The history of the Mayan civilization remains shrouded in mystery. But science has managed to find out that many of the secrets are nothing more than a myth. Representative of the international publishing house National Geografic Michael Shapiro destroyed the legends.
1. The Mayan civilization suddenly disappeared
Just as the fall of the Roman Empire did not mean the end of the existence of Roman citizens, so did the disappearance of the Mayan state, which reached the height of its development in the 9th century. BC does not mean that indigenous people disappeared without a trace.
Today, approximately 40% of Guatemala's inhabitants, some 14 million people living in southern Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula, are descendants of the Mayan peoples.
The Mayans persevered through five centuries of Spanish occupation, maintaining their cultural traditions, ancestral agrarian way of life and festival customs.
More than 20 provinces of Guatemala are inhabited by individual Mayan peoples. Each of them has its own culture, clothing and language. So for thousands of years the Mayans lived outside their empire.
2. The Mayans didn’t believe in the end of the world
In films about the apocalypse we are told what the Mayans prophesied. This moment occurred in the year 5000 according to the Mayan calendar. But this is not true.
Representatives ancient civilization We celebrated the beginning of the next cycle, which will begin in 5125, just as we celebrated the onset of the new millennium. No records have been found indicating the end of times. In any case, they hoped that with the new era, humanity would enter an era of higher consciousness, increased peace and a deep understanding of other peoples inhabiting the earth.
3. The ancient Mayans came up with the concept of zero.
The Mayan calendar is based on the value zero. However, the idea of zero is probably not a secret of the Mayan civilization. It originated in. And only in the 4th century. BC this invention became associated with the Mayan peoples.
Zero in the writing of civilization was represented by a symbol similar to a shell. The Mayan numerical system was based on 20 factors. Their numbers consisted of whole units: 1, 20, 400, etc. To write, for example, the number 403, they used one 400, plus zero ones 20, and three ones 1. This is how the concept of zero arose.
4. The Mayan city remained underground
Major sites built by the Mayan peoples, like Palenque in southern Mexico and in the north, have been found during archaeological excavations. Others remain buried underground. In Guatemala, mounds have been found that may contain great temples.
The least visited attractions are at El Mirador and Auxactun, north of Tikal in the Guatemalan jungle. In Belize, there are the open ruins of Altun Ha, 30 km from Belize City.
In all these places you can see pyramids.
5. The Mayans invented saunas
This is truly the secret of the Mayan civilization, the existence of which is difficult to argue. The ancient Mayans used a stone sauna known as a temazcal in the Yucatan Peninsula. Mayan saunas, "sweathouses", are still a popular holiday destination for tourists. They are offered to guests of hotels and resorts around the world.
The ancient Mayan cities were built from mud bricks. They were used for spiritual satisfaction and health. Steam was made by mixing water with fire. Sometimes leaves were added to the water. Sweat cleansed my skin and my mind.
6. The Mayan Empire was destroyed by a volcano
A number of volcanoes in Guatemala remain active. In the city of Antigua Guatemala, you can see the eruption of the Fuego volcano, throwing down columns of smoke and dropping fiery lava. The spectacle is especially magnificent at night. Not far from Antigua, about 1.5 hours away, is the Rasahua volcano, which has been erupting regularly for several years.
Antigua sells day tours to walk a few meters from the lava.
7. The Mayans crossed white-water rivers in boats
The mystery of the Mayan civilization about the construction of reliable rafts has long been solved. Guatemala offers world-class Rio Cahabon boating. During the trip, you can get a lot of impressions and get acquainted with the area where the ancient Mayans lived - the jungle on the river bank.
The Usumacinta River straddles the borders of Mexico and Guatemala. While walking along the river, the group stops to explore the ruins of Piedras Negras.
8. Sports were popular in the Mayan civilization.
Ball courts were found in cities. Competitions were held among teams. The soccer ball was made of hard rubber. Some scientists believe that a human skull was placed inside the ball.
Cultural and entertainment events ended with human sacrifices. This was probably the fate that awaited the losers. Guides to Tikal claim that the winner was sacrificed.
“It was considered an honor to die in Tikal,” say local guides.
9. Mayan pyramids were built with astronomical events in mind
It's no secret that the Mayans were versed in astronomy. Many structures such as El Castillo (Temple of Kukulcan) and the pyramids at Chichen Itza reflect astronomical events.
This secret of the Mayan civilization connects the history of the people with the neighboring state - ancient Egypt. , along the northern edge of Kukulkan there passes a shadow similar to a snake. This phenomenon is caused by the passage of a ray of sun through the nine terraces of the building.
