The Mayans

The Mayans are very fascinating as they were ahead of their time with their inventions and way of living. The Maya believes that everything in life are of purpose and has some sacredness attached to it. Since every aspect in life has a sacredness attached to it, the Mayans believed in an astounding number of gods estimated to about 166 deities (Nancy). The Mayans also believed in recurring creation and destruction. Such beliefs leads to sacrificial rituals. Mayans also created their own calendar to trace their lineage. With the calendar relates to their intricate and sophisticated mathematics. Both aspect ultimately relating to their religion. Religion plays a big factor in motivating and inspiring the Mayans to make creations and continuously
The Mayan tribes used a “ vigesimal system… that express numbers up to 19(that is unit of the first or lowest order), they used dots and short lines; but to express units of higher orders the authors of the codices had recourse to relative position” (Thomas 54). In our mathematical system our base value is in the powers of 10 but in the Mayan mathematics they used the powers of 20. Their number system is also used for the calendars that many of us heard of know about today. The Mayan calendar consist of three cycles called tzol kin, tun and haab. The tzol kin cycle is composed of “13 numbers and 20 named days(Imix, Ik, Akbal, Kan, Chicchan, Cimi, Minak, Lamak, Muluc, Oc, Chuen, Eb, Ben, Ix, Men, Cib, Caban, Etz’nab, Cauac, and Ahua)” (Edmonson 713). The days can be permutative having a set of variety and different arrangements. During the tzol kin which is the 260 day cycle it is used to determine the important event and activities involving the gods and humans. The haab is the 365 days cycles in the Mayan calendar. It consists of 18 months of twenty days each month. This cycle is most likely used for agriculture and seasons based on the solar cycle. The eighteens months are called Pop, Uo, Zip, Zotz, Tzec, Xuc, Yaxkin, Mol, Chen, Yax, Zac, Ceh, Mac, Kankin, Maun, Pax, Kayab, and Cumku. It is believed that the last five days of the haab cycles are the unlucky days known as uayeb (Canadian History of Museum).
The priest “looked to the heavens for guidance. They used observatories, shadow-casting devices, and observations of the horizon to trace the complex motion of the sun, the stars and planets in order to observe, calculate and record this information in their chronicles, or ‘codices’ “(Canadian Museum of History). The priest were in charge of predicting upcoming important events. In the Maya cities they built temples/pyramids to use as a compass. One of the most famous pyramids can be visited at Chichen Itza. It is still a ceremony today to observe and visit this pyramid as the sun light up the stairs of the pyramid and the head of a serpent at its base. This pyramid was dedicated to the Feathered Serpent God, Quetzalcoatl. Building pyramids is one of the way the Mayans tried to connect and serve the Gods. The Maya believed that “the gods guided the Sun and Moon across the sky. Even in the darkness of night, the Maya believed that the Sun and Moon continued to journey through the Underworld, threatened all the way by evil gods who wanted to stop their progress”(Canadian Museum of History). Therefore, the practice sacred rituals such as human sacrifice because they believe that the gods needed help and it was their duty to serve. Dying from sacred rituals was found as an honor and believed to grant