Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Maya Civilization

Starting point is 00:00:00 Centuries before the arrival of Europeans, one of the greatest civilizations in the Americas rose and fell. They left behind a rich legacy of roads and construction. They had an advanced system of writing, as well as a highly developed system of mathematics and astronomy. However, this advanced civilization suddenly ended. The people who made up the civilization never left, but their cultural and political institutions fell apart, and their cities were abandoned. Learn more about the Maya civilization, its rise and its fall on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed.

Starting point is 00:00:54 It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. The Maya civilization existed in what is today, Southern Mexico and the Yucatan Peninsula, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Also, the correct term to describe the civilization is Maya, not Mayan. Mayan is the term used to describe the languages. Maya is the term used to describe any non-linguistic aspects of the civilization.

Starting point is 00:01:30 So for the rest of the episode, I will be referring to the Maya people and the Maya civilization and the Mayan languages. The earliest evidence of the Maya appear in the archaeological record around 1800 BC. The dawn of the Maya consisted of small agricultural villages growing crops. The primary crops grown by the Maya include maize, bean, squash, chili, sweet potatoes, and cacao. The dominant civilization in Mesoamerica during the early Maya period was the Olmec civilization. They were centered in the region just south of what is today Veracruz, Mexico, and the Yucatan Peninsula, and they're best known for their large round heads made of stone. As the Olmec civilization went into

Starting point is 00:02:09 decline, the Maya civilization began to rise. The first Maya cities were established sometime around 750 to 250 BC. These first cities showed the hallmarks of later Mayan cities, including large monumental construction with elaborate designs. Many of the hallmarks of the Maya civilization, which I'll be talking about more in a bit, are believed to have been inherited from the Olmecs, similar to how many aspects of Roman civilization were borrowed from the earlier Etruscans. The period which is considered to be the golden age of the Maya civilization took place, between the years 250 and 900. This is when most of the monuments and cities that still exist today were built. One important thing to know about the Maya is that there was no Maya empire, which is why I

Starting point is 00:02:51 constantly refer to it as the Maya civilization. There was, as far as we know, never any single ruler that unified the Maya people like the Aztecs or the Incas. The Maya were more a collection of city-states with local kings. So, again, to make a comparison with the ancient Mediterranean, the Maya were more analogous to the Phoenicians or the Greeks than they were to the Persians, Romans, or Egyptians. Early on, it's believed that there was a single Maya language that originated somewhere around the modern-day border of Mexico and Guatemala. However, over a period of centuries, as the Maya culture spread, it splintered into

Starting point is 00:03:26 dozens of languages. One of the reasons why the Maya were splintered linguistically and politically had to do with the difficulty in transportation. Unlike many other early civilizations that were built around rivers, such as the Nile, Yangtze and Indus. There were no navigable rivers connecting Maya communities. They also didn't have the benefit of domestic pack animals such as horses, nor did they use wheeled devices such as carts. Hence, the movement of any goods and people had to be done on the literal backs of people moving from place to place. Needless to say, this was very slow and difficult and was a major contributing

Starting point is 00:04:00 factor to the lack of a unified Maya government and language. The Maya language might have been splintered, but their system of writing was not. In fact, the Maya written language was arguably the most sophisticated written system in the pre-Columbian Western Hemisphere. The Mayan system of writing came from earlier systems in the region and developed into a formalized writing system with rules around the start of the Maya Golden Age. The Mayan written language is a combination of logograms that represent entire words, similar to Chinese characters, as well as phonetic signs that represent sounds, more like an alphabet. The vast majority of Maya were illiterate, and most probably many of the elite in Maya society were as well.

Starting point is 00:04:39 A class of priests and scribes handled reading and writing. Unlike civilizations in Eurasia, women were also scribes in Maya society, as is evidenced by the images of women scribes writing. The Maya didn't just leave inscriptions in stone. They actually created books. They developed a writing material akin to paper known as Amatel made from tree bark. The Amatel was bound together to form a codex. there are only four surviving Maya codices that exist today, but there were thousands in existence when the Spanish arrived. The vast majority of them were destroyed by priests who had them burned because they thought they were the work of the devil. As such, it's taken centuries to decipher Mayan writing, but through the few surviving texts and thousands of stone inscriptions, it's now

Starting point is 00:05:24 possible to read Mayan. In addition to a sophisticated system of writing, the Maya had a highly developed system of mathematics as well. As with other Mesoamerican cultures, the Maya mathematical system was base 20, unlike our system, which is base 10. Their system of numbers was simple and straightforward. A dot represented a number, so one dot was one, two dots was two, three dots was three, up to four. However, five was represented by a horizontal line or a dash. Six would be a dot over a line. Ten was two lines on top of each other. Once you get to 20, the position of the dots and lines represented different things. 20 was a dot over a as the dot represented 20. 21 was a dot over a dot, i.e. 20 plus 1.

Starting point is 00:06:12 29 was a dot above four dots above a line, or 20 plus 4 plus 5. Just as the position of a numeral determines its value in our base 10 system, so too did the position of a dot or dash in the Mayan system. This allowed for the Maya numbering system to represent incredibly large values. One of the biggest mathematical innovations that the Maya had was a symbol to represent zero. The earliest known zero in Mayan writing dates back to about 357. They used it as a placeholder just as we do today. However, it didn't necessarily represent the concept of nothing when used by itself. Their advanced mathematics may have led to, or was the result of, an advanced understanding of astronomy.

