The MAYA Tribe

What is the MAYA civilization?

The Maya civilization was a Mesoamerican civilization developed by

the Maya peoples.
 Where was the MAYA
civilization living?
The Maya civilization developed in the Maya
Region, an area that today comprises
southeastern Mexico, all of Guatemala and
Belize, and the western portions of Honduras
and El Salvador. It includes the northern
lowlands of the Yucatán Peninsula and the
highlands of the Sierra Madre, the Mexican
state of Chiapas, southern Guatemala, El
Salvador, and the southern lowlands of the
Pacific littoral plain.
 Why was it called MAYA?

"Maya" is a modern term used to refer collectively

to the various peoples that inhabited this area. They
did not call themselves "Maya" and did not have a
sense of common identity or political unity.[1] Today,
their descendants, known collectively as the Maya,
number well over 6 million individuals, speak more
than twenty-eight surviving Mayan languages, and
reside in nearly the same area as their ancestors.
The Mayan’s
History:
Mayan history is generally divided into four phases
which include the archaic period, the pre-Classic period,
the Classic period and the post-Classic period. During
the archaic period which ends at 2000 B.C., Mayans
were nomadic tribes who slowly settled down to
agriculture primarily because they learned to grow
maize in vast quantities.

The pre-Classic period saw the development of

earliest Mayan cities such as El Mirador. During the
Classic period, many Mayan kingdoms came into being
and many Mayan cities expanded to immense sizes. The
post-Classic period saw the decline of the main centers
of Mayan civilisation and the civilisation’s shift to the
northern lowlands.
 Their religion:
Maya religious beliefs are formed on the notion that virtually everything in the world
contains k'uh, or sacredness.
The Mayans, like other cultures of Mesoamerica, followed a polytheistic
religion where a wide range of gods and goddesses were worshipped.
Some of these gods had more power than the others. Each god and
goddess was associated with a certain aspect of nature.

For instance, there was the sun god and the god of maize and so on.
Different kinds of rituals were offered for these gods, including the ritual
of human sacrifice. A lot of elements of the Mayan religion were inspired
from previous Mesoamerican civilizations and in turn had an influence
on the subsequent civilizations such as those of the Aztecs.
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The MAYA calendar :
The Maya calendar is a system of calendars used in pre-Columbian
Mesoamerica and in many modern communities in the Guatemalan highlands,
Veracruz, Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico.

The essentials of the Maya calendar are based upon a system which had been in
common use throughout the region, dating back to at least the 5th century BC. It
shares many aspects with calendars employed by other earlier Mesoamerican
civilizations, such as the Zapotec and Olmec and contemporary or later ones
such as the Mixtec and Aztec calendars.

By the Maya mythological tradition, as documented in Colonial Yucatec

accounts and reconstructed from Late Classic and Postclassic inscriptions, the
deity Itzamna is frequently credited with bringing the knowledge of the
calendrical system to the ancestral Maya, along with writing in general and
other foundational aspects of Mayan culture.
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The Maya calendar consists of

several cycles or counts of different
lengths. The 260-day count is
known to scholars as the Tzolkin, or
Tzolkʼin. The Tzolkin was
combined with a 365-day vague
solar year known as the Haabʼ to
form a synchronized cycle lasting
for 52 Haabʼ, called the Calendar
Round. The Calendar Round is still
in use by many groups in the
Guatemalan highlands.
Thanks for listening