The El Caracol Temple at Chichen Itza is known as an observatory associated with the orbit of Venus. The main staircase is directed towards the northern part of Venus, and the corners of the building correspond to the position of the sun on the summer solstice at sunrise and the winter solstice at sunset.
10. No one knows what caused the decline of the Mayan civilization
From the end of the 8th to the beginning of the 9th century. BC Mayan cities fell into disrepair. People died or went to others settlements. Culture, highly organized irrigation, agriculture, astronomy and construction technology were forgotten. Why, no one knows the answer.
Scientists have put forward several hypotheses regarding the death of ancient civilization:
Confrontation between Mayan city-states.
Overpopulation, which led to environmental degradation, soil depletion and climate change.
Strengthening the influence of the ruling class, the clergy and the ruling elite.
What actually caused the decline of developed civilization, archaeologists still find it difficult to say.
MOSCOW, January 24 - RIA Novosti. Excavations in the ancient city of Ceibal in Guatemala have helped scientists find new hints that the Mayan civilization was destroyed not only by sudden climate changes, but also by military conflicts between city-states, says an article published in the journal PNAS.
"We found that both the Classic and Pre-Classic Maya extinctions followed a similar path. They didn't just disappear overnight - they disappeared in waves. The waves were small at first and were associated with war and political instability, and then... a total collapse, during which large Mayan settlements were abandoned, then they were populated, and then disappeared again,” says Takeshi Inomata from the University of Arizona in Tucson (USA).
Double end of the world
The Mayan civilization lasted for several millennia, leaving behind many “dead cities” and cultural monuments on the Yucatan Peninsula, disappearing from the face of the Earth around the ninth century AD, when most of the Mayan city-states were abandoned by their inhabitants. The reasons for this civilizational collapse are still a matter of debate among scientists.
Mathematicians have uncovered the unexpected mystery of the disappearance of the Mayan civilizationOne of the main reasons for the disappearance of Mayan cities could have been reservoirs and canal systems, which helped the Indians survive short droughts and aggravated the situation during long periods of water shortage.One of the possible reasons for the collapse of this civilization, as a number of archaeologists now believe, could be droughts caused by climate change and overpopulation of Mayan cities. Serious confirmation of this theory was found in 2012 during excavations on the territory of Tikal, one of largest cities Indians, where scientists discovered a complex system of reservoirs and canals, indicating the importance of water in the lives of its inhabitants.
Inomata and his colleagues uncovered another possible reason Maya disappearance by studying data collected at Ceibal, one of the largest and southernmost Maya cities in Central America, which the authors of the article have been excavating for more than 10 years.
According to scientists, recent excavations in Ceibal have shown that the Mayan civilization experienced not one, but two collapses, one of which occurred approximately 600-700 years before the complete disappearance of the culture of these Indians. The discovery of two “ends of the world” at once forced archaeologists to compare them with each other and try to understand whether they were caused by similar reasons.
To answer this question, scientists tried to reconstruct how the population of Ceibal changed before these episodes of the disappearance of civilization, by layer by layer counting how many buildings were present in the city in the different years his existence. To get this answer, archaeologists had to use the latest radiocarbon dating technology, which allows them to calculate dates with an accuracy of several years.
Political climate
In total, Inomata and his colleagues carried out 154 such measurements at different points in the year, obtaining an almost complete picture of how its appearance changed in the last few decades before the classical and preclassical collapse. It turned out that the city ceased to be the center of civilization in a completely different way than historians had previously imagined.
As it turned out, Ceibal and other Mayan cities did not fade away gradually or suddenly, as supporters of climate theories believe, but in stages. As radiocarbon dating shows, approximately 130 years before Seibal's first disappearance, the city entered a phase of political instability, which was accompanied by a series of military conflicts, attacks on the city and sharp declines in its population.
For a long time these periods of decline, as shown by excavations of younger layers, alternated with short periods of restoration of the city, but in about 300 AD Ceibal was almost completely abandoned, and the city disappeared completely in about 500 AD.
In a similar way, interestingly, the situation developed before the final disappearance of Ceibal - at the end of 600 AD the city was repopulated, and already in 735 it again experienced a period of decline, associated, according to scientists, with the lost war with the cities of Aguateca and Dos- Pylas. After 50 years, when both these cities were devastated by Tikal, the largest city-state of this era, Ceibal again recovered, experienced an era of "militarization" of buildings, and finally disappeared in 930 AD after wars that began in 889.
