Context

Culture

The Maya were a pre-Colombian civilization on the Yucatán Peninusla, who eventually rose to dominance in the area around 250 B.C. They were a major force from that time until about 900 A.D., during what is now referred to as the Classic Period.

(Video’s original source is The History Channel.)

The Maya settlements began when the hunter/gatherer populations settled into agricultural and fishing societies. The Maya grew and expanded their society for several centuries, eventually becoming the most influential society on the peninsula. An excellent timeline of the Maya civilization can be found on the Canadian Museum of History’s website.

Location

At the height of the Maya civilization, it included lands from what are today Southeast Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and parts of Honduras and El Salvador:

Maya map c. 30 B.C. via

Advancements

“The Mayas excelled at pottery, hieroglyph writing, calendar-making and mathematics, and left an astonishing amount of great architecture; the ruins can still be seen today.” They also had an advanced system of writing that could express anything in writing that could be said verbally, which was one of only three writing systems at the time (including the Sumerian cuneiform and Chinese) that were invented independently and could express complex ideas. The Maya also had a complex system for numbering, often in base 20 or base 5 (differentiated from base 10, i.e., decimal notation), which included the concept of zero, which was discovered independently from other cultures at a time when it was a very advanced mathematical concept.

Maya numerical symbols via

The Maya also had an accurate calendaring system and a deep understanding of the science of astronomy.

The Maya began to create codices to document beliefs, advances, and each ruler’s high rank (generally viewed as propaganda for the ruling class). “The unit of the Maya writing system is the glyphic cartouche, which is equivalent to the words and sentences of a modern language.” The Maya did not have a phonetic alphabet as we do today. Instead they used symbols (hieroglyphics) to represent complex ideas and create understood concepts. Maya writing was the only such sophisticated form of writing developed in the pre-Columbian Americas.

For more information on deciphering the Maya language and hieroglyphs, check out this video from PBS: