W11M1: The Olmecs & the Maya

1. W11M1: The Olmecs & the Maya Time to learn about the Ancient Mesoamerican Cultures

2. First: The First Americans • Independent of all the inventions and occurrences of the Old World (Europe, Africa, Asia, etc.), culture and technology developed and thrived here in the Americas. • Developments as advanced as any in the Old world, such as domestication of plants and crops, hugecities and monuments (Pyramids, etc.), and even calendars and mathematics, writtenlanguage, etc. were all found here, in the Americas, developed independently of anywhere else in the world.

3. How did they get here? • Today, thousands of ancient sites have been uncovered in Central and South America. • Beginning about 9,000 years ago, small bands of hunter-gatherers inhabited much of Mexico. There are many theories on how they got to the Americas, but that is another discussion • By 2000 B.C.E., they had learned to farm corn, beans, squash, and other foodstuffs. • Soon they formed a powerful and impressive civilization that today are known as the Olmecs. Much about them is still shrouded in mystery.

4. The Olmecs • The Olmec civilization is considered by historians to be “pristine:” this means that it developed on its own, without the benefit of immigration or cultural exchange with some other established society. • Generally, only six pristine cultures are thought to exist: those of ancient India, Egypt, China, Sumeria and the Chavin Culture of Peru in addition to the Olmec. • That’s not to say that the Olmec appeared out of thin air: as early as 1500 B.C. pre-Olmec relics were being created at San Lorenzo, where the Ojochí, Bajío and Chichárras cultures would eventually develop into the Olmec.

5. San Lorenzo and La Venta: • Two major Olmec cities are known to researchers: San Lorenzo and La Venta. These are not the names the Olmec knew them by: their original names have been lost to time. • San Lorenzo thrived from approximately 1200-900 B.C. and it was the greatest city in Mesoamerica at the time. Many important works of art have been found in and around San Lorenzo, including the sculptures of the hero twins and ten colossal heads. • The El Manatí site, a bog which contained many priceless Olmec artifacts, is associated with San Lorenzo. After about 900 B.C., San Lorenzo was eclipsed in influence by La Venta. • La Venta was also a mighty city, with thousands of citizens and far-reaching influence in the Mesoamerican world. Many thrones, colossal heads and other major pieces of Olmec art have been found at La Venta. Complex A, a religious complex located in the royal compound at La Venta, is one of the most important ancient Olmec sites.

6. Olmec Religion and Gods: • The Olmec had a well-developed religion, complete with an interpretation of the cosmos and several different gods. • To the Olmec, there were three parts of the known universe. First was the earth, where they lived: it was represented by the OlmecDragon. • The watery underworld was the realm of the FishMonster, and the Skies were the home of the BirdMonster. • In addition to these three gods, researchers have identified five more: the MaizeGod, the WaterGod, the FeatheredSerpent, the Banded-eye God and the were-jaguar. • Some of these gods, such as the FeatheredSerpent, would live on in the religions of later cultures such as the Aztecs and Maya.

7. Olmec Art • The Olmec were very talented artists whose skill and aesthetics are still admired today. • They are best known for their colossalheads: these massive stone heads, thought to represent rulers, stand several feet high and weigh many tons. The rock they were made from had to be sourced 100s of miles away…how did they move these? No one knows… • The Olmecs also made massive stonethrones: squarish blocks, carved on the sides, which were evidently used for rulers to sit or stand upon. The Olmecs made large and small sculptures, some of which are very significant.

8. Olmec Trade & Commerce • The Olmec were great traders who had contacts with other cultures from Central America to the Valley of Mexico. They traded away their finely made and polished axes, masks, figurines and small statues. • In return, they obtained materials such as jadeite and serpentine, goods such as crocodile skins, seashells, shark teeth, stingray spines and basic necessities like salt. They also traded for cacao and brightly colored feathers. • Their skill as traders helped disseminatetheirculture to different contemporary civilizations, which helped establish them as the parent culture for several later civilizations.

9. Decline of the Olmec • La Venta went into decline around 400 B.C. and the Olmec civilization vanished along with it. The great Olmec cities were swallowed up by the jungles, not to be seen again for thousands of years. • Why the Olmec declined is a bit of a mystery. It may have been climate change: the Olmec were dependent on a few basic crops and climate change could have affected their harvests. Human actions, such as warfare, overfarming or deforestation may have played a role in their decline as well. • After the fall of La Venta, the last truly Olmec city, TresZapotes, prospered for a while after La Venta. The Olmec people of Tres Zapotes were also talented artists who developed concepts such as writingsystems and a calendar.

10. Importance of the Olmec: • The Olmec civilization is very important to researchers. As the main "parent" civilization of much of Mesoamerica, they had influence out of proportion with their military might or architectural works. • Olmec culture and religion survived them and became the foundation of other societies such as the Aztecs and Maya.

