How does a civilization create massive pyramids, intricate hieroglyphics, rudimentary plumbing, advanced mathematics, and a celestial calendar that rivals our modern, scientifically engineered calendars by a few minutes, maybe even seconds? How does a civilization dwarf the amount of pyramids left by the ancient Egyptians have advanced architecture and create irrigation systems for their crops, and do all of this while being only regarded as a Stone age civilization?
Why does such a group like this make such a striking impact on the world around them? And then just vanish? Where are they? Where did they come from and where did they go? Where did you come from? Ghana. Joe. This week we learn the mysteries of the Maya, the people who prophesize the end of the world. In 2012, after having vanished from the face of the earth almost a millennium before all that. More on another episode of The Remedial Scholar. Welcome, everyone.
I am Levi, and this is the remedial scholar. I hope you are excited to hear me mispronounce every other word in this episode. It's going to be fun. Before we get to making a linguistic fool of myself, a few quick things. Firstly, if you learn anything from the show, if you end up finding it fascinating, or if you think my voice is irresistible, please leave a review wherever possible. You can also leave a comment in the Facebook group there dedicated post to each episode.
In addition to that, you can also comment on the YouTube video about anything really, but it would be cool if you leave a comment or, you know, like like leave a like and do all the YouTube things related to that, subscribe and all that jazz, anything to help show in the algorithm. And speaking of boosting the algorithm, not immediately. maybe immediately, I don't know. We'll see how it goes. I will be back to the full swing of things, releasing
episodes in rapid fire every hour on the hour. No. but it's going to be a much faster pace than one every two months. you know, starting a year or two off, like, I probably should have started year one. kind of crazy that it's been a whole year. I mean, with an asterix, this is like.
This is like when they transition from a shorter, more manageable scale early in baseball and then into, like, this, the massive scale of games that they play now, like all the records from back then or Asterix because it's like, hey, you hit that many home runs and you did it in this amount of games, but now we have these many games and we can hit more home runs or whatever.
So bad sports analogies aside, I'm excited to see what year two brings and actually be, you know, focused on creating the show. I'm back to feeling very passionate about it. I am, you know, free from school, and I kind of got a good work life balance going. So I'm very excited. and I just want to be able to deliver the best possible show that I can. And, you know, I have some fun ideas on how to do that and some cool episode ideas also coming up.
So all that preamble, let's get into the actual episode itself. This week is an exciting one. This topic you, this topic itself is also a Herculean effort for me to finish. If you are a long time listener of the show, then you're like, yeah, we know we've been waiting, waiting, waiting. You're also probably thinking that because of the fact that you know, the mind up and vanished is probably pretty tough to research. And you were slightly correct.
Also, with slight correction, the Maya did not vanish. They're actually never even here. You might be surprised to learn that what we know is the Maya is actually nothing more than a few misunderstandings and bad translation. And at the Maya, we're actually just left handed Aztecs. So we're going to be looking further into what split from the actual Aztecs into what we believe is Maya. No. Now, this this week is definitely just about the Maya.
but to get a better understanding of the Maya, like all things, we got to look backwards. Indigenous cultures suffer from the lack of written history. Weirdly enough, they also. I mean, they they did write in calf things a lot, but it seems a little bit different than what, like the European and Asian cultures did. And I kind of looked into why this is. And it has to do with a few main things. First, let's compare some of the oldest written down languages and cultures in Egypt.
Writing on papyrus can be dated back to the mid 26th century BCE, and the close proximity to the areas around and blowing up of the trade in the Mediterranean made a be camp pretty commonplace in the cultures we generally think of when it comes to a written history. The next earliest in the invention of writing on paper instead of stone comes from China, almost 2300 years later, when fragments from a paper map were dated.
These cultures are very far apart, and even in the heyday of the Roman Empire, Far East Asian cultures really did not interact with those in the Mediterranean. So these two cultures who have both contributed greatly to the advancement of society, whose distances are pretty, pretty separate, you know, developed their writing on paper, not stone or clay, thousands of years apart.
The second issue with writing on paper, like documentation, is that you need, you know, plants suitable to create such long lasting documents. The developed paper that the mass of American cultures did end up using instead of the native papyrus that the Egyptians use, deteriorated far quicker than any other Mediterranean or Asian versions. Mesoamerican cultures use what is known as a mate, which is a bark based paper created by grinding up bark into a pulp, type material and then drying it out.
And then they would write on that and, you know, the Maya, they, they did write they developed a system of hieroglyphics, one of only a few original written languages invented without external influences all over the world. Like this is one of a handful of them, so that's pretty impressive. They also had their own mathematical system, which has been proven to be very accurate.
So accurate that when, the world was going to, people thought the world was going to end when their calendar ended in 2012, or like, the Mayans, they they really knew what was up. but I am getting ahead of myself, like, like I often do. So what does all this paper nonsense have to do with anything, Levi? Well, just kind of wanted to demonstrate how lucky we are to have what information we do about the Maya and how a lot of it is still an unraveling mystery.
Would have been a lot easier had the Spanish not burnt most of their written books in in order to say, but there's not much we can do about that now. there's only a few, codex ins that, exist. Probably, I think four maybe when the entire world of Maya codices, where their language is written down on like books, there's only four. So, so that's pretty sweet. So did the Maya and other indigenous cultures really not write that much down, or did the colonizers just burn it all?
There's probably the latter, but we won't know until I look into every single one of them. I choose to tell you this because I believe that it's important to understand that history is always, and probably history is, and probably always will be, incomplete in many cases. This is to say that I will let you know for sure when I have like this is this we know that this happened, when facts are involved. And try my best to tell you when scientific
archeological hunches are being made going forward. So in that spirit, let's do some estimation on how people even got to the Americas. If human life truly did originate and spread from the continent of Africa to where everybody rests now, there are a few leading theories on how this happened. The most prominent one is that 15 to 20,000 years ago, the first Americans descended through North America via the Bering Land bridge, which is now where the Bering Strait is.
During the last ice age, the hypothesis is focused around the connection of the eastern edge of Russia on the Asian continent and the northwest edge of what is modern day Alaska. DNA testing between Native American tribes and Siberian people shows that there's a close link between them, and that there is a likelihood that this is where the origin stems from. This is not the only case, however.
There are two other DNA links which the origins that archeological archeologists surmise could have contributed to or coincide with the Bering land bridge crossing. Archeologists and historians alike hypothesize that with the migration of people to Australia 65,000 years ago, that many nautical expeditions had taken place that very well could have led to the settlement along the west coast of South America. Now, if you remember from the Magellan episode, The Pacific Ocean ain't no easy feat.
So it makes more sense that people walked across the Bering Land Bridge. But we have to remember that the Americas were vastly different 20,000 years ago. The earliest archeological data we have found of indigenous cultures in America was thought to have been the Clovis site, which dates around 13,000 years ago. This discovery was made in the 1930s near Clovis, New Mexico, hence the name.
The site seemed to have lined up with the Bering land bridge, but it is thought that North America would have been frozen and not been able to offer much in terms of life for traveling people to sustain themselves on, especially when they had to walk the entire way. There's another site which predates the Clovis site, all the way down in the southern, section of Chile. at Monteverdi. Monteverdi. I think if you're unfamiliar with this area, that makes two of us well made. Two of us.
Now we both know what Glasgow, Monteverdi is in the southern section of Chile, and not far, like, not so far south, that it touches the Strait of Magellan. But the cluster of islands in which Magellan tried to navigate is just south of this area. Monteverdi is an archeological site in which the earliest dated indigenous sites in the Americas is located.
It predates the Clovis site by over a thousand years, which means that people were all the way near the southern tip of South America, much further back than we realize. Now, I do realize that Indonesia is much closer to Australia than the southern tip of South. A South America is to, well, literally anything except for maybe Antarctica and the rest of South America.
But it doesn't make sense that people would have taken boats of some kind to the Americas, while people made it to the very remote Easter Island as far back as 400 C.E.. Granted, this is a long time removed from 14,000 years ago, but when you factor in that people were traveling via maritime routes that far back, it is not completely unreasonable.
I can't imagine that the voyage across the Pacific Ocean, in what had to have been smaller vessels that Magellan had, could have possibly been like, I can't imagine it was very much fun, really. No matter which way you slice it, we have absolute proof that people were living migrating in the Americas almost 15,000 years ago. For certain. There's some other ones, like there's footsteps I can't even remember specifically where they are, but they were dated about 22,000 years ago.
And it's like these, this lady walking with, a man, and then his steps disappear, and then it's just her. And then there's, like, mammoth footprints all over the place. Anyway, but if you think about what these two sites show us, that these people had to have moved with some prior knowledge because there's tools homes found.
So it's kind of reasonable to assume that they were either near those areas for a while, or they arrived with some very thorough knowledge of how to survive, if only for a while. It's not like a bunch of babies washed up on tour of South America and just drew up like some sort of, I don't know, Lord of the flies situation. Another archeological find I want to bring up is the find in Queenstown, a room. Mexico.
This is the eastern section of the Yucatan Peninsula, and this particular find was found on the north shore of Quinton Aru, some 127 miles from the infamous Chichen Itza, which will we will discuss further in a little bit.
In this region, a man was diving in a cenote, which is a water filled cave, and while diving he came across a human skull and attached skeleton, which had been encrusted with crystallized liquid that had fell on it from above, from the stalactites above it, long before the cave was eventually filled with water. Skeleton was dated to be about 10,000 years old, and, it was found to be a teenage girl. The suspected theory is that she fell into the snow while looking for water.
I think that this kind of tells me more than anything that there were, you know, scores of people just literally all around varying degrees of lifestyle, thousands of miles apart around the same time doesn't really help pinpoint exactly where people were or where they came from. But, you know, this is in between both sites, and I guess it's younger than both of those sites, but it kind of just shows how spread out the indigenous people of the Americas were in that kind of time period.
So anyway, on to our actual topic. the Maya kind of an interesting group to look at, in particular because of what we think they were or what happened to them, is largely misunderstood. They, like many cultures around the world, have distinct phases that they went through in terms of their development, into what we know as a civilization. Interesting part about this is that they did not consider themselves to be Maya.
They had no governing body that oversaw all the people who fit the description of this group. This is different from people like the Aztec, who had a defining name defining a government body over overall ruling like system. Aztec also like the peak of the Maya and the peak of the Aztecs, are different. The Aztecs kind of came up as the Maya had already began to, quote unquote, collapse. I'll talk why? That's kind of a quote unquote thing later.
But there's some overlap with the Maya and as tech, but also with different cultures like the Inca and the Olmec. Although the Olmec are probably the ones that that Maya interacted with the most, we know for sure that they interacted with the old man because that's where they got their famous calendar. they took the Olmecs calendar and then developed it even further into what we know as the Maya calendar.
To that is it also important to note that the Maya is essentially a term that was chosen to describe this larger group of people who did not fit in the Aztec or Olmec categories. They're definitely a different group, but they did not, you know, consider themselves to be super different from Aztec or Olmec. They obviously live by different governing rules, but they interacted with these two cultures.
Maya was also a broad term because there's over 30 different languages that the Maya spoke regionally differentiated, but also closely, associated with one another, that they could speak and trade within different city states. It is like as if you considered all of Europe to be one type of people. Sure, they can communicate with their neighbors just fine, but it's a little trickier the further out you go. So without further ado, let's look into what we know about the Maya.
According to the Maya creation myths, in the beginning, world was a vast expanse of nothingness filled with only what the sky and an immense sea. Amidst this emptiness existed the heart of the sky known as hurricane. A hurricane, the creator of God's feathered serpent. These are the most famous of the Maya deities. These divine beings looked upon the void and united their powers to bring order to the chaos. Which is kind of ironic, because it was like there's nothing other than water and sky.
This is too chaotic. We got to bring more shit into it throughout their words. But through their words, the gods conjured into the world, into existence. Mountains, rose, valleys, dipped, trees, grew tall, animals roamed the new land. And despite the beauty and abundance, the gods were dissatisfied, for the animals could not speak or offer praise. It's. Listen, you guys are very cute. The squirrel is adorable, but it can't praise me, so I hate it. It's so crazy.
the gods desired beings who could acknowledge their creators, which you know, I guess it was probably hard work. You want people to recognize your effort. Their first attempt to create humans evolved, molding them from mud. These beings, however, were weak, crumbled easily, and dissolved back into the Earth. Obviously, they're made of mud. What did you expect? I mean, honestly, you made animals just fine. But then people, you're like, I guess we'll make them out of mud.
Determine the gods. Try it again. This time crafting humans from wood. All right. These these wooden beings were more robust, yet they lacked souls and understanding their ignorance angered the gods. You stupid piece of wood. You don't. You can talk and praise me, but you just don't get it, I imagine. what is it, Jimmy? From eternity with Planck. This is Yelena. Why don't you get me? Sorry. But. Yeah. So, God's unleashed a great flood and other calamities to destroy these wooden people.
Some of the wooden beings managed to escape and were transformed into monkeys, serving as a reminder of the gods displeasure. Which is not really sure why the gods hate monkeys, or more importantly, why the Maya myth makers hate them so much. But you know, moving on, the gods made a final attempt to make their their preferred people. They used dough, a sacred and vital substance for the Maya to shape humans. That's right. We're all corn. You mean everyone? Corn. Always have been, always will be.
These beings were perfect, possessing the ability to see and comprehend everything. Yet their perfection posed a threat to the gods authority to prevent humans from becoming too powerful. The gods clouded their vision. Limiting their understanding to what was necessary seems a bit rude. These game gods are a little picky. You got all this power and you're so picky on what you make. the story of creation did not end there. There. the adventures of the Hero twins had hudner poo and shubhankar.
I'm gonna say that I nailed that, but I don't sound too confident. That's kind of like Hercules a little bit. They went to the underworld. Also, underworld is called Jabal, which is fun to say. Where they defeated the Lords through some advanced tactics. They played games. They outgained the gods in a way very, Very Bill and Ted. Bogus journey, if you will.
You know, when they have to play chess with, the Grim Reaper and whatnot, their exploits not only, you know, gave the people some, like, power through, like, this is who we want to be, but, you know, it also, it made it it set up the values for the Maya people and also gave them a reason to love cosmology. They picked up, you know, there's the heroes in the sky kind of thing, you know, like we do now with constellations. Anyway, pretty fun story.
But I wanted to dive into the things we know about for sure. So in a historical archeological manner, Maya culture is broken into phases. The archaic period, which is from 8000 to 2000 BCE, the Pre Classic, which has further divisions such as early, middle and late. The pre Classic is defined as 2000 BCE to 200 C.E., so you can imagine with that long of timeline, kind of want to break things down a little bit.
The classic goes from 250 to 950 C.E. and the Post Classic, which goes from 950 to 1539 and then overlaps with which with what is called the contact or contact period, which stretches from 1511 to 1697. There's some overlap, as I mentioned, but not just in timeline, but also advancements, building techniques, writing, and many other things between the various periods.
But you know, when there are some but not all the pieces for the next movement, they kind of go, all right, you're not quite there. And then when you see all of the pieces that are pretty like part and parcel to that period, you're like, all right, that's kind of when they that's kind of when they got there. it's got it's a little archaic, but you know, it works out overall difficult to pin down exactly. When things changed up similarly similarly to how it is for us today.
But, you know, we do it by decades now. But in 100,000 years, will alien archeologist to discover our own planet think the same? Who knows? Either way, we've kind of discussed the migration of indigenous people, which happened at least 14,000 years ago. But exactly when remains to be seen. How did the people get from new settling people to the mighty Mesoamerican cultures we think of today? A lot of hard work. There's a lot of trial and error.
The pre classic is based transitional period to discuss as it takes place between the archaic and the classic, but also last 2000 years. So there's definitely some room for growth early pre pre classic period as is when the Maya began to get their footing as a culture that we know and would be later known for. For that they were semi-nomadic turned farmers settling in what are known as the lowlands or the peninsula part of the Yucatan.
The main plants that are made that made these early Maya settle down as one. I'm sure we're all familiar with maize. I kind of mentioned it earlier. Corn. The cob wobble, also known as I don't think anybody calls it the cob wobble. But I think they said this plant was one, one that many indigenous people across North America utilize in many different ways. Most common was using it as a base to make a bread type meal and using the husk to make tamales. That's my favorite way.
Other things they feasted upon were squash, beans, peppers, and the occasional sweet potato. Yeah. Yuck. I just hate sweet potatoes. It's it's just a personal thing. You know, it's fun as this process is not exactly an overnight one. That is, one of the earliest early pre classic period is from roughly 2000 BCE to 1000 BCE.
It's also in this timeframe that the Maya began to trade with the Olmec, who had a larger influence on Maya culture, as I briefly mentioned a little bit ago with their influence on Brain Child in the famous Maya calendar, and so conosco. The early Pre classic period began around 1800 BCE, with notable changes in settlement patterns, sustenance, technology and society.
Permanent inland villages near flood prone bias provided advantageous fishing and agricultural conditions despite maize being present, you know, around 1700 BCE is not the primary diet staple yet, leading to speculation about reliance on other crops like manioc or casa cassava.
Technological advancements include the introduction of pottery in the burrow phase, which is around 1800 BCE with sophisticated ceramics like likely used for ritual purposes, earliest of as evidence of chocolate use, and clay figurines also emerged during this time. Then after this, we have a little more of the complex pottery, just kind of stemming from this, like origin.
They, also began to have rank societies with large capital villages and signs of social differentiation, such as elaborate burials and depictions of shaman chiefs, which, you know, also putting a little more emphasis on the, it's like almost like a aristocratic group. Next phase, we have, unique pottery decorations, more sophisticated figurines.
Early pre classic sites similar to snow scale have been found along the Pacific littoral, littoral, Guatemala and El Salvador, but not in the Central and North America Maya areas, or the earliest Olmec civilization. Before 1000 BCE, conditions were not favorable for effective village farming outside of the Pacific littoral.
However, during the middle pre classic period, you know, until about 400 BCE, heavy populations with pottery, likely Mayan speaking, began establishing themselves in both the highlands and the lowlands. These populations were mostly peasants with limited social organization, architecture and art. In contrast, the Olmec civilization in southern Veracruz and adjacent to Basco thrived during the early and middle Pre Classic periods.
Olmec Center at San Lorenzo, dating back to 1400 BCE, was the first urban capital in Mesoamerica. Known for its giant basalt sculptures. San Lorenzo was destroyed around 1150 BCE, but its influence spread across Mesoamerica, even into the Yucatan Peninsula, but only like a little bit. Olmec colonists also settled eastern San Usko. So Conosco. I think I'm been pronouncing that wrong, because, they they settled there because of rich cacao orchards. Which big thing, big theme.
After San Lorenzo was fall, La Venta became the new Olmec center, featuring these elaborate tombs, jade and serpentine offerings, and significant public architecture indicating a very powerful Olmec state. Olmec slightly likely created the Long Count calendar, influencing obviously the Maya at this like this is when they created it and then later the Maya would pick up in the middle. Pre classic period, the Maya began to showcase things that would define their classic period.
Architecture began to flourish in similar patterns across various settlements Maya, across the lowlands. architecture was not the only major improvement as they began to add some infrastructure to their habitats, which is really something that I never really considered before. They developed a very rudimentary irrigation system further advance their already improving agricultural methods.
Villages of each state began to show some version of a town square or central plazas, with greater gifts within the greater geographical area of the town. There's also the inclusion of sporting fields. This is where the iconic ball game would be played. If you're unfamiliar, the Mesoamerican people had a very developed interest in physical feats. This extended to their athletic prowess, which could be displayed in war. Also in the ball game.
The name is some kind sometimes called these pits, but most often just called the ball game or the Maya Ball game is not a specifically Maya thing, as many cultures in the Mesoamerica umbrella played it, especially the Aztecs later on. This game was also pretty interesting. They, didn't use their hands or feet, which sounds confusing because all of the sports we watched, they use their hands and feet to move an object around.
But essentially what they did is like, dribble it off of their chest or knees, and then would like, you know, use their hips to kind of kick it around, I guess. not I don't know, it seems very confusing, but if you watch videos, there's like people who could will reenact it and play the game now and you can watch them and it, it seems relatively, interesting. I don't know, it's different because it's just so alien to what we're used to, but it's also pretty interesting.
sometimes they would use this to settle disputes. So that's that's they would also in those cases, if they're like warring with another town or whatever, when they played the ball game and the other town lost, they might sacrifice one of the people on the other team. It's fun moving right along.
the, the decorated and, expansive town center also came hand in hand with, more decorated stelae, which transcribe their hieroglyphics and adorned many town centers, similarly to how the Greek city states borrowed from one another. Early Mesoamerican cultures did the same kind of thing, and the people who would be labeled as the Maya were no different.
They borrowed many, masonry techniques from the nearby Olmec people, mostly, most likely learned through traded means because also extended to different methods of tools and weaponry.
As the Maya never made it out of the Stone age technically, as far as tools were concerned, their general weaponry and utilities remained constant with, some, some improvements over the few thousand years they utilized stone tools, wooden tools crafted with stone tools, but were also big users and, obsidian tipped weapons into ores. Obsidian is volcanic glass, which is ever sharp and incredibly resilient and heavy.
Uses. Obsidian also doubled as a highly sought after traded item, and it, kind of along with things like jade and, cocoa beans. So throughout the pre classic period, more cities began to pop up, especially in the regions that are known as the lowlands. If you look at the Yucatan Peninsula, the region just south of the actual peninsula is called Southern Lowlands. They are the, they are beginning, you know, to spread throughout this region and keeping connected from each city state as they grow.
Numbers are hard to estimate, but they were sizable enough to have plenty temples and plenty of infrastructure that could support hundreds of thousands of people in some of the largest ones. It seems super impressive to me considering I have to. I have tried to build cities and games and can never get that high. One of the most notable examples from this time is oh boy, Cumbernauld Junior, Cumbernauld u u. Yeah, obviously, which is located in modern day Guatemala City.
Remember earlier when I mentioned that, there were some Maya cities that had irrigation and really dynamic features in stone carved buildings? This city was founded towards the middle pre classic in 1500 BCE, but it lasted all the way until it was eventually abandoned in 1200 C.E..
As is the case with most of Maya things, we know most about it thanks to their hieroglyphics, when they marked many things in their cities, as well as their dating system, which could often include the carvings that they made or which they often included in the carvings that they made, confused myself. Ancient Maya were accomplished astronomers and mathematicians who developed one of the most important one of the most accurate calendar systems in human history.
They use several cyclical calendars, including the harb, the sultan, the sultan, and, and the calendar round. The is a 365 day calendar with 19 months, 18 of 20 days each, and one of five days. Called the wired. The token is a 260 day calendar made from a combination of 20 day glyphs and the numbers 1 to 13. Calendar round interweaves the hub and the token silicon. I don't know, calendars repeating every 52 periods.
365 day. The Long Count calendar was used to chronologically date events spanning more than 5100 years, counting in cycles of 20, with an exception for the third cycle, which approximates the solar year. The long count calendar starts from the mythical creation date of August 1131, 14 BCE, and that cycle ended December 21st, 2012. This is the sign of a new cycle and not the end of the world, like many people like to assume because they, you know, see the word end and get all weird.
But really, if the Maya would have been around for this entire amount of time, realistically what it would have just meant is a new beginning kind of thing. like, not even a rebirth, but just like, all right, this is our new cycle. We're on this cycle. We're doing stuff differently. Slightly. Maya farmers conducted offerings and ceremonial hour ceremonies. According to the Hobgoblin, the silken, calendar also played a significant role in Maya rituals, including the. Oh my gosh, what luck.
Shakib, what's. Yeah. Nailed it! Ceremony. The Walk Saki Bots ceremony in the highlands of Guatemala, marking the start of a new 260 day cycle. Now with the calendar round combining both the hub and a token token, I'm still not convinced that, its completion signifies special wisdom for those reaching 52 years of age. Every 52 years, the calendars would synchronize a period. this period is considered to be sacred.
Mentioned earlier that they had accurately counted 365 days in the year for their mathematics. Goes way more in-depth than just that. The mathematical achievement of the Maya is, pretty noteworthy and very complex. The Maya number system was, it was a base 20 system, likely influenced by counting on fingers and toes. It included advances the features such as zero. Who would have thought that zero such an events feature. But, an positional system, though not a true positional based system.
The interesting thing about this is that the Maya had the concept of zero down way before the Europeans did, and this might be silly, but think of how often the concept of nothing might play a part in your life. Think about how the Europeans did not have something like that until like 1200 C.E., when the famous Fibonacci returned from traveling in North Africa and delivered the concept, along with Arabic numerals, to Europe, Egypt, Greece, Rome. None of these ever had zero figured out.
Isn't that kind of wild? Astronomically, the Maya achieved remarkable precision with minimal tools. They calculated the solar year to be 365.242 days, and the lunar month to be 29.30 .5302 days. Very, very close to modern values, their interest in celestial cycles led to constructions of observatories like the Caracol building et cheating Chichen Itza.
Aside from astronomy, the Maya's mathematical legacy includes intricate architectural decorations with geometric patterns found in the regions, ruins, showcasing their inventiveness and intuition. And, you know, you kind of got to think about it because they spent a lot of time hanging out outside and a lot of time looking at the stars and a lot of time planning.
And, you know, we we were like, man, they're not making very many observations in science now, but like, let's just during our lifetime think about generations of wealth, that of knowledge that's been passed out. So anyway, that moves us right.
In the classic period, this titular this is the Maya period as we know it, considered by many to be the height of the Maya civilization, where things that I mentioned before with the mathematic calendar, mathematics calendars, celestial observing and architecture really grew into their iconic selves is in the classical period that the heavy influence of the calendar in the way that they began to heavily date things and most architectural achievements from this time.
There are calendar dates included in the hieroglyphics that decorated the facades of these buildings and monuments. This is especially useful now that we have an understanding of how the calendars work, and can use them to tell exactly when the building was built, which is pretty neat. During the classical period, which, as I mentioned earlier, stretches from the second century BCE to 900 C.E. we also have one of the most influential Mayan rulers.
There's a good time to share the fact that just because Maya did not have a unified governing body or major kingdom presence in the same way that the Aztec or Inca had their city states, who often fought one another struggled in these fights. one such location in is in the city of Plunkett, which had been dealing with some major rival disputes with the Catholic.
More turnover for rulers of Lincoln was pretty bad, and Catholic more attacked them consistently over and over during the fourth and fifth centuries. With the tumultuous time that the attacks and leaders who were unable to make any meaningful progress in their city, the people of Lincoln felt, you know, very disparaged. Religious ceremonies were ignored, linked even more, people just being alienated. There's even glyphs which stated the fact, you know, like people aren't praying.
That's not what they said specifically. But, you know, you know, it's bad. You know how bad your city is missing a religious ceremony or ceremonies. There has to be a it has to have an artisan carve it into a building. That's pretty bad. Things felt bleak. That was until the son of a woman who assumed the role as a leader of the city was brought into the fold. Sack. Cook was the daughter of a man named Jenab Khalil, who is the namesake for her son.
I explain that very confusing, but he her son, took power at age 12, assisted by his mother for a quarter of a century. The young Pascal, also known as Pascal the Great began to run the city in the right direction. City experienced a great renaissance under Picard's guidance.
Majority of the buildings in Pelinka were constructed during his nearly 70 year tenure, remodeling current buildings, adding new and majorly improved structures that feature some of the greatest and latest breakthroughs of Mayan engineering. Plank was advanced as it features some of the rudimentary pseudo plumbing which fed sweat baths, latrines, and, of course, water for crops, which is amazing. They had sweat, sweat baths, figured out.
Buildings were constructed with iconic vault style that would be found in many other classic and Post Classic Maya buildings. Although there were no great success stories in the buildings, he did not rule unchallenged during his reign. The warriors of pulling battle against external foes quite often, but just as often found themselves victorious. The success of percale is important in highlighting a few different things.
Firstly, the lack of religious effort before he took over versus the importance he placed on building temples, doing rituals at the beginning of his reign in an effort to please their gods, who in turn provided some favor towards him and his reign. This is a pattern that is seen in a few mind states, where at a certain point, emphasis on religious practice does get placed. And maybe it worked and it did keep doing it. So or it stops working and they move on.
More on that, more on the latter in a little bit. It's kind of a great system. No, because like, you don't swear religious fealty, support my reign as king. And if I do a good job, you know, or the gods support my rule, then if things work out and I'm actually good at my job, it will look like the gods favor me. So this is my thought on ancient systems of like God kings. They really are really effective ones. Really, really helped the spread of the power of their dominant religion.
If you think about it as you move through, towards the modern age, through history, the power of who is running, whatever place it may be largely focused on the gods supporting them. Then, as time moves forward, the common people become more educated. Facts become a little more obvious, and then the leader is a little more to blame because of their actions, rather than they displease the gods in some vague fashion. Let's you actually did it. I digress.
The reason we know Picard's great leadership is due to a few factors. The first, obviously, the inscriptions of the monuments and buildings constructed during his reign. As I stated before, they often tagged them with the dates of the buildings. And then when the general events, like what general events were happening at the time, which I think we should go back to. Welcome. Welcome to McDonald's. This building was constructed on the third day of June 2007.
When it was constructed, it was the only building within a five block radius, and during construction, a man drove into the building and defecated on the fresh concrete. Something like that. It would be fun. I thought it would actually be cool if they did that with buildings that they take spot of other buildings. They knocked some, you know, classic Art Deco building and put up a soulless square building, leaving a picture of what was replaced so that people know the new architects. All right.
So back stepping off here, the other way to tell how important a leader was is to base off their funerary elements, right. Because definitely upper echelon of importance. His tomb was being prepared well before he died, which not super duper uncommon. But when he died, they had devised a way for him to be placed in sealed nice and neatly. His funeral mask was made from the prized jade which the Maya loved. This thing was pretty wicked too.
He was, you know, he was in his 70s, having ruled from 615 until his death in 683, so he clearly was doing something right. The death mask is completely made of jade with like 12 chains of jade as well. Massive spine earring type things, Jade bracelets, rings and pins to go on clothing. The cover of his tomb is also fantastic. Features him curled up in a seated position like sideways like profile view. You could call it an like elaborate decoration of what looks like a throne under him.