All these periods of prosperity and decline of the city, as scientists note, were primarily associated with politics. However, this does not exclude the possibility that the launch of all these political events Droughts could also play a leading role, forcing the Mayan rulers to “expand their living space” in search of water and land suitable for agriculture.
Clear confirmation has been found of the hypothesis of an environmental catastrophe that led to the disappearance of the Mayan civilization.Contrary to popular belief about the destruction of the Mayan civilization Spanish conquistadors the empire fell into decline five hundred years before Columbus's voyages. In the middle of the 10th century, the construction of magnificent pyramids and temples stopped, the cities were abandoned by the inhabitants, and by the time the Europeans appeared, the entire “empire” was already small, scattered settlements, constantly fighting among themselves and with nomads.
Two hypotheses have been proposed about the reasons for the disappearance of the great civilization. Firstly, defeat in wars with another Central American people - the Toltecs. The second hypothesis considers environmental disaster caused by the use of a primitive slash-and-burn farming system. And indeed, according to the Mayan texts, deciphered by the great Russian linguist Yuri Knorozov, every three to four years they had to abandon old crop areas and burn out the jungle for new ones. In addition, huge amounts of wood were required to burn limestone and produce building lime. As a result of deforestation, the structure of the soil changed, droughts began and yields of corn, the Mayan monoculture, sharply decreased.
Recently, strong arguments have emerged in favor of this hypothesis. According to the website membrana.ru, American biologists David Lentz and Brian Hockaday examined 135 samples of wooden structures from 6 temples and 2 palaces of the ancient city of Tikal. It turned out that every year more and more wood was used in construction. worse quality. Eventually, the builders replaced the large, straight sapodilla logs with short, gnarled logwood trunks. It is obvious that the sapodilla (a local evergreen tree) has simply already been cut down.
After the appearance of the conquistadors, previously unknown diseases and persecution of the Inquisition were added to the environmental woes of the Mayans, but the people did not die out completely, and now there are more than 6 million Mayans - they live in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Honduras. The jungle has long been restored, many tourists come to see the pyramids, and the Mayans sell them ancient, ancient figurines with the Made in China label torn off.
Mayan writing:
Mayan mythology. Among the Mayans, knowledge and religion were inseparable from one another and constituted a single worldview, which was reflected in their art. Ideas about the diversity of the surrounding world were personified in the images of numerous deities, which can be combined into several main groups, corresponding different areas experience of people: gods of hunting, gods of fertility, gods of various elements, gods of heavenly bodies, gods of war, gods of death and so on. At different periods of Mayan history, certain gods may have had different significance for their worshipers.
The Mayans believed that the universe consisted of 13 heavens and 9 underworlds. In the center of the earth there was a tree that passed through everything celestial spheres. On each of the four sides of the earth there was another tree, symbolizing the cardinal points - a mahogany tree corresponded to the east, a yellow tree to the south, a black tree to the west, and a white tree to the north. Each side of the world had several gods (wind, rain and heaven holders) who had a corresponding color. One of the important gods of the Maya of the classical period was the god of corn, represented in the guise of a young man with a high headdress. By the time the Spaniards arrived, Another important deity was Itzamna, represented as an old man with a hooked nose and a goatee. As a rule, images of Mayan deities included a variety of symbolism, indicating the complexity of the thinking of the customers and performers of sculptures, reliefs or drawings. So, the sun god had large crooked fangs, his mouth was outlined by a strip of circles. The eyes and mouth of the other deity are depicted as coiled snakes, etc. Among the female deities, especially significant, judging by the codes, was the “red goddess,” the wife of the rain god; she was painted with a snake on her head and with the paws of some kind of predator instead of legs. Itzamna's wife was the moon goddess Ish-Chel; it was believed to help with childbirth, weaving and medicine. Some Mayan gods were represented in the form of animals or birds: jaguar, eagle. During the Toltec period of Mayan history, the veneration of deities of Central Mexican origin spread among them. One of the most respected gods of this kind was Kukulkan, in whose image elements of the god Quetzalcoatl of the Nahua peoples are clear.
Currently, most scientists accept and recognize the following Mayan mythological deities: the god of rain and lightning - Chaak (Chaak or Chac); god of death and lord world of the dead- Ah Puch; god of death - Kimi (Cimi); lord of the sky - Itzamna; god of trade - Ek Chuah; goddess of sacrifices and ritual suicides - Ish-Tab (IxTab); goddess of the rainbow and moonlight - Ish-Chel (IxChel); the riding god, the feathered serpent of Quetzal - Kukulkan (Gukumatz); god of corn and forests - Jum Kaash; god of fire and thunder - Huracan; demon of the underworld - Zipacna and others.