Starting point is 00:06:55 Their astronomers obsessively track the movement of the stars, the sun, and the moon. As such, they were able to measure the 584-day cycle of Venus to within two hours. They were also able to predict solar and lunar eclipses. At the time of the Maya Golden Age, they probably had a greater understanding of astronomy than any civilization on Earth. And this led to a very sophisticated calendar system. The Maya calculation of a solar year was actually more accurate than the Julian calendar. The Maya calendar is known as the Long Count Calendar.

Starting point is 00:07:27 At its core, the long-count calendar is based on five units of time. The kin is the smallest unit equivalent to one day. The unial is 20 kin's equal to 20 days. A tune is equal to 18 unials, making a tune equivalent to 360 days or approximately one solar year. A kattun is 20 tons, totaling 7,200 days, approximately 19.7 years. A bachun is 20 kattun, equaling 100. 44,000 days, or approximately 394 years. Beyond this, there are even longer units of time.

Starting point is 00:08:04 A pictun is 20 bactun's, and a klobtun is 20 pictuns. A klabtun is approximately 157,000 years. December 21st, 2012 was the completion of the 13th Bakhtun. Many people who had a deep misunderstanding of the Mayan calendar thought it prophesied the end of the world. It was really nothing more than the start of a new calendar cycle. It was the equivalent of saying that your car will explode just because your adometer turned over. The astronomical observations and the development of the Maya calendar were all in service of the Maya religion. The Maya religion was as structured as their system of mathematics.

Starting point is 00:08:41 They believed in a supernatural realm where their deceased ancestors could intercede on their behalf. They had a heaven with 13 levels and an underworld with nine levels. The Maya buried their dead under the floors of their homes so their ancestors could always protect them. Maya deities required sacrifices, usually of blood. As such, the Maya practiced human sacrifice. They usually sacrificed a high-ranking enemy prisoner, or in some cases, the greatest sacrifice would be an enemy king. Human sacrifices would also be conducted for the installation of a new king or the dedication of a new temple. One Maya ritual was a ball game, today known as Pock-to-Pok. Pock-to-Pok, or similar games, were played all throughout Mesoamerica. The rules of the game aren't known,

Starting point is 00:09:25 but several intact courts still exist. It seemed to be a combination of racquetball and basketball. There was a hoop on the court that was vertical instead of horizontal, however, the hoop may have been a much later innovation. The ball was made out of natural rubber, and it would weigh as much as four kilograms or nine pounds. By all accounts, the game was very brutal, with serious injuries being reported.

Starting point is 00:09:48 It was sometimes played in conjunction with religious observances with the losing team being beheaded. Some anthropologists think that the game may have been played as a proxy for warfare. The thing which most people know about the Maya is the magnificent temples and cities that they left behind. Today, if you visit southern Mexico, Guatemala, or parts of Honduras, you can find many Maya ruins which are still in very good condition. The Maya were roughly split between Highland and Lowland Maya. The Highland Maya lived in the mountains and the Lowland Maya lived in the plains closer to the sea. Most of the monuments left

Starting point is 00:10:21 by the Maya were from the Lowland Mayas. The greatest single monument is, probably the pyramid of El Castillo in the Mayan city of Chichenica in Mexico. It was dedicated to the deity Kukla Khan. On the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula is the city of Tulum. It was one of the last Maya cities that was ever built, and one of the only Maya cities ever built on the coast. In Guatemala, you can find what is perhaps the greatest Maya city of them all, to Kahl. And in Honduras, you can visit the city of Kupan. All of these cities I've listed are actually UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and I've had the pleasure of visiting all of the of these and several others. In total, there are believed to be over 4,400 Maya sites of various

Starting point is 00:11:02 sizes. And they're still actually finding more of them. Because their civilization was built in the middle of a tropical forest, many ruins were quickly covered by foliage after they were abandoned. Satellite images and radar have discovered structures that have been lost and covered by forest. The Maya were one of the greatest and most sophisticated cultures in the Western Hemisphere. However, some time around the year 900, everything collapsed. And no one is sure exactly why. Over a period of about 50 to 100 years, the cities were abandoned, kings were to throne, new monuments ceased being built, and the calendar stopped being updated. Had it occurred catastrophically from an invasion or an earthquake, it probably would have been recorded, at least through oral history. However,

Starting point is 00:11:46 it was slower than that. Theories usually include some sort of famine or plague that may have devastated the society, or perhaps there was an extended drought that changed conditions in the region. Many of the Maya cities were still inhabited by people at the time the Spanish arrived, but they were not the vibrant centers that they were centuries earlier. The people there were living in the shadows of their past greatness. While the Maya civilization collapsed, the Maya people didn't go anywhere. They're still there, living in the same place their ancestors did centuries ago. If you visit the region, you can meet and talk to local Mayan people today. They still speak Maya languages and eat similar food. When we look at the full scope of human history,

Starting point is 00:12:26 in terms of its literary, mathematical, and astronomical accomplishments, the Maya take their place among the greatest civilizations of the ancient world. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener May Gee with the letter one from Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, So enjoyable. I discovered the podcast. in April 2022 and today listen to my final back episode. I feel like I've really accomplished something and picked up so much interesting knowledge along the way. I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings. Thank you, Maggie. You have accomplished something significant. You've shown a

Starting point is 00:13:09 curiosity about the world around you and have taken the time to learn more than the vast majority of your contemporaries. That is quite an accomplishment. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a Boostagram, you two can have it read on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Maya Civilization

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