HIST 223 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Chichen Itza, Uxmal, Common Era
Week 5
September 26th, 2016
The Mayas
Mayan Cultural Area
•Mesoemericans like the Aztecs, but are off in their own corner
•inhabit a number of cities that rise and fall over centuries in the Yucatan peninsula
•often divide Mayan geography into the Lowland Mayans of the Yucatan Peninsula and the
Highland Mayans of Guatemala
•Peninsula is very flat, a limestone plain, covered with dense bush, hot tropical area, source of
water is naturally occurring wells or pools formed in the limestone
•Highlands are mountainous, quite different from lowlands
•after maize arrived agriculture was practiced, people lived in cities, fairly large concentrations
of population over hundreds of years (somewhat later than central Mexico, but well before the
beginning of Common Era 2000 years ago)
•Mayan civilization has both an urban and rural component
•never a central power controlling the empire….basically a civilization of small independent
city-states with varying power
•Classic Period-“height” of empire, great cities, pyramids, etc-209-900 AD
•some characteristics of state societies, but mostly semi-sedentary
•fewer cities/decline in urban life after this classical period
•when cities were abandoned, the wet hot climate resulted in forests completely
encompassing these lost cities
•Some important cities: Palenque (elaborate state, large labour force needed to have built
architecture, includes Temple of the Sun), Tikal, Chichen Itza (evidence that it was conquered
by Toltecs)(El Castillo-large pyramid), Uxmal (very high steep pyramid here)
•city and country-side kind of blur together
•intensive agriculture: elaborate irrigation, shifting agriculture (land cleared in forest and
farmed, as fertility of soil declined after a couple years, it was abandoned and new space was
cleared in the forest)
Mayan Society and Culture
•Milpa: farmstead cleared out of the forest, constantly shifting
•Lords, commoners and slaves; a rigid hierarchy
•elaborate rituals staged on imposing pyramids
•importance of calendar, calendrical rituals
•time passes in ways that are religiously significant
•divisions of days, months and years are very important
•certain rituals had to be performed at very precise times to keep the universe in balance and
prevent catastrophe
•astronomy (careful observation) and mathematics (seemed to understand the concept of
zero as a holding unit) were very important and the Mayans were highly developed in these
•far more precise than anything in Europe
•260-day cycle and 365 and1/4 day years coincide every 52 years
•Mayans had ways of dealing with the varying movements of celestial bodies
•writing systems: phonetic and ideographic
•had wooden books with hieroglyphic messages on them (basically none survived-the
Spanish priests systemically collected and burned them)
•did stone inscriptions on some of their monuments (which baffled scholars for a long time)
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