An example of Mayan mythology of the pre-Hispanic period is provided by the epic of one of the peoples of Guatemala, the Quiche, “Popol Vuh”, preserved from colonial times. It contains stories of the creation of the world and people, the origin of the twin heroes, their struggle with the underground rulers, etc. The veneration of deities among the Mayans was expressed in complex rituals, part of which were sacrifices (including human ones) and playing ball. Chichen Itza had a ball court, the largest in all of Mexico. It was closed on two sides by walls, and on two more sides by temples. The game of ball was not just a sporting competition. Many archaeological discoveries indicate that it was clearly associated with human sacrifice. On the walls enclosing the site, beheaded people are depicted in relief. There are 3 platforms around the site: the Venus (Quetzalcoatl) platform with the tomb of Chac-Mool, the Eagle and Jaguar platform with the Jaguar Temple, and the Skulls platform. Huge statues of Chak-Mool depict him reclining, with a sacrificial dish on his stomach. On the platform of the Skulls there were stakes on which the severed heads of the victims were strung. Mayan writing. It has long been believed that the Mayans were the inventors of writing and the calendar system. However, after similar but older signs were found in places farther away from the Maya region, it became apparent that the Mayans had inherited some elements from earlier cultures.
Mayan writing was of the hieroglyphic type. Mayan hieroglyphs were preserved in 4 manuscripts (the so-called Mayan codes, three in Dresden, Madrid, Paris, the fourth codex was partially preserved); they give either images of figures, or are connected in groups of 4 or 6 hieroglyphs above the figured images. Calendar signs and numbers accompany the entire text. Schellgas (in “Zeitschrift fuer Ethnologie”, 1886) and Seler (in “Verhandlungen der Berliner Anthropologischen Gesellschaft” and in “Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie”, 1887) did a lot to analyze hieroglyphs.
The latter proved that groups of hieroglyphs are composed of one hieroglyph relating to the action depicted in the picture below them, another - hieroglyphically meaning the corresponding god, and 2 more, communicating the attributes of the god. The hieroglyphs themselves are not compounds of elements representing a known sound or sound combination, but almost exclusively ideograms. Paul Schellgas systematized the images of Mayan deities in three codes: Dresden, Madrid and Paris. Shellgas's list of deities consists of fifteen Mayan gods. He identified most of the hieroglyphs directly related to these deities and denoting their names and epithets.
As a rule, the texts ran in parallel with graphic image plot. With the help of writing, the Mayans could record long texts of various contents. Thanks to the efforts of several generations of researchers, it became possible to read ancient texts. A significant contribution was made by our compatriot, Yuri Valentinovich Knorozov, whose first publications were on this topic appeared in the early 1950s. In 1963 he published the monograph “The Writing of the Maya Indians.” It reproduced in facsimile the texts of the surviving Mayan manuscripts (codes), compiled, perhaps, even before the Spanish Conquest, in the 12-15 centuries. and named after the cities in which they are now stored - Dresden, Madrid and Paris. The book also outlined the principles of decipherment, a catalog of hieroglyphs, a dictionary of the language of the Yucatan Maya of the early colonial period, and a grammar of the Mayan language. In 1975, in the book “Hieroglyphic Mayan Manuscripts,” Knorozov proposed reading the manuscripts and their translations into Russian. The texts of the codes turned out to be a kind of manual for priests with a list of rituals, sacrifices and predictions related to different types Mayan farms and everyone social strata population, except slaves. Brief descriptions The activities of the gods served as instructions on what to do for the corresponding groups of inhabitants. In turn, the priests, guided by descriptions of the actions of the deities, could set the time for rituals, sacrifices, and the implementation of certain works; they could also predict the future.
Mayan calendar To calculate time, the Mayans used a complex calendar system that included several cycles. One of them represented a combination of numbers from 1 to 13 (“week”) and 20 “months”, which had their own names. Was also used solar calendar with a year of 365 days. It consisted of 18 months of 20 days and five “extra” or “unlucky” days. In addition, the Mayans used the so-called long count, which, in addition to a 20-day month and an 18-month year, took into account a 20-year period (katun); a period of 20 katuns (baktun) and so on. There were other dating methods. All of these methods changed over time, making it much more difficult to correlate the dates recorded by the Mayans with European chronology.
The disappearance of the mysterious Mayan civilization is still considered a mystery to scientists. When the Spanish arrived to conquer the Mayans in the 16th century, the once advanced civilization was already in serious decline. By the time the conquistadors arrived, many limestone cities were already overgrown with jungle, and the economic and political power of the people had disappeared. What happened to the mysterious culture that built the famous pyramids and made many scientific discoveries? /website/
The Mayans began to abandon their cities around 850 AD. e. Only limited settlements remain from the former civilization. Researchers are considering different options for the death of civilization. International group Scientists from the USA and Great Britain have put forward a new version of the collapse of the mysterious people.
