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Society during the Columbian exchange
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Sample analysis paper of mayans number system
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Even though humans now days built buildings with machines, the Mayans carried heavy stones with their bare hands to build their beautiful cities. Mayans were highly intelligent people, who lived in the classic period of 200 CE and in Mexico. That lived in isolation from the rest of the world. Mayans believed in many gods like sun god, rain god, death god, and many other god's. They would please their gods by bringing one of their sacrificial victims on top of a god's temple and sacrificing them. The Mayans gods were to be nourished by the human blood. Mayans knew a lot about of nature and the world around them. By knowing about those things, it helped them live a better life and make their life more comfortable and rewarding than most people …show more content…
of that time. They were a very advanced civilization. From scale, genius, effort, and significance, what was the Maya's greatest Achievement? The Mayan Cities is one of the remarkable achievement still standing. The Mayans civilization created a calendar based on the movements of the stars, moons, and planets they observed and studied.
Mayan's calendar was carved into stone monuments, and covered periods ranging from 13 days to the Long Count calendar that expired on December 21, 2012. The Mayans calendar was the most accurate calendar than any other New world people and the only calendar that developed further. They even made predictions with their calendars and developed their systems. When the calendar is done rotating for 52 years, it starts again and rotates for 52 years again. Calendars also helped the Mayans predict when the world will end, but that wasn't always true. Mayan calendars are way different than modern day calendars in many ways. For example, our calendar takes 12 months to finish one cycle and our calendars uses numbers instead of …show more content…
glyphs. The Mayan trade network is one of the impressive achievements their civilization created. Traders traveled ten hours a day carrying loads between 80 to 150 pounds. The traders traveled all over from what is known today as Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala to trade with each other. They mostly traded Animal skins, Coco, Cotton, Feathers, Honey, Jade, obsidian, and salt with each other. Mayans had no horses, donkeys, or other beasts of burden to carry the things there going to trade. Everything they traded to other places was carried by hands and by boats. It took a lot of planning and precautions to create their Trade network. The Mayans Trade network was a big impact on their society because it made their life a success with their trading. The Mayan number system was developed by the ancient Maya civilization of Central America.
In addition, the Mayan number system is similar to the number system we use today and their number system operated with place values. The Maya seem to be the first people who used a place value system and a symbol for zero back then. Beyond those similarities there are some significant differences between the Mayan number system and our modern system. Mayan's system is based on 20 rather than base ten. Their number system also uses different digit representation for their number. For zero they use a Shell, for one they use a rock, and for five they use a stick. Their number system is hard to understand, but you will probably learn after some tries. You add, subtract and multiply with the shell, stone, and
sticks. The most phenomenal achievement is building city's. Mayans build their cities in the pre-industrial days which means before machines were made. They built their beautiful cities with stone and carried the stone with their bare hands to built their cities. Most of the buildings in Mayan cities were government buildings, and most of these buildings were either palaces for the upper-class or temples to worship and offer sacrifices to the many Mayan gods. The lower classes of people typically lived outside the cities, around and on farmland. It took many workers to build the buildings and the many Pyramids palaces temples and ball courts. It's been estimated that at least 80 to 130 workers have would have been working on the buildings and employed full time to finish in two or three months. After all, Mayan cities were not simple huts, they were massive structures taking months to complete. It's just impressing how much time and effort the Mayan's put on building their beautiful cities. Furthermore, it shows you they were hard working and successful people. They never gave up even when they didn't have machines to build their cities. Therefore, the most astonishing achievement would be building cities. Building cities is the most astonishing achievement because Mayan's put so much effort and time and never gave up on building their cities. Having a city is really significant because without them the Mayans would have no place to live or do their daily jobs. After all, Mayan cities were huge which caused them to take over a big space of land. Today, there is about 5,000 Mayan structures still standing. In modern world, we can build many structures with machines, but not like the Mayans. Even though, the Mayans don't have what we have today, they still had tremendous cities and achievements. If it seems easy to build a city without tools or machines, then try building cities with just your bare hands and stones.
It is very likely that most people have heard about the Mayan Civilization in one way or another. Whether fictitious or factual, this ancient culture iw idelt recognized. The Mayan people lived from about 250 to 900 CE in Mesoamerica. Which includes modern day Belize, Honduras, Guatemala, and parts of southern Mexico.These people had many remarkable achievements, all of which can fit under the categories of scale, genius effort, and significance. These achievements include an advanced trade system, an amazing understanding of numbers, and the ability to design and build cities that are still mostly standing today. However, their most impressive achievement is their complex calendars.
