The Maya Civilization

about it, and it's really a lot of fun. It's become one of my favorite podcasts that I listened to, and I reached out to them and they were kind enough to have me on as a guest, so you get to hear me uh completely recap the horror movie or kind of edge of your seat thriller slash horror movie Don't Breathe. And I had a really great time on the show. They're wonderful, they're funny, and we had

a lot of a lot of laughs. So check out and just you know, subscribe as what I say, listen to Too Scary, Didn't Watch, and check out my episode on the movie Don't Breathe, which just came out a couple of weeks ago. Alright, on with the show Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. Um, and that makes this stuff you should know, the anthropology edition. That's right. And I

would argue our one to three maybe four Maya adjacent podcast. Well, we did the mind calendar. Yeah, the world ending in. I mean I think we did that back then, right, is right around that. That's the benefits of having a show run this line. I think we did that in That's what I mean, but leading up to Yeah, not after the fact, because that would be very us uh. And then of course we did our our episode where

we traveled to Guatemala. It's sort of like our two part travel diary where Jerry spoke and um, you know, Guatemala is partially where the Mayan people lived and live. So maybe we should just start out by since I said lived and live, dispelling some myths. Well, hold on, we did another one last December. I believe did climate cause the fall of the Maya civilization? All right, so this is the fifth one, easily maybe I'm not sure

I lost count since you were talking. Well, I was inspired because, as you know, I just recently took a trip to Kintana Rue in Mexico, and uh that saw some Mayan temples, and so there's a couple of episodes coming out of that rip because it was just one of those inspiring trips where you're you know, when you go someplace where your your endorphins are firing in your brain is doing things that usually doesn't do. Those are

the best trips, you know, you come back. I wanted to eat different foods and talk about different things, and I love those trips wearing cats. I didn't get any clothes, but we did get Ruby a couple of really pretty traditional Mexican dresses. Oh that's cute. Does she like them? She loves them because they are colorful and have flowers embroidered and stuff. Yeah. So. Um. There are a lot of different groups that lived over the millennia in UM

Mexico and Central America. UM, but the Maya stand out in particular for a number of reasons. Um. They had one of the most developed alphabets um or systems of writing ever in the ancient history of Central America. Or Mesoamerica. Yeah, they came up with zero independently, almost almost almost a thousand years before it was introduced to Europe. Not not the europe didn't come up with themselves like it was introduced,

but they the Mayans figured it out independently. They also had some really top notch calendars, which we talked about in that one episode UM and that we're based on um really advanced astronomical observations. So they were. And then not to mention, they also have the romance of having like lost civilizations, like entire cities swallowed up by the jungle and lost for a thousand or more years. Those

are that's like so Mayan, you know, so um. For all those reasons and more, they definitely kind of just stand out in a field of pretty interesting cultures. Uh, if I may say so, Yeah, I think that's why we keep going back to them. They just fascinate me the more I read about them. And uh, at some point I've heard it's a decent movie, but it's not the most accurate. But I was reminded today of the Mel Gibson directed film Apocalypto. Man, it's almost a snuff film, dude.

I saw the one human sacrifice scene, and I'm like, it's awful. It's super realistic. Yeah, it's way too stantographic. Director. Oh yeah, he's like, yeah, he's super obsessed with violence. It's crazy. Have you seen we were heroes? No? But what I thought he did, Haxall Ridge, I don't know if you did or not. I know he definitely did. We were heroes about the early early day. We were heroes?

Is that what it was called. Yeah, it was the early days of Vietnam and it's like brains blowing out onto the camera lens in front of the Ridge was supposed to be really violent too. It's just occurred to me. I don't know if I've seen any Mel Gibson directed film. Uh, we were heroes. No, we were soldiers. One of the two. It's Thanks for Soldiers. We were soldiers. Um meet me in St. Louis. I think that's the name of it. Super violent. But some of the myths we can dispel.

First of all, I kind of teased one out that, um, the Maya are still around. That it's not like, you know, people talk about the fall of the Mayan civilization. It's not like a meteor came down and did the dinosaur treatment on them. There are still Maya today, and you know, some would argue that their civilization civilization didn't really collapse so much as just became sort of a uh, suburban sprawl in a way. Yeah. I mean a lot of them speak some of these ancient languages and tongues that

have been around for a very long time. They carry on a lot of the ancient traditions that were passed down. So yeah, it's definitely inaccurate to say that the Mayan civilization just went away, just disappeared. It just dispersed instead, that's right. Uh. It is also incorrect to just say the Maya were this one sort of unified historic people that we can talk about as being one thing. Um, we're talking about a lot of different like dozens and dozens of cities and city states, um that you know,

