The origin & where they live now

 Mayans are originally from Guatemala. The majority of

Guatemala’s population is Mayan Indian. Most Mayans
live in villages and towns in the country’s highlands.
From town to town Mayan groups speak slightly different
languages and create unique art.

 The Mayas built great cities such as Copán in the

present day country of Honduras and Tikal in present
day Guatemala. Mayan cities were religious centers.
Large pyramid shaped temples often stood in the middle
of Mayan cities. The Mayas worshiped their gods there
and performed rituals including human sacrifice or the
offering of human life to their gods.
 Their basic beliefs
 Mayan religion was characterized by the worship of Nature
gods, especially the gods of sun, rain and corn, a priestly
class, the importance of astronomy and astrology, rituals
of human sacrifice and the building of elaborate
pyramidical temple.
 Some aspects of Mayan religion survive today among the
Mayan Indians of Mexico and central America who
practice a combination of traditional religion and roman
catholism. The remaining Mayas were conquered by the
Spanish and converted to roman catholism.
 The present day Mayan peoples are spread mainly across
southern Mexico with small numbers in Guatemala and
Belize. They practice a religion that combines roman
catholism with Mayan cosmology, deities, and domestic
rituals.
 Arts and traditions
 The Mayan society was a strict theocratic hierarchy, where the priests held
great power for their connection with the gods. Warfare played an
essential part of Mayan society, and they did practice human sacrifice. It is
believed that they sacrificed captured enemy warriors and ball players as
well as people of their own tribe, going willingly to the World of the Gods.
Many offerings and sacrifices, human and others, have been found in
cenotes, the fresh water sinkholes found throughout the Yucatán.

 The priests and royalty also performed auto-sacrifice, for example by

piercing a body part to offer their own blood. One popular bloodletting
ceremony, shown on many examples of Mayan art, was to pierce their own
tongue and thread a thin rope through the hole, thus letting the blood run
down the rope.

 The tradition of offering alcohol or blood to the Gods is still in pratice in

many places around the Mayan World. Maya hand woven traditional
clothing can reveal the wearers identity as a belonging to a certain
linguistic group, her origin from a specific place, or place in a religious
hierarchy.
 More Arts and Traditions
 In most Mayan villages, women weave cloth for their family's clothing
or for ceremonial, artistic, and, increasingly, commercial purposes
Mayan women weave the design of the universe into their cloth. Like
prayers, the designs woven speak to the gods to convey wishes or
reflect the glory of the universe. An embroidered scorpion calls down
the rain. Cotton symbolizes clouds. A diamond represents the world.
The number thirteen recalls the sun's course through the sky and
underworld. Elaborate geometric designs repeated on each piece map
the organization of the Mayan cosmos.
The Mayans Encounters with the Europeans
 The early inhabitants of the Caribbean and Central America were
the Arawaks and the Caribs, who were skilled hunters,
fishermen, and farmers. The Arawak people learned the skill of
farming about 9,000 A.D. through cultivating wild seed fruits and
roots and growing crops of maize, yams, cassava, cotton, and
tobacco. The Maya people developed complex civilizations in
Central America and Mexico, thousands of years before
Europeans arrived in the region.