The Mayans did not grew up with technology, they grew by using their instincts. The way Mayan’s grew their crops were all done by their hands. The Mayan people did not use any wildlife such as an ox, bull, nor caribou. The work they have done was purely all muscles. Not only was the Mayan civilization was not polluted, but their population was not massive as well. They had a decent amount of people. They had to balance out their water and food consumption because the weather was bipolar. The weather would be hot for four months and it would rain for six to eight months. The people had to figure out how to save enough water during the hot season and how to preserve their crop during the rainy season. The Mayans somehow knew about the environment more than the people
In Europe, there were several advances being made that would affect our society today. However, simultaneously, societies across the world in the Americas would too be making these types of advances as well. One society in particular were the Maya. These people made technological strides that the Europeans themselves could not even fathom. But, what was their most remarkable achievement? One will find that their achievements of their trade network, a convenient method of transporting goods and messages; architecture, intricate buildings built in large cities on a massive scale; and number system, which takes into consideration some of our key principles in today’s math, have a momentous buildup to the Maya’s most remarkable achievement—their complex calendar, an astonishing nearly accurate calendar that governed Mayan society and is still seen in our own society today.
The Mayans lived in Southern Mexico and Central America in their capital, Tikal, which is in present day Guatemala. The Mayans were known for their engineering, one structure they were famous for is their pyramid temple in Tikal (Document 1). This pyramid was the tallest structure in the Americas up until the 20th century and is still standing today. The government must have been strong and well organized in order to carry out such a large task. The Mayan religion had multiple gods and this pyramid was most likely devoted to one or used as a place for sacrifices. Another accomplishment of the Mayans was the creation of their calendar. An extra document that would be useful is one that explains how the calendar was created. The Mayans must have studied astronomy and math to a great length. Similar to the Ancient Egyptians, they wrote with symbols and pictures known as glyphs that were used in the calendar. These glyphs were gods, such as Zotz (Document 2). The use of glyphs is an acknowledgement of a writing system, which is another accomplishment.
This book focuses on different types of calendars from a number of different places all around the world. This specific chapter, even more specifically this section, focuses on the Mayan calendar. These calendars were written by honored members of their aristocracy and were held to be of great value. The Spanish invaders believed them to be instruments of the devil and burnt great quantities of them. E. G. Richards explains that only four Mayan books are survive in the libraries of Europe, and one of those—The Dresden codex—suffered severe damage in another fire, one which was inflicted on that city in the Second World War. Richards says that the earliest record of a calendar survives from about 500 BC in Monte Alban near Oaxaca. This calendar employs a 260-day cycle, which was commonly used by several societies and is still in use among the present-day inhabitants of the region. The Maya used the calendar partly to anticipate propitious days to embark on wars and other activities. It was also used to record on stone pillars, or stelae, important events in the lives of their kings and to relate these to more mythical events of the past. The Mayan calendar system involved two major methods of specifying a specific date—the calendar round and the long count. The calendar round was used to specify a date within a period of about 52 years, while the long count served to relate such dates within a longer period named a great cycle. The calendar round involved three interlocking cycles of 13, 20, and 365 days respectively. The 365-day cycle was called a haab and was similar to the Egyptian wandering year. Each haab was divided into 18 periods called uinals; each uinal had 20 days and a name. The 18 uinal were followed by five epagomen...
The Egyptians used their pyramids to honor their gods and pharaohs, and the Mayans had flat pyramids that they worshipped their gods on. The Egyptian pyramids were huge and in a triangle shape. Both of these civilizations also sacrificed their gods on their specific pyramids. One thing the Mayans had that the Egyptians didn’t was a priestly caste, which is a social group that officiates sacrifices and leading prayers. Both of them used calendars in different ways than we use them today.
In math, the Maya developed a system based on three symbols: a dot, a bar, and a shell. The dot represented 1, the bar 5, and the shell 0. The Maya used the concept of 0, 1200 years before anyone in the Old World. Their number system was based on 20 and the value increased from bottom to top.
The Maya were an advanced society, rich and full extraordinary architecture with great complexity of patterns and variety of expressions, that flourished in Mesoamerica long before the arrival of the Spanish in the sixteenth century. They were skilled architects, building prodigious cities of primarily of limestone that remain a thousand years after their civilization fell into decline. Greatness and Grandeur was the signature of all Mayan cities, from the terminal pre-classic period and continued until the abandonment of all the city states by the beginning of the ninth century. The Maya built pyramids, temples, palaces, walls, residences and more. The limestone structures, faced with lime stucco, were the hallmark of ancient Maya architecture.