The researchers studied all the data obtained from the former Mayan territory throughout the history of excavations. This helped them describe the political situation of the ancient civilization and compare it with the climate changes that occurred during that period.
Maya was destroyed by drought?
Previously, one of the versions of the Mayan decline was considered to be the drought that came in the 9th century. However, inscriptions on stones and pottery showed that even during periods of drought, people in the northern territories of the country remained creatively and socially active. Northern cities, such as Chichen Itza and other centers, flourished in the 10th century. This suggests that more people were affected by the drought. southern territories, located on the site of modern Guatemala and Belize. This led to an aggravation of the already unstable political situation.
Scientists believe that the drought-stricken southern regions began to fight with the northern regions for food resources, and this led to serious fragmentation ancient state. Climate data shows that there was an even more severe drought in the 11th century, after which the decline of the northern Maya began. Thus, two severe droughts against the backdrop of political instability did their job, putting an end to the Mayan empire.
Conflict, drought and technology
New research by scientists confirms previous hypotheses of the death of the Mayans. In particular, one of the versions of the collapse of civilization was the deforestation to clear land, which aggravated the effect of drought. Fertile lands became less and less, and people began to leave the places of their ancestors in search of sources of water. Thus, the Mayans moved to the Caribbean coast, losing their culture.
In the 16th century, the Spaniards tried to conquer the rest of the Mayan civilization. Along the way, they introduce diseases that were previously unknown to the Mayans. This aggravates the already deplorable state of the people. In 1697, the last independent Mayan city of Tayasal was completely subjugated to Spain. Today, about 6.1 million Mayans live on the Yucatan Peninsula. They continue to live in the homeland of their famous ancestors - in Guatemala and Mexico, preserving the language, customs and way of life.
Long before the Europeans, before many other scientists in the world, the Mayans predicted solar and lunar eclipses, began to use the concept of zero in mathematics. They were brilliant astronomers - the path of Venus's movement in its orbit was calculated with an error of 14 seconds per year. The Mayans were also excellent architects and sculptors. However, they did not use metal and had no idea about the wheel. However, their elegant and huge temples, palaces and pyramids grew throughout the Yucatan Peninsula. But this was before the 9th century AD.
In the 9th century, some strange, terrible and mysterious catastrophe occurred. After this, all construction stopped and people left their habitable places, and the jungle swallowed up all the Mayan cities with its vegetation. By the arrival of the conquistadors, only small scattered tribes remained from the great Mayans.
What happened to the Mayan Empire when, according to some researchers, at least one million people died within just a hundred years? According to one version, this is due to a major drought, as well as strong earthquakes and even epidemics of malaria and fever.
According to another version, which was popular at one time, all this was attributed to social upheavals. Thus, during excavations in Tikal, archaeologists found many intentionally damaged stone sculptures. At the same time, in the entire 600-year history of Tikal there have never been foreign conquerors here. Some researchers immediately concluded that something like a revolutionary situation was brewing in the Mayan kingdom, which then developed into mass unrest. During the unrest, the rioters, as scientists suggest, destroyed many stone statues, and at the same time massacred all the royal family.
There is also a version about external influence. Moreover, the first among foreigners to visit here were Teotihuacans. Traces of their culture are visible in some Mayan city-states. The next foreigners are considered to be the warriors of the Mexican Pipil tribe, who defeated the warlike Maya-Kiche tribe. However, the pipils appeared here after the end of the Mayan golden age.
Another version of scientists is associated with periods of changes in solar activity, the impact of which on the rise and decline of civilizations was discovered by American scientists in the 90s. XX century. The fact is that the process of formation of sunspots changes every 3744 and another decline in solar activity will be on December 21, 2012, the date that the Indians consider the end of the modern fifth era of the life of the universe. Research has established that the decline of Indian civilization occurred during the peak of the least solar activity. This affected the hormonal activity of women and their fertility, as a result of which the Mayan population began to decline sharply, and infant mortality reached unprecedented levels in the entire history of civilization.
But is this true? Are all these hypotheses and guesses of scientists true? There are no reliable facts. Perhaps the collapse of the Mayan empire was influenced by the combined circumstances of all of the above versions. For so much short term(about 100 years) many Mayan cities were destroyed and abandoned, and no one knows the reasons for what happened.
