The Maya Civilisation

The first of the Meso-American cultures to develop after the end of the Ice Age was to be the Olmecs, an African-like race that ruled the coast of the Mexican Gulf between 1500 - 300 B.C. It was these people that left massive sculptured heads, probably of their rulers. As the Olmec culture waned, two other native cultures emerged. These were the Maya and the people from the great city of Teotihuacan.

The Maya are probably the most well known of the pre-Columbian civilizations of Mesoamerica. Originating in the Yucatán around 2600 B.C., they rose to prominence around A.D. 250. They founded numerous kingdoms in the mountainous regions of present-day southern Mexico, Guatemala, northern Belize, western Honduras and Salvador.

Building on the inherited inventions and ideas of earlier civilizations such as the Olmec, the Maya developed astronomy, calendrical systems and hieroglyphic writing. The Maya were noted as well for elaborate and highly decorated ceremonial architecture, including temple-pyramids, palaces and observatories, all built without metal tools. They were also skilled farmers, clearing large sections of tropical rain forest and, where groundwater was scarce, building sizeable underground reservoirs for the storage of rainwater.

The Maya were equally skilled as weavers and potters, and cleared routes through jungles and swamps to foster extensive trade networks with distant peoples.

Around 300 B.C., the Maya adopted a hierarchical system of government ruled by nobles and kings. This civilization developed into highly structured kingdoms during the Classic period, A.D. 200-900. Their society consisted of many independent states, each with a rural farming community around growing maize, beans, peppers and tomatoes, crops native to the area.

Mayan culture was at its height between 300 and 900 A.D. Many ceremonial cities were built with pyramids and palaces. No one lived in these cities - they were used only for religious ceremonies. The main centres were Chiapas (in southern Mexico) and Peten (in northern Guatemala). But it started to decline around A.D. 900 - the southern Maya were forced by war and famine to abandon their cities and they moved north to the Yucatan peninsula. When the northern Maya were integrated into the Toltec society by A.D. 1200, the Maya dynasty finally came to a close, although some peripheral centres continued to thrive until the Spanish Conquest in the early sixteenth century. Their customs were influenced by the Toltec Indians and their religious ceremonies began to include human sacrifices.

Mayan history can be characterized as cycles of rise and fall: city-states rose in prominence and fell into decline, only to be replaced by others. It could also be described as one of continuity and change, guided by a religion that remains the foundation of their culture. For those who follow the ancient Maya traditions, the belief in the influence of the cosmos on human lives and the necessity of paying homage to the gods through rituals continues to find expression in a modern hybrid Christian-Maya faith.