they had a lot in common. Sure, and they did trade with each other and did some of the same things, but they also were at war with each other almost constantly, um, between themselves. And you you can't just and we're talking about hundreds and hundreds of years like they're definite. They're different, very specific periods of Mayan culture and depending on when you're talking about some cities may be bigger than others,

others maybe um not not quite as large yet. So you can't really just say I believe Libya helped us with this when I think she got from a website called Mexicolore with an E they said just saying the Maya is trying to invent a name for like the Free to the Italian, the Spanish and the Romanian people all is one. It's just there. They were not just one people, know, and they didn't see themselves as one people. They probably saw themselves as members or citizens of their

particular city state. But the reason that we today and researchers and archaeologists who you know, investigated the Maya to begin with, considered them one group is for two reasons. One, they inhabited a really specific um geographical location covered southern Mexico, Guatemala, parts of Honduras, Sal Salvador, UH and Belize Peninsula specifically yeah um so and like in that area, not kind of spread out like that was the Maya's area UM.

And Then number two, even though they consider themselves separate um and and not like members of the same whole group that inhabited the area. They exchanged, Like you said, they traded, they exchanged ideas, um, scientific breakthroughs art um. So their their culture to those of us on the outside, looks like one homogeneous, cohesive culture, when really it was a bunch of different cultures influencing one another and creating

kind of this meticulture that we consider the Maya today. Right, UM. If you know, I talked about the different periods that we can talk about. The first one was the pre Classic period. Uh. And we'll talk a little bit about each of these, but the Classic period is going to be most of the focus. That's sort of the golden age of the Maya. Uh. But in the pre Classic period, this is where they started to um get involved in agriculture.

They started to um cultivate through burning land. Uh. And you know, as we covered in the episode on UM, you know how they went away. I believe we talked about burning crops as being you know, a lot of people think that was significantly bad for them in the long run, um over a population to be sure, and eventual uh food shortage when they had food surplus for

so long. But they started out as always with the three sisters growing those beans and maize and squash, and then the Middle Pre Classic we're talking about a thousand to three hundred, they started spreading out a little bit in that territory, the same territory that would eventually be

like the classic most robust Mayan cultures UM. And they also at that time, in the Middle Pre Classic, about twenty three years ago, that's when they started to build like architecture, not the stuff that you would see in the classical period, but it was like the beginning of it, literally the foundation, because they actually started they built um new structures over old structures. But this is kind of

where it was born. Yeah, and all this if it sounds like it's happening very organically, is because it did. Um Lvia is you know, points out that these these city centers, in these city states, it wasn't some and we we know now more than we ever had before. We got a lot of stuff wrong over the years, um science and archaeology, but we were pretty squared away at least, you know, we're up to date on the

latest uh like truths about the Maya. But they think they used to think they were so organized they would plan out these cities, but they really sort of grew organically because they were good at what they did and they could really farm the heck out of the land and support a lot of people. So it just sort of happened organically. I mean, they clearly were a culture

that knew a good idea when they saw it. So like an elevated highway, um causeway, it's wide and can afford a bunch of traffic between one city state to another. That's just a good idea. So if you build one that, there's the other city states can say what other city states can we link to? And before you know it, basically every city state and I think there were four great ones in total at the height of the Maya

classical period, are connected by ways. So of course today it looks like, surely this was planned, some great centralized government planned this out and they must have been amazing. No, there's another way to do. It's almost like an emergent property of a hive mind. A bunch of people no good idea when they see it, and they put it to use, and over time it just builds up and up and up and becomes so complex that it looks to people that come later like it couldn't have possibly

happened organically even though it did. That's right. Uh. And we've talked a little bit before about the size of these I guess, I mean people have called them empires for these civilizations. Um, there were about forty cities in total. I mean you said for within that there were all these smaller cities each of these And they're not sure so that the number ends up being a bit of a swing. But five thousand and fifty thousand people and

total maybe up to fifteen million people. Uh. They've done studies that found I believe it was like double the uh, double the size of medieval England at the time. Uh and and farley more densely populated than medieval England, like legitimate cities. Yeah, did I say four. I meant to say forty. Oh did you say for No? I think you said I said for no. No No, No, you did say four. But I thought you just meant there were four main areas. There were at least forty great cities.

