I do this show.
For those curious, that want to learn more about the Mayan Civilization, as always, you’ll find links in the description where
you can start!
Thank you so much for watching this video, thank you for giving your time to me rambling about the Mayan Civilization,
if you've enjoyed this video please leave it a big thumbs up,
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With that being said, my name has been Darius Cosden, it’s been an absolute pleasure and
you can follow me on social media, the links will be in the description, and I’ll see you all next Wednesday!