 The Maya civilization took thousands of years to develop, and

reached its height between 250 A.D. and 900 A.D. These ancient
peoples were farmers and thrived on crops of beans, corn,
cocoa, squash, and chile peppers. The Maya were also proficient
potters and cloth makers. They made beautiful clay pots that
they hardened with fire. They wove fabrics from the cotton that
they farmed and dyed the cloth with bright patterns. The multi-
faceted Maya were also great stone workers, making jewelry
from jade, gold, silver, copper, and bronze, as well as erecting
various architectural wonders including plazas, palaces, public
buildings, temples, and sculptures of their gods and heroes.
 The Mayans Encounters with the
Europeans continued…
 The Spanish began conquering Central American countries, including
Guatemala and Honduras, and devastating the Maya settlements.
Spaniards tried to gain control of the Maya of Chetumal, which was
the capital of a large Maya area in Belize, but the Maya people
opposed the Spanish invasion with methods that included burning
Spanish buildings, making the capital a refuge for the Maya in other
areas who were trying to escape the Spaniards.
 The Spanish never gained control of the Maya who resided in Belize.
Still, the Spanish took their toll on the Mayas. Before the Spanish
invasion, the Maya population numbered about 400,000. Afterward,
the number of Maya people in the region dropped about 86 percent
due to war and European diseases.
 When the British came to Belize, the Maya were no longer living on
the coast, and there are no recorded encounters between the two
cultures until the late 18th century. In the 18th century, the Spanish
forced the British out of the land, but never inhabited it, so the British
returned to Belize and expanded their settlements and logwood trade.
 The Mayans Encounters with the
Europeans continued…
 As the British moved deeper into Belize, they inevitably
came in contact with the Maya. The Maya were pushed
back into the forests, but did not surrender easily. In 1866
Marcos Canul, the leader of the Mayans, led a revolt
against a British mahogany camp and captured British
prisoners. He demanded ransom for the hostages as well
as payment for the land that the British had stolen. The
British retorted by burning the Maya crops and destroying
their villages and food supplies in hopes of starving them
out of the region. But within five years the Mayans had
rebuilt their villages and replanted their crops. They
continued attacking the British settlements until the death
of Canul.
 How their lives were affected by
European colonist.
 Beginning around 1960, a civil war raged in
Guatemala for more than 30 years. First an
elected leader who favored land reform was
overthrown by the military. Then government
military forces fought rebel groups that were
living I the highlands. Thousands of civilians
were killed, and many others fled the country.,
The Mayas suffered during the civil war. In
hundreds of villages throughout Guatemala,
soldiers came to claim the Mayas land. Many
Mayas lost all of their belongs and were forced
out of there villages.
Problems the Mayans face today in
the modern world
 The Maya today number about six million people, making them
the largest single block of indigenous peoples north of Peru.
many Maya communities have succeeded in preserving their
identity and their ways. This is partly because, throughout their
history, the Maya have been confined to a single unbroken
area including parts of southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize,
and the western edges of Honduras and El Salvador.
 In 1996 agreements were signed promising that indigenous
communities would be rebuilt. However not all of the
agreements have been followed. Violations of human rights by
the government increased again in 2000, and many
Guatemala's protested in the streets. The fight for the rights of
the Mayas and for all of the ordinary people of Guatemala
continues today.
 How climate shaped mayans
culture
 What caused the collapse of the great Maya
civilization?
 A long time of dry climate, enlarged by three
intense droughts, led to the end of the Maya
society. Climate change is to reason for one of
the worst collapses in human history.
 Then, almost in an instant, a society of some 15
million people imploded, leaving deserted cities,
trade routes, and immense pyramids in ruins.
The sudden demise is one of the greatest
archeological mysteries of our time.
 How Mayans culture changed as a
result of European conquest
 The Mexican invasion of the Mayas in the Yucatan occurred in the century that followed the
end of the Classic Period for the Mayas. There is 800 miles that separates the groups and
this meant long and difficult travel for the Mexican Toltecs. Toltec art and architecture is
seen first in the late 900s at Chichen Itza, a Mayan city that had flourished during the
Classic Period. According to Maya records, the Toltec rule of Chichen Itza lasted for two
centuries and as a result, the Maya way of life was altered considerably. The Toltecs
brought with them many new religious cults and beliefs such as the worship of
Quetzalcoatl-Kukulcan, the feather-serpent god. This is important because after the
Mexicans gained control of the Mayas at Chichen Itza, this god became a part of the new
architecture that accompanied the arrival of the Toltecs and it proves that the Toltecs did in
fact change the Mayan way of life. The invaders also brought very militaristic attitudes with
them and this was also reflected in the new Maya art as warriors began to be depicted more
frequently.
 Although the Itza’s controlled virtually every aspect of the new Mayan society, after 200
years of their rule, a famous character in Mayan history wiped out the Itza’s almost single
handedly. Hunac Ceel, also called Cauich, became the ruler after a ceremony in which
sacrifices were made to the rain gods. Ceel became the ruler of the area and in no time
drove the ruler of Chichen Itza and his followers from the city. This new leadership that was
started by Ceel controlled the Yucatan and surrounding areas for two and a half centuries
and there were numerous changes that resulted.