That was what I was trying to say. I think he said for But yeah, we'll go. One of the things that made the city so striking, though, Chuck, was, um, the elaborate architecture, you know, and because it was all made from well not all of it, but a lot of it was made from cut limestone blocks, which, by the way, they used harder stones to cut the limestone because in the area that the maya Um occupied there's

no metals that are easily accessible. Um. There are also no draft animals, so they did everything with like stones basically, and with human labor, not with animal labor. So um, what they did is all the more impressive when you realize that because they built these huge temples in huge pyramids that are just amazingly well designed and well built,

so so much so that they still survive today. But then on top of it, when you start to investigate the way that they're oriented, you're like, oh, my goodness, each of these staircases is completely in line with each of the four cardinal directions. How do they do that? Um? Or if you stand on this one temple at Cheetz and itsa and you look at the other three temples, depending on whether it's a salstice or equinox, the other temples are in line with the rising sun. How did

they do that? So yeah, So, in addition to just the visual amazement that you get, UM, the kind of intellectual amazement of how they were designed and implanned is even more impressive. Yeah, and you can stand on these things because they're still there. Uh. A lot of the civilization has gone now. But you know, if you go down to the Ukndam Peninsula and you visit to Loom or someplace like that, I highly encourage you to take one of those doors and go see these temples. Uh

or well, we're not exactly sure what they were. We think that they're temples. Uh. Sometimes they are called palaces, but it's pretty clear from like the size of the rooms that they weren't for the hierarchy. You know, it was a very um, very hierarchical society. But they don't think like that the kings lived in these temples that are still, these pyramids that are standing. It was probably for ceremonies. Uh. This may have been where I guess we have to talk some about the ritual sacrifice. This

is where a lot of that took place as well. Yeah, particularly the temples and the pyramids. Um, but they they Yeah, we should talk about sacrifice at some point in time. Will pepper it in? Okay, But the something you talked about I want to kind of flesh out a little more is the hierarchical society. So again, there wasn't some one great central government that organized all these city states.

In some of the city states, not all, there was a strong centralized government, a leader of priestly class, a divine king or something who ruled over that city state with an iron fist and by divine right um and could say I'm going to kill your kid um, to sacrifice them for a bountiful harvest, for more rain or something like that. It was that that level of control,

that level of hierarchy, and it was really rigid. But again to kind of underscore how each of these cities was kind of independent in its own kind of thing. Not all of them had a hierarchical structure like that. Yeah, And I think I think that's one reason they were. It seemed like I saw a couple of like documentary documentary, documentary, video high I am new to Earth, I'm new to YouTube. Uh. It seemed like they were always at war with one another.

And I think that, Um, I think that was just sort of the nature of the hierarchy of these places, Like I feel like these it just seems like these kings were always at war with another king over something. Yeah, and apparently the first the first researchers who started to investigate the Maya. I think it started in eighteen thirties, the eighteen thirties when Westerners, when Europeans first started to well, I don't want to say that because the Spanish war

aware of them. When say Western Europeans, this includes Spain, say, um, you are new to Earth to northern Europeans. How about the English? The English first stumbled upon you know, Mayan cities um. From from from that point on, for a very long time, researchers just assumed that the mines were this really advanced, intelligent, peaceful culture. Um. And it wasn't until later that we started to find more and more things like fortresses and battlements, um, defensive walls. Were like, oh,

actually there was a lot of warfare. And then as we got to know more and more and cracked their language, UM, we're like, oh wow, this is a deeply violent group of of cultures that that really killed a lot of one another in some really brutal ways too. Right, But we did mention they also traded with one another. So what wasn't like there was just a guarantee that their closest neighbor they were going to do battle with. Um. They traded all kinds of things. They traded. Uh, it's

an area very rich in jade apparently, obsidian UM. Obviously things that are a little more commonplace like salt, uh and and seeds and grains and things like that they would trade. But copper and jade and obsidian were sort of the money things that you would trade. And they traded, like you said at the beginning, they traded ideas and cultural ideas, and they traded art with one another. They had a lot of influence, and this was in one

of the documentary videos that I saw on online. Uh, the Olmec civilization was somewhat was the civilization that they um really really borrowed from or not borrowed from. But we're influenced by I guess yeah. The Old Mec I was reading are considered one of six pristine civilizations, meaning they just grew up out of whole cloth. Um. They weren't influenced by other civilizations or other groups six, including I think the Um, like Sumerians, they think, maybe the Egyptians.

I can't remember a few others UM, but the Old Yeah, the Old Mecher considered pristine civilization. That's pretty cool. Um, So I say we take a break and come back and talk about the religion and the science of the Maya. What do you think about that, Chuck, let's do it. So you mentioned religion and science, we'll talk about that now. Previous to the break, you mentioned the priestly class. From what I saw, the priestly class was basically the highest

class under the ruling class. Uh. And and I guess in a lot of older civilizations that's sort of the case, is the religious leaders were I had so much influence and we're just under the king and had a lot of influence on the king as well. But there was that priestly class who organized these ceremonies in these rituals. They were the ones who developed the mathematical system and the astronomy that we talked about, and they were able to accomplish some pretty amazing things. Uh, not only with

math in their alphabet, but with astronomy. They were able to accurately predict solar eclipses. And this is in I mean, I guess depending on which period you're talking about, like thousands of years ago. Well, I think we've entered the Classic period, which I think was from the second century to the ninth or tenth century CE. Okay, so that's when most of the astronomy and the math and sort

of sciences were advanced. Yeah, but yes, but again for comparison, at this time, England is in smack in the middle of the dark ages um, while the my priestly class are predicting solar eclipses and can accurately tracks Venus is transit around the Sun. Um. So they use this information, this astronomical information, their ability to use math um, they're

they're like extensive calendars. They use that for those rituals and for those um those like the to basically reinforce their priestliness like what we would recognize as mathematicians and astronomers today. Imagine if if you know, an astronomer said, you know, this comment is going to pass by Earth

in two days. It's going to be amazing, and also the Sun God will be driving it like a chariot, so everybody don't leave your house that day, Like you're you're really on the money on one part of that, right, But I mean that that's kind of like what they're priestly class did they were right, but the interpretation was wildly different from you know what we interpret things as today. Yeah. Um, they had a solar calendar. And again we did a whole episode on the Mayan calendar, but it was very

advanced for the time. Uh. They had eighteen months on their calendar, twenty days per month, with a five day unlucky period each month, which is pretty funny. No, I think that was every year there was a five day unlucky period. It was once a year, not once a month. I think so, I think so. I think I didn't do the math, Chuck, I'm no Mayan priestly class guy. Uh. And then they also had an overlapping calendar or two d in sixty day sacred calendar. This had thirteen cycles

in twenty named days. And as we all know, in twelve it was the Mind's never said that the world was going to end in twelve. This was just internet hokum basically because their calendar was ending. Yeah. It wasn't like made up entirely from scratch like the old Mixed Civilization. It was based on like a misinterpretation, a misreading, uh, an exaggeration like in twelve the mind long count calendar

like reset. It was a thing, and to the Maya that may have included some sort of apocalyptic thing, but um, it wasn't like the end of the world. It was like a resetting of the world order as we understand it, and that got turned into The World Is Ending starring John Cusack. Should we talk about the creation story? I think we should. It's pretty cool. Uh. There were a couple of sacred texts that's survived. As we'll see later, a lot of their written history was burned by Christian

missionaries who said, you don't need that stuff anymore. You're gonna be like us, very sadly, but there are some texts and cotuses that survived. In a couple of them, the Popo Vu and the chill Um Bollum had these creation stories wherein there was a god of wind and sky called Hurricane Hurricane, and there was a ciba tree planted on the earth to create space between the earth and sky for people and animals and plants and things to grow. And humans came third after the plants and animals.

But in the text it said that they were made out of mud. It's soundfamiliar, uh, And they could speak but could not think or move, which sounds like a lot of modern day Americans. Yeah, all they could say is please kill me. Uh. So the god said, oh, that's not good, so they destroyed them with water. Then they tried again, created a man from wood and woman from reeds, and they were sort of like functional humans evidently, but were immortal and didn't have souls. So the god said, well,

that's no good. Yeah, that that'll do if you're made of well I guess I thought if they were made of mud that would do, but I guess wooden reeds boiling water would in their minds, that would kill them. It sounds more tortuous, but it didn't kill all of them because some people survive some of the reed and would people turned into monkeys also very interesting in terms of like evolutionary theory. Uh. And then finally they got

it right in their minds. They created what we think of modern humans in their creation story from maize dough and their own blood. But then the gods thought, hey, there a little too scary smart, So they might threaten us one day, but we won't destroy them. We will just cloud their minds in their eyes and make them not as smart. And that's their creation story. Yeah, it's pretty interesting. Yeah. Um. They they had a pantheon of gods um, much like the Greeks had um that were

dedicated to like a sky god or rain god. Um. There were like more than one creator god um. It depends on what period of the Maya civilization you're talking about, which one was more important than another. One might be a little more important to one city state than another. Um. So they kind of just jockeyed in and out of importance.

But they were still generally the same pantheon. And again, in addition to art and um and like other ideas, their religion was traded amongst themselves and with outside groups as well. That's right, Like they would trade God's right. Yeah, like I'll trade you a rookie shawl for eight eight tops cucko khan. Uh. This part this next are really sort of gets me going intellectually, is when we talk

about their system of agriculture. Uh. They were great, great farmers. Um. You know, some say too great and that they over farmed. I guess that would make them that great farmers because I don't know about over farming, but they were really good at making things grow and and depending on where you were, which mind culture you were talking about. Uh, that was it could be very very dry if you weren't near water, if you were inland, and they have,

you know, rainy season in your dry season. They have to contend with that dry season, and they did so by building these huge underwater cisterns that would collect enough water to basically last them about half of a year. Yeah. So, like every built structure was engineered so that anytime it rained during the rainy season, that water got channeled right into that underground cistern. And it wasn't just carved out

of limestone, chuck. I mean it was they carved it out of a bedrock and then covered it up, but they also covered it with stucco so that it would be waterproof and could hold enough water to keep everybody going for the rest of the year. So cool. They had um aqueducts in one of the city's Uh. I would pronounce that pelink polink polink. Okay, you say that as if you know for sure I've heard the word before. Polink. Plus, it's fun. It's more fun to say than polink. That

sounds like a Internet challenge from you know, several years ago. Yeah, it's really I don't know. I've never done an Internet challenge. I always think it's funny when they pop up. So the Polink challenge went away. But the Polink A they had a system of aqueducts and they actually I mean, in my mind, I don't know what the Chinese were doing. It seems like they invented everything. But in my mind,

they created water pressure. They're the first people I heard of to create water pressure, right, using like a drop in elevation and a narrow conduit for yeah, and then little kids would just dance and play in front of it. No, that wastes the water. Um. There's also like great use of filtration to which is amazing if you think about it. But two cal Um they use zeolite and quartz zeolites kind of like a clay like silicate um and quarts as courts um. The thing is is neither one of

those are found at too cal Um. They're found kind of far away, So they were purposefully put in their water reservoirs. Uh. And the reason why that's so impressive is because zeolite and quarts are used today to filter microbes out of water. Yeah, and they figured it out. They think probably they just realized that the natural aquifer around the zeolite cory tasted better, was clearer, that kind of thing. So they just quarried the zeolite and moved

it over to their own reservoir. It's possible it's a pretty good gas. We just don't know for sure how they got the idea. We just know they didn't. Yeah, I mean a lot of it seems like just brilliant innovation, and a lot of it seems like just good common sense. Yeah, it really does. They knew a good idea when they

saw one, that's right. They also had irrigation canals. Uh, they had tiered agriculture fields that were cut into the hills, so it would prevent erosion, it would prevent flooding, and water would just sort of drained down like a beautiful champagne fountain. Yeah. I mean, that's terraced farming, and that's been like invented multiple times by different cultures independently. It's just again a really good idea, wonderful idea. They also invented,

or at least employed, raised beds for farming. Uh So if they're you know, they wanted to keep things a little dryer, they would build a raised beds and then you could still have wildlife underneath aquatic wildlife. Yeah, I think they were actually doing aquaculture too. They were raising the fish and the turtles, and that the swampy area next to that, next to the raised beds. Wonderful idea. So they also did what you mentioned before, slash and

burns called milpa. It's where you take a section of rainforest, cut, cut it down, leave the vegetation in the trees in place, and burn them there, and then the resulting ash covers the dirt and you plant directly into the ashy dirt. You don't till the soil, and it's really really good at fertilizing um an area without any kind of inputs, certainly no fossil fuel based industrial inputs, and it keeps

the land going for about two to three years. But then after that it gets depleted, which means that you have to take that plot of land and leave it fallow for about fifteen years. So if you do some pretty quick back of the envelope math, you have to have a tremendous amount of land to to cycle through so that you can leave each spot fallow for about fifteen years. They need a lot of land or very

low population. And that's one of the reasons why some people say must have we must have covered it in our episode from back in December. But some people say that's what led to the clin of the Maya. They over farmed, they over slashed and burned. Their population got too big to support through slash and burn agriculture because it just requires too much land because of the fallow period you have to have. Was that December, I believe so. I mean, the years are running together these days. Crazy.

I would have guessed that was seven years ago. I'm pretty sure it was December. Another thing that they did was sports ball. Yeah. I don't know what it is, Chuck, but talking about this particular game is always annoyed me. I don't know. I don't know, but I've always hated this game because we talked about it before we have Yeah, and plus, I mean it's a big anytime you talk about the Maya, you can't not talk about it. You know, why would it annoy you? I don't know, anno easy

that they did it. It's just an annoying game. I feel like, Okay, well, they had a ball game, uh called either poc to poc or pocket talk. And you know, it's sort of like, I'm of the belief that most of these sports games are pretty similar soccer, hockey, basketball, American football. They they're all sort of the same, which is they sort of simulate war, like here's our side,

here's your side. We're gonna try and go on your side and do something, and you're gonna try and come to our side and do something, and we're both going to try and prevent one another from doing that thing, whether it's putting a puck in a net or a soccer ball in a net, or a basketball in a hoop, or a football in an the end zone. And this may or may not take place during a ten cent

