Mayans and Aztecs

Mesoamerica is where all the Mesoamerican civilizations lived. The Olmecs, Chichimecs and Toltecs were the earliest empires, but the Mayans and the Aztecs were the most advanced and civilized. What defines the Mayans and Aztecs as being civilized, what were their beliefs, what was their religion, and what led to their down fall?

The Mayans weren’t the most advanced civilization but were able to keep their empire going for the longest period of time. The Mayans started around 600 b.c, and came to an end around 900 a.d. Their civilization was mostly located in central and southern Mexico around the Yucatan peninsula. The capital of their empire was the city-state Tikal. A city-state is just a city and its surrounding territories. The Mayans borrowed most of their ideas and beliefs from the Toltecs and Olmecs. They even took their religion from other civilizations and just tweaked it a little. They mainly took ideas of architecture, time keeping, and religion or beliefs, like gods.

The Mayans where defined as a civilization because of its developed agriculture, cities and pyramids, social organization, writing, and education.  Their developed agricultural systems allowed less people to farm and more people to work on other technologies. What amazed scientists was their ability to build large cities and hundreds of pyramids. You may think building a pyramid is easy, but for the Mayans, they had to carve, construct, and move several ton blocks all by man power. The Mayans also had a very efficient social organization which was simply the leader at the top and slave and farmers at the bottom and all the other orders in the middle based on usefulness. The Mayans had an extremely advanced solar calendar. They had a 20 month year and an 18 day month. To end up with 365 days in a year they added “5 bad days”, or unlucky days, to the end of every year. The Mayans, like most previous civilizations, had an effective form of writing called hieroglyphics, or picture writing. In addition, the Mayans had an impressive education and many had great skills. And to top it all off, the Mayans had a complex religion.

The religion of the Mayans was polytheistic. They believed in multiple gods like the god of war, rain, earth, and many more. To please their gods, they would give them blood. It wasn’t just the blood of enemies, but noble priests would give their own blood by cutting their wrist and bleed for awhile. The Mayans did not go over bored with gallons of blood just a little bit every now and then. The Mayans did not really sacrifice people either. Instead, they played a sacred ball game, which was borrowed from previous civilizations, and the winning team would sacrifice one member to the gods. We think of this as being stupid but the Mayans thought of it as an honor to be given to the gods.