Why the Maya are Awesome.

So, this being my first ever blog post, I decided to do it on something I consider to be awesome, the Maya. First and foremost, they get thrown into this category in my opinion because they are the ONLY pre-Columbian civilization in America which had its very own fully developed written language. This to me is crazy, because the Maya had their own language, and on top of that it was one which was recorded and written. This is mind blowing because at the time many European cultures were not even educated enough to have the majority of their population know how to write. Another interesting aspect of the Maya society is their architectural advances as well as their mathematical intelligence. Using this intelligence, they discovered two items. The first of which, being the idea of the number zero, which was unknown to civilization before this point. Secondly, was the Gregorian calendar, which used a 365 year period.

Another odd Mayan tradition originates with their religion, being both celestial and terrestrial there was a priest which interpreted the cycles and sort of gave ideas to what the future held. The most interesting aspect of their religion to me is the idea of human sacrifice. Now this has been seen in other cultures up until this point as well, however, the enthralling aspect of the Maya is that in many cases there would be individuals who held the human being sacrificed arms and legs while the priest tore his heart from his living body. There is no known reasoning behind this, although there are many theories. Another interesting fact is that many of the sacrifices made were children, who were thought to be pure.

At its peak, the Maya culture was one of if not the largest civilization in the world, with a very diverse and ambiguous culture (to the Europeans). Although the reasoning’s are not entirely sound, the Maya empire sort of diminished in the 17 and 1800’s. Some theorize there was a massive drought, others believe it may be due to overpopulation and food running out, whatever the cause the Maya’s were one amazing culture.