11. The Maya Who’s up next, Johnny? THAAAAAAAAT’S Right, the Maya!

12. One Falls, Another Rises • Interestingly enough, about the same time as the Olmecs were fading (400 BCE), the Maya rose in power, in relatively the same area. • Much like the Olmecs before them, the Maya also cultivated squash, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, and cocoa. • Corn / maize was their primary food source and the reason the Maya population grew. Modern science indicates that over 70% ancient Maya diet came from corn. Video about the Maya “I thought about telling a corny joke here…then decided not to”

13. Maya Religion • The Maya believed that the gods created humans from dough made of corn and blood. To repay the gods, the Maya offered animal and humansacrifices. Maya inscriptions describe gruesome rituals that included priests removing the hearts of victims to satisfy the gods. Maya priests also cut themselves and sacrificed their own blood to worship their gods. • Maya astronomers studied the heavens and kept careful records for their religious observances because the Maya believed sacrifices to the gods had to be carefully timed. Hence they created precise calendars to know the will of the gods. • The Maya used two calendars. An everyday calendar with 13 months of 20 days each was probably related to the appearance of the planet Venus. The Greeks and the Romans associated the planet Venus with the goddess of beauty, but the Maya seem to have associated Venus with war. The Maya also had a solarcalendar that was similar to our own. • Dates were so important that many Maya named their children after the name of the date of the birth.

14. Mayan GLyphs • On June 15, 1952, Mexican archaeologists broke though a passageway within the Temple of the Inscriptions at Palenque. • They stumbled into an underground crypt holding a limestone sarcophagus. Inside lay the bejeweled body of a ruler of Palenque, his face covered by a haunting jade mask. Who was this great leader? No one knew. They could not read the hieroglyphics carved on the sarcophagus. • In the past 25 years archaeologists have learned to read most of what the Mayas wrote. Today we know the names of kings and queens, how they lived, and when they died, transforming our view of Maya culture. More: Video

15. Fall? • Maya civilization thrived in the southern lowland Yucatan Peninsula from 250 to 900 CE, then suddenly collapsed. There was a dramatic drop in population. Maya cities such as Copán and Tikal were abandoned and all new construction apparently stopped. • We don’t know what happened, but theories include overpopulation, over-cultivation, drought, erosion, deforestation, warfare among cities, and internal rebellions. The collapse was probably a result of many of or all of those factors to varying degrees. Historians refer to the period from 250 to 900 as the ClassicPeriod of Maya history. Pyramid at Tikal

16. Rise, then Fall Again • Some of the Mayan cities struggled to regain their power and glory. After the fall of the Classic Period, about seven new Maya cities including Uxmal and ChichénItzá formed in the northern Yucatan Peninsula. These post-classical Maya constructed large canoes that allowed them to dominate trade throughout Mesoamerica. • Then about 1200 CE, the post-classical Maya cities began to collapse as mysteriously as their earlier counterparts. The last significant Maya city remained at Mayapán. In 1441, Mayapán was sacked, burned, and abandoned after a revolt by its neighbors. • One of the groups leading the revolt was the Mexica, a new group that was consolidating power in the central valley of Mexico. History knows the Mexica as the Aztecs— the next great power in the region. (next time!) Pyramid at Uxmal Observatory at Chitzen Itza Ruins of Mayapan

17. Assignment: • Create your name in Mayan Glyphs! • See the worksheet and links for more info! • Due: Monday, Dec 5th

18. Ch. 7.2 Part II Maya Glyphs in Depth Today we are going to check out one of the coolest remnants we have from the ancient Maya: their writing!

19. Maya Glyphs: What do we Know? • The Mayahieroglyphicwriting is arguably one of the most visually striking writing systems of the world. It is also very complex, with hundreds of unique signs or glyphs in the form of humans, animals, supernaturals, objects, and abstract designs. • These signs are either logograms (to express meaning/ideas) or syllabograms (to denote sound values), and are used to write words, phrases, and sentences. In fact, the Maya can write anything that they can say. A

20. Maya Number System • One of the coolest things the Maya came up with was their number system! • They even invented zero, the concept of which wouldn’t be known in Europe for hundreds of years! • Why is it based on 5s and 20s? • Simple: We have 5 fingers on each hand / foot, and 20 digits total Simple, right?! Video

21. Discovery • 1832 Actual decipherment began with an eccentric European genius named ConstantineRafinesque, who boasted of having dabbled in more than a dozen professions, from archeology to zoology. • His insatiable thirst for knowledge had led Rafinesque to a reproduction of just five pages of the DresdenCodex, from which he was able to crack the Maya's system of counting. • In 1832, Rafinesque declared in his newsletter, the Atlantic Journal and Friend of Knowledge, that the dots and bars seen in Maya glyphs (like these at left, from the Dresden Codex) represented simple numbers—a dot equaled one and a bar five. • Later findings proved him right and also revealed that the Maya even had a symbol for zero, which appeared on Mesoamerican carvings as early as 36 B.C. (Zero didn't appear in Western Europe until the 12th century.)

22. Examples? • Maya writing is found in several forms today. Sometimes, the glyphs can be seen on temple walls. • They also had accordian-like books of paper, called codexes, though many of these were destroyed by the Spaniards, who thought they were books of the devil. • Also, another way they were used was on stela, which are pillars or obelisks, much like the Egyptian obelisks used in the same way. • In fact, you’ll be creating your own stela, with your name, for the rest of class and homework!