beer night too. But they had a game all long window way of saying, they had sort of the proto version of this game where they have been able to sort of reconstruct how it might have been played, except they did not use these a little rubber ball that they used by mixing latex with juice from a morning glory vine to make it bounce here, and they wore padding like you would in football American football. That's news to me. I didn't realize that they were padding. Does

that annoy you. It's okay, I'm neutral. Uh. And then the key here with this game, though, it makes it so different is uh, they didn't use their hands or their feet. They would use their mainly their hips, I think, but their elbows in their knees as well to move this ball until you, uh, in a very kidd itch like move, quidditch like move, throw it through two stone rings. You almost just got us torn to pieces. I'm really glad, I think yourself. Yeah, maybe it's them. It's quidditch, right, Yeah,

so it's close quidditch. So maybe it's the use of the hips. It just seems really painful and that they should have been like this really hurts. Let's try our hands or our feet instead. It seems intuitive to use hand and feet. Yeah, and not hips. There's no other game in the history of games as far as I know, and I know a lot about games um that used the hips. Um, but it's twister they did, or maybe golf. It's all in the hips. M. I've been playing on

golf again lately, Oh you have. Yeah, I got back into it after like a twenty year layoff. Oh that's right, that's right. Yeah, are you still loving it. I'm having fun. That's a lot of fun. Good way to spend some time with friends. That's what tiger Wood says, and he also says must dominate. All right, let's take a break and let's come back and talk about the supposed fall

of the civilization right after this. Okay, So we talked about all these different periods, um and the end of the ninth century is typically considered the end of the Maya classical period, what you referred to earlier as the Golden Age of the Maya, and for a lot of people that equates with the fall of the Maya civilization. That was it. That's when their cities were abandoned and reclaimed by the jungle. That's when their ideas and thoughts and languages and culture were lost. And that was that

was when the Maya became a loss civilization. And like we said at the outset, that's just not true. I mean, the Maya is still around today. But in addition to being more of a dispersal than a fall um, that didn't happen all at once to all of the Maya city depending on where you were the Maya territory. Some of those cities not only kept on going just fine. New ones were developed, like way after this this supposed fall of the Maya civilization. Yeah, which that's really interesting

to me. In fact, we get Maya, I don't think we said from Maya Pan, which was one of the last ones, and that was founded in twelve sixty three. So this was after the supposed you know, fall of the Mayans and the classic period um one of them. In fact, the last one to fall, which is in modern i Guatemala today, was almost in the eighteenth century.

It was in six when the Spanish finally took the final um Mayan city basically, and we mentioned the Spanish because they were, uh, they were the big reason why things stopped. It wasn't. I mean, there was a dispersal for sure, But when the Spanish came and the Christian

missionaries came is when things got really ugly. And they basically said, we're going to squash your culture, We're going to take away your language, we're going to burn your written history, and you're going to be like us now right, you're gonna be Roman Catholic and you're gonna like it um. And as we learned in Guatemala, um the modern Maya

uh and the Maya. From this colonial period, UM got into syncretism, which is where they took their original traditional religion and meshed it with the forced upon them Roman Catholicism, so that they associated saints with specific deities like Um, Mashamo, the the may A deity who helped me quit smoking. Yeah, good old Mashamo. Yeah, he was associated with St. Simon, and you would go to him and say, I have this vice I need to I need to get rid of.

Please help me Mashamo. You give him a cigarette and some I think maniac root wine or liquor, and uh light a candle and he would take care of you. I forgot all about Mashamo. Oh how could you? That was one of the Yeah, that was a long time ago. And uh we obviously shout out our friends at co ED, Uh, the charity organization that we've been working with for years who got us down there to begin with. So just go check out their their work and uh sponsor a kid,

give them a access to books and education. Yep, co ED you see dot org right, Yeah, go check them out. Um. So you said that the Spanish missionaries, the Franciscans in particular, um, were the ones who came in after the leading tip of the spear, the conquistadors who would come in slaughter a bunch of people, subjugate them, and then the Franciscans would come in and rebuild them in the European style and voiced you know, um, the Spanish language on them,

Roman Catholicism on them, um. And that the Maya kind of adapted with syncretism, right. But one of the big ways you you get rid of somebody's culture getting rid of their writing. And I think you said it earlier, but the Franciscans burned almost all almost every book as far as we know, except four of those codices were burned, destroyed by Spanish missionaries in the colonial period when they

were trying to subjugate and convert the Maya um. Which is extraordinarily sad because it just makes you wonder how much history and and cosmological thought was just totally lost forever through that. Yeah. I mean they wrote a lot of books, uh. And those codices were made from fig tree bark and they were folded accordion style, and you can there's some of that stuff that's that's carved into monuments that you can still see, uh, some of us painted on walls and pottery that you can still see

that survived. But just those four, uh survived and these were basically post just after the end of the Classic period. It. So there is good stuff in there about you know, prophecies and medicine and their history and astronomy and science or religious rituals and stuff like that. But again, like you said, I mean, like who knows how much we would understand if if they hadn't have just torched everything.