And then there's like this massive tree and like, masks floating around. Obviously, I'm gonna put an image of these things on the social media posts and then in the video companion, so, you know, don't forget to look for those. But percale is one of the most famous kings of the mind city. And he brought his city to a great power. And you'd think. But the footing he left in it, it would succeed for a long time. But this is not not really the case.
If you have a standard passing knowledge of the Maya, you might be thinking that is around this time that they began to disappear. The famous vanishing of the Maya. The only problem with this theory is that there's still Maya around to this day. Many people believe that they were wiped out with the arrival of Spanish as well, but this is also not the case.
I mentioned the phases of the Maya time periods, and that the classic period is what truly defines what we think of as the Maya to this day, and that there are sections to the classic period, while the early and late classic are what I've described until now. So now we're entering what is known as the Terminal Classic. The name like, that's pretty easy to guesstimate what is about to happen. Even so, there's some misrepresentations of what happened because we really don't have a full story.
There are a few leading ideas and theories, but before I get to those, I want to describe what is found in archeological realm from this time. At this time we have cities. No longer expanding. In the years after cause death in the eighth century, there are no new buildings being built at all. There's also the same issue and numerous other Maya sites. Not all the same time, but around each other around the same time. For sure.
This is often described as a collapse, which if you look at the city itself, no longer expanding. And soon people began to leave. The city collapsed. Sure, the Maya civilization did continue on, though they did what they did before they had these cities. They moved. They moved to others. They started new ones. Some of the most notable Maya cities that we know of today actually started around the time of this so-called collapse. So let's talk about what is happening during this time.
Well, the leading theory is that one of the droughts and subsequent lack of food, there carvings from around this time that indicate that the people were people themselves, were attempting to please the gods in whatever ways they could that there, you know, and there are scientific data points that have been taken from caves, senators and the like, which revealed different isotopes within crystallized selected stalagmites
that point towards low amounts of water for many years in this time period. Actual science behind it is pretty intricate, but essentially they found certain pairings of isotopes in these crystals that indicate that there were a few major droughts. What causes these droughts? The main idea is that the Maya actually deforested. So much of their region that it affected the environment and produced, that produced rainfall, the sharp and vast forest region becoming nothing.
It makes the region much hotter, affects the amount of rainfall. And then that affects affects the crop rotation. There's scientific data to back that up from 802,000 C.E. was one of the most arid times in the Yucatan. And a quote from this PhD candidate, well, this is from 2018. He's probably a doctor by now. But, Nick Evans of Cambridge said, quote, rainfall decreased on average by about half and up to 70% during peak drought conditions. This is all very interesting.
But then how does that go to affect the Maya? Well, you could say that they're very crafty with their irrigation water reservoirs and whatnot, right. The bigger issue is that they're focused on one main crop at a certain point, maize, the corn crop. They'd put so much into using this crop, which cannot do well in droughts. And because of that, the food stores begin to dry out, both figuratively and literally.
The Maya were effective in their methods of constructing, expanding, as well as farming and irrigation based on all success that they had. They just did not have the data that would show them that they overextended themselves in many different ways. Their population grew vastly during the classic period, and this requires a lot of food and space for people to live in. Space means clearing out rich jungle and planting more food and feeding more
people. Now, I've been playing a lot of manor lords lately and I promise this will connect. And in this game you are starting a medieval settlement and you're trying to expand your village and use the finite resources along with agriculture and military expansion. I've struggled in each game.
I start with feeding my people after a certain point, try to set up a few different fields, rotate crops, make sure the soil stays fertile, and yet every couple of years I dip into dangerously low food reserves. What I'm trying to say is that it's very hard to manage things like this, even on a virtual small scale. So imagine their crops not growing because of no water or little water depleting the reserves. This causing people to just leave, find a better place to live makes total sense to me.
There were some tactics that they tried to apply before completely abandoning their cities, though. A major archeological find known as the as the Calm Conveys was found in the pit of just like a bunch of random things, and it was broken into a bunch of big broken face in a broken pit, all of broken dreams in a broken city. What's so special about it?
Well, this place is actually decorated completely with hieroglyphics spelling out things that would normally be told in building form with no new buildings. This space from the middle of the Terminal Classic period kind of sheds some light on. You know, the city in modern day believes this space tells about the, various, events at the time, which is standard, but also tells about the efforts the city and the king were taking to pull themselves out of the struggle.
At the time, the King was doing things like leading attacks on neighboring cities to take their resources, also doing a lot of rituals and sacrificing. This is a point of pause, because I think the I often get wrapped up with the Aztec and how