The second calendar, called the Haab, is a solar year of days. Together, the Tzolkin and Haab form the third calendar known as the Calendar Round, referring to a period of 52 solar years. The Mayan solar calendar is astoundingly accurate, even more so than the modern calendar we use today. While debating the likelihood of this prophecy can make for interesting conversation, Maya people saw the world as undergoing recurring cycles of death and rebirth, so that the end of the current calendar cycle also marks the start of the next one rather than an onslaught of the apocalypse.
Mayan culture made adept use of the natural environment in Central America to maintain health and treat illnesses. Traditional Mayan medicine is said to employ native plants to treat malaria and manage diabetes, among many other uses. Mayan civilization and culture flourished for thousands of years until roughly , about the time that the Spanish set about exploring and conquering the New World. Belize is home to many of the oldest ruins of Mayan civilization and more than Mayan sites.
Belize is also a popular point of departure for trips to the ancient Mayan civilization of Tikal in Guatemala. Altun Ha refers to the ruins of an ancient Mayan city located about 30 miles 50 km north of Belize City. Caracol is the largest Mayan site and ruins in Belize.
Located about 25 miles south of San Ignacio in the foothills of the Maya Mountains, Caracol occupies an area of some 88 square kilometers and once supported a population of about , people in the sixth century AD. Today, this area supports the largest Maya population. This divergence adds a further complication to efforts to translate the hieroglyphic writing of the city-states.
Scholars today are still trying to reconstruct the family tree of the Mayan languages and there are different interpretations, but it is generally felt that four or five language groups had emerged by the Middle Preclassic period B.
Back to Exhibitions. The Mayans were a prominent civilization in Mesoamerica which spread over an enormous region including the Yucatan peninsula, southeastern Mexico, the western areas of El Salvador and Honduras, and Belize and Guatemala in their entirety. Crops such as beans, chili peppers, maize and squashes were star ingredients in the Mayan diet, all of which are still commonly found in the modern day Mexican diet.
The Mayans are known as the only group to have existed in the pre-Columbian Americas to have established a complete writing system. The upper class was literate, and the Mayans recorded important historical facts and ritual practices in screenfold books. The Mayans placed great value in art; materials including jade, wood, ceramics, stucco, obsidian, paint and stone were expertly crafted by skilled artisans.
After a period of two years, they moved their fields to new locations, allowing the old fields to lie fallow for ten years before reusing them. They lived in small villages consisting of household compounds occupied by extended families. Their thatched-roof houses were usually one-room huts with walls of interwoven wooden poles covered with dried mud.
These huts were used primarily for sleeping; daily chores such as cooking took place outdoors in the central communal compound. The division of labour between men and women was clearly defined: the men looked after building huts and caring for the cornfields, and the women prepared food, made clothing, and tended to the family's domestic needs.
These ancient farming methods and family traditions have persisted over the centuries and continue to be followed in many rural communities today. The southern Maya in the mountain valleys chose to unite under high-ranking chiefs of kings, but most of the lowland Maya resisted the pressure to conform, preferring tribal confederacies that recognized no power above their village patriarchs.
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