Well so, and then the surviving stuff, um, the surviving writing and the hieroglyphics that mayan Um system of writing that was so developed, Um, it wasn't cracked until uh, not that many years ago, I think the twenty one century. And there's a really great nova Um episode on PBS called Cracking the Maya Code. And it's just almost like this thriller where like a group of like linguists got together and um figured out you know what it meant

without a Rosetta stone, nothing like that. They just had to make conclusions and assumptions, and um, they finally figured it out. But um, one of the other things that happened to one of the remaining kind of bits of written information was on the hieroglyphics stairway at Copon. Another great city, one of the temples Chuck was a pyramid and it had the staircase and the staircase was made of limestone blocks with hieroglyphics carved into it that told

the story. But unfortunately, the first archaeologists who excavated it back in disassembled the staircase to examine it, and when they put it back together again, I guess they realized that they hadn't noted where it was originally, so they put it out of order. So whatever it was trying to say is lost to history forever thanks to archaeologists. And they said, it says there's a lady who knows all that glitters is gold, and as she winds on down the road, and they're like, no, no, it's all

out of order. There's something about a bustle in your headgerow that doesn't make any sense. It still doesn't make sense. Uh. The um colonial period that came much much later, the agenous languages were um discourages. One way to say it kind of squashed is another way. Uh. And then finally in the nineteen seventies and eighties, there was a revival of the Maya and Guatemala to basically say, you know, our language is important, our cultural rights as indigenous people

are important, and they made some concessions. They're they're not officially believe Guatemala still has not accepted any of the indigenous languages as official co languages like it does with Spanish, but uh, they are acknowledged, they're part of the national identity and Guatemala and I believe that you can receive public services in your native language, in indigenous tongue, even though they're not official languages. They still guarantee that. Yeah,

that's really something. And that also actually comes after a genocide. There was a genocide against the Maya by the Guatemalan army, which presumed that the typical indig and it's Maya in Guatemala supported the guerrillas in the late seventies early eighties, and something like two hundred thousand Maya indigenous Maya were killed, uh in nineteen between nineteen eight and ninety three, and another one and a half million um just disappeared and

are presumed to have been killed. And they keep finding like mass graves that that definitely underscore the fact that they were killed. So almost two million people were killed in three years in tiny little Guatemala um. So so much so that like there was a substantial hit to the Maya population in that country. Um, but they managed to hang on and stay around and maintain links to their you know traditions still. Yeah, I mean, if you

go there today, you will see uh traditional mind people. Sometimes. Uh the women might be wearing to the traditional clothing, which is beautiful. Uh. Eat some of that food, is my advice. Sit down with some of them, have a conversation if you can. I guess we should finish up with a little bit about human sacrifice instead of that lovely note. Ye. So there's a great article in the

Economists called who did the Maya Sacrifice? And there was another one in Reuters called Ancient Maya Sacrifice Boys not Virgin Girls colon study. But there was this you know notion that I mean, sacrifice happened in numerous ways. There was blood letting. Sometimes. There was the ball game that we spoke of. A lot of times they would play the game against another city state and someone in that city state would die if they lost and be sacrificed. Uh.

Sometimes they would sacrifice children like you spoke of. They would uh throw them in the sootes which are the swam in them when I was in Mexico, and it's an amazing experience, but UM, to know that that kind of thing happened there is a little sobering, to say the least. But the underground, you know, pools uh in these caves and uh, there's no way getting around it.

You know, they sacrifice people, and so they you know, they definitely did it with uh when at war, they would a lot of times sacrifice someone from another city state to sort of appease the gods and not their own. But they thought, maybe we can find out, um, who these people were. And there's a lot of gobbady cookie science that we won't get into and how they did it.

But they looked at their at these uh at teeth and from examining the teeth in the isotopic ratios, they're able to basically determine where people came from depending on uh the enamel of their teeth. And what they ended up finding out was what they called it was anywhere

and everywhere where Who these people were. There were half of them were locals, about a quarter were from some distance others from hundreds of kilometers away, and they were, uh, you know, there were children, there were boys, there were girls, there were adults. It was sort of all over the map. So I think they were hoping for sort of like a tidy little answer there and they did not get one. No, But didn't they say that it was ultimately mostly younger boys,

like teenage boys. Well that was that was the Reuters study, and that was um when they would specifically, I think, throw children in the sontes to call for rain. I think they used to think that those were, uh, they sacrificed virgin girls. And what they found out that was because I think they had ja jewelry and things like that.