Archaeologists, anthropologists, and art historians use the term Mesoamerica to describe the known world of the Aztecs in 1519 (The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya 9). It encompassed lands as far north as the old Aztec frontier and continued down to the Mayan territory in Guatemala. All of the indigenous people that made up the Mesoamerican culture were not very unified, but they did share an immense interest in what each tribe was inventing. They also agreed upon religious beliefs and practices, and through this common interest was how the indigenous people unified the use of the Mesoamerican calendar. The calendrics served as an essential means by which Mesoamericans organized and conceived of their world (The Gods and Symbols of Ancient Mexico and the Maya 32). They used the calendar for many religious rituals as well as picking the date upon which the rituals would fall. In order for us to understand these uses, we have to know exactly what the calendar consists of.
In the early centuries A.D., the Mayan peoples began building their civilization in the center of Mesoamerica. This location allowed the Maya to conduct trade and exchange their local products. They also participated in the slash and burn method, however, evidence shows that they may have developed other methods such as planting on raised beds above swamps and on hillside terraces. Not only did location have an influence on agricultural life, it also had an influence on all other aspects of life. The Maya drew influence from a neighboring society, the Olmec. The Maya blended their customs with the Olmec to create a culturally diverse society. These Olmec customs had quite an influence on other aspects of the Maya society. The Maya had a polytheistic religion with gods of corn, death, rain, and war. These religious beliefs led to the development of calendars, astronomy, and mathematics. The Maya developed two types of calendars: religious and solar. The religious calendar was based on the belief that “time was a burden carried on the back of a God.” The solar calendar was based on the observations of the sun, planets, and moon. Unlike our calendar today, it was consisted of twenty-five da...
The Maya, like all Mesoamerican people, used a vigesimal numbering system. The first nineteen numerals were similar to our English terms, with unique numerals from one through ten, and the numerals eleven through nineteen produced by combining one through nine with ten.
In the Central America, most notably the Yucatan Peninsula, are the Maya, a group of people whose polytheistic religion and advanced civilization once flourished (Houston, 43). The Maya reached their peak during the Classic Period from around CE 250 to the ninth century CE when the civilization fell and dispersed (Sharer, 1). Although much has been lost, the gods and goddesses and the religious practices of the Classic Maya give insight into their lives and reveal what was important to this society. The major Mayan gods and goddesses all have common characteristics and, according to “features which they share in large part with the gods of neighboring people of Middle America” (Thompson, 198). One of these characteristics is that Mayan gods and goddesses have “features which they share in large part with the gods of neighboring people of Middle America” (Thompson, 198).
In a Long Count calendar date there are five numbers which are separated by four periods (for example, 13.0.0.0.0). 13.0.0.0.0 is thought to have been the Mayan’s theory as to the world’s creation date. The Mayans used hieroglyphs, such as those in the image,
The Mayan civilization was located in southeastern Mexico on the Yucatan Peninsula. One of the first American civilizations, it lasted from about 1000 B.C.-1542 A.D. Their civilization flourished during the Sixth Century. They built many temples and over forty cities. The Mayan population consisted of almost fifteen million people who were all living in one of the many cities. The Mayan people were extremely religious and believed in multiple gods which meant they were polytheistic. Their most commonly worshiped god was the Maize God, or god of corn, as corn was the most grown and most relied on crop. The Mayans grew all of their own food so they needed to have useful farming methods. The one they used most often was the slash and burn method, which involved cutting down trees and burning them to make the soil fertil which was necessary to grow crops. This method worked for many years, but soon started to backfire. The Mayans were ahead of their time, but that did not prevent their mysterious decline which occurred between the years 800 A.D.-900 A.D. Although it is not known exactly why the powerful empire fell, but there are various probable theories. The mysterious decline of the Mayans may have been caused by
The Maya culture has a long history that started in about 1000 BC. The history of the Maya is divided up into four different time periods: The Middle Preclassic Period, Late Preclassic Period, Classic Period, and Postclassic Period. The Middle Preclassic Period was when the small areas started to become city-like in the way that they started to build larger temples. The Late Preclassic Period was when the cities began to expand with paved roads and massive pyramids. The Classic Period was the time the Maya civilization hit it’s peak. Populations were growing rapidly and the structure of politics was formed. The Postclassic Period was when warfare was on the rise and cities were being abandoned(Coe 2005). This paper will focus on the Classic Period due to the fact that that is the greatest time period in Maya history.