{"id":25810,"date":"2023-06-21T07:11:19","date_gmt":"2023-06-21T05:11:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=234156"},"modified":"2023-06-21T09:12:57","modified_gmt":"2023-06-21T07:12:57","slug":"your-guide-to-ancient-maya-from-the-writing-system-to-the-truth-about-human-sacrifice","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/your-guide-to-ancient-maya-from-the-writing-system-to-the-truth-about-human-sacrifice\/","title":{"rendered":"Your guide to ancient Maya: from the writing system to the truth about \u2018human sacrifice\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professor Matthew Restall of Pennsylvania State University answers key questions on the ancient Maya civilisation <\/p>

By Elinor Evans\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Wednesday, 21 June 2023 at 12:00 am<\/p>

\n\n

Is it correct to say Maya or Mayans? Or could we use either?<\/h2>\n

It\u2019s Maya; Mayan only applies to the language they speak. So, it\u2019s the people of the Maya or the Mayas with an \u2018s\u2019, but they are not the Mayans.<\/p>\n

Who were the Maya?<\/h2>\n

I love that question because it gives me a chance to rephrase the question. It must be \u2018Who are the Maya?\u2019 There are six or seven million Maya alive today, defined more or less as people who speak Mayan. Most are still in the Maya area, but there has been the Maya diaspora so many are in Mexico, the United States, parts of Central America, and Europe.<\/p>\n

Alternatively, you could add a word to the question: \u2018Who were the ancient (or pre-Colombian) Maya?\u2019 Now we\u2019re talking about the civilisation of the ancient Maya, which is usually what people mean.<\/p>\n

\""The\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
The ruins of Tikal, a city of the ancient Maya civilisation, in modern-day Guatemala. (Image by Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

The short answer is the Maya are an ethnic group who built a spectacular civilisation and have been around for thousands of years. In terms of area, their civilisation geographically comprises loosely of southern Mexico and northern Central America (all of modern-day Guatemala and Belize, much of Honduras, parts of El Salvador, and a big chunk of Mexico, including the Yucatan peninsula).<\/p>\n

When was the start of the Maya civilisation?<\/h2>\n

Archaeologists debate and constantly change the date as they discover more about the early Maya. But we can agree, more or less, on somewhere around 1000 BC, when peoples developed a lifestyle and culture that we can start talking about as being Maya, and some of the other hallmarks of who the Maya were \u2013 like their calendar and hieroglyph writing system.<\/p>\n

But that date tends to get pushed further and further back as archaeologists dig deeper, both literally and metaphorically.<\/p>\n

What are some common misconceptions about the Maya civilisation?<\/h2>\n

I think the obvious one is that the Maya don\u2019t exist anymore, and not only that, but that they disappeared in some mysterious way. Another is that they were very violent.<\/p>\n

Misconception 1: the Maya disappeared<\/h3>\n

Over the last hundred years or more, people have come up with increasingly outlandish explanations as to what happened to them. One is kind of fringe and crazy (but you\u2019d be amazed at how much you can find it repeated): the Mayans were aliens, and the reason they were able to create spectacular cities and a beautiful writing system, and could understand the movement of the planets to create an advanced calendar and mathematics was because they\u2019d come from outer space. What happened to them? Where did they go? They went back to the planet they came from. You can see the appeal of this theory. It does kind of wrap up all these questions in a nice, tidy bow.<\/p>\n

Misconception 2: the Maya was a violent society<\/h3>\n

Whether you have seen the Mel Gibson movie Apocalypto<\/em> or not, you\u2019re perhaps still going to have an impression \u2013 the same impression that many people have about the Aztecs \u2013 that they were very violent, and that their culture was oriented around what we love to call \u2018human sacrifice\u2019.<\/p>\n

I have a real problem with the phrase ‘human sacrifice’ <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>

I have a real problem with that phrase. This is where I will get into arguments with other historians, anthropologists and archaeologists. When people in early modern Britain or Spain were burned at the stake for political and religious reasons, we don\u2019t talk about that as human sacrifice. It\u2019s only ritual political and religious executions by other peoples that we place in this \u2018other\u2019 exotic category.<\/p>\n

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A 16th-century miniature depicting human sacrifice, by Dominican Friar. (Image by Getty Images)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

The fact is: the Maya were no more violent than any other civilisation or culture, nor were they any less violent. But they did not practice \u2018human sacrifice\u2019 on any kind of massive scale. Were people ritually executed? Yes. Were offerings made to deities? Yes. But the vast majority were not human, not even animals. It was plants, herbs and incense.<\/p>\n

There were self-sacrificial rituals where a person might cut themselves to let some blood, which would go on a sacred piece of paper, or something like that. The ritualised execution of a human being happened relatively rarely, and I would argue probably less often than was happening in Europe during the same period.<\/p>\n