But they said no, they found out that they were in fact mostly young boys, right, And they would throw them in the semeotes because those were considered portals to the underworld and they were sacrificing not just for rain, but also just to keep things going. Like they they believed that the gods were nourished by human blood, and by sacrificing humans, the sun would come up, crops would grow, night would come and turn into day again. Um, like the world would just keep functioning as a as a

matter of nourishing the gods with human blood. Yeah. I mean, it's definitely something to keep in mind when you go to tour and swim in a soote. It's a you should always sort of respectfully think about that kind of stuff. I think. And don't look down. Don't look down, you're down already. Don't look up. That's where the bats are. Did you go scuba diving in it? No? Uh, we went on a great tour and ended up being just the three of us and this one other woman is

very nice lady from Dallas. Uh, And we were the only ones down there, and our guide was this awesome dude, and uh, you know, you just it's like caving. You go deeper and deeper and deeper about in knee deep in water this cool, beautiful, perfectly clear water with blind fish all around you. Uh. And then you get to

the sort of the swimming hole part. Uh. There are others not taste down there that you can scuba dive in and zip line in and the inner tube and there's tons and tons of people, but this one was way off the beaten path and very quiet and very private and uh, more of a historical educational type of tour was great. Yeah, a little in fact that may invented the zip line so that they could zip line in the scene note taste. But he gave us these

um waterproof flashlights. You know, it's our way around. And I was floating. He gave us about thirty minutes just to sort of swim and float in this one main swimming cavern. Uh. And it's they electrified it down there. They had these colored lights. It was really spectacular. But I was laying there and I was floating, and I saw these big sort of look like portals. There's these little indentations in the ceiling above me, and I was like, oh,

I wonder what's in those? And it turned on the light and it was like twenty bats just hovered and sort of shaking and shivering together. Uh. And yet there is no more natural instinct than to get out from under that hole. Like a bat's gonna just fall on you. Like, no, they fly, he kind of. But your instinct is like every time one of us walked under one was like, oh, I don't want to be under that, right. Yeah, it's very cool though, Yeah, ah, you got anything else? I

got nothing else? Well, Chuck's got anything else. I don't have anything else, and since uh that's the case, it's time for a listener mail. I'm gonna call this our second kidney donation email. We did one in our last episode we just recorded, and this one is from a kidney donor and it's pretty great. Uh. He discovered our podcast six years ago and said, about seven years ago, I had the opportunity to sign up to donate my kidney to a stranger. I was fortunate enough to be

a universal donor. Our blood type was a match, and the ride started. It took blood work every two weeks for four months to get cleared. I met the recipient and his family. They had two young kids, so it made my decision that much easier and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Some interesting facts the remaining the remaining kidney can grow up to larger to make up for the missing friend. I don't think we said that. No, I didn't know that. I was also curious at the

time how they decided which one to take. They scoop out the one that has the longest yurager because it makes for an easier transplant. Uh. Here's another one. One part was not mentioned is the six inch incision at the waistline where the surgeon reaches in almost elbow deep to grab the kidney. Isn't that something? Yes, he very very clean arms. He said he made the mistake to

watch a video surgery video after he had it done. Yeah, it's probably, he said, Now that I'm a living donor, I'll be at the top of the waiting list of ever needing a kidney. I'm not sure if this is the case everywhere, but would help others, uh, if it would help others that are on the fence about it to know that. Uh. And our seven year transplant anniversaries in May, so I had to write in and give kudos for the great episode. And that is from Shane

Green and Candy and New Hampshire and Shane. We usually don't do shout outs, but I think the rule now is if you'd give a kidney, then you get some shout outs. Because Shane wrote back after I said he was going to be on listener mail and said, UH, please shout out the Dartmouth Hitchcock Transplant team. Please shout out Donate Life, which helped pay for Shane's bills while he was out for five weeks. UH, and most importantly my family that backed me up, my lovely wife Bree

and my daughter. Maybe we are all listeners and our anniversary is coming up soon. So as from Shane Green, he sent a picture of him and Big Mo, his transplant friend. He was six ft six that's why they call him Big Mo. And it's just a great story. It's amazing you did that, Shane. Yeah, Shane, way to go. You definitely get shouts out any time for that, just right in next time you're like, I'm in the move for a shout out. Yeah. If you want to add

a nice cheese steak the other day, right exactly. Um, if you want to be in touch with us, like Shane didn't let us know something amazing you did, we might give you a shout out to who knows? You can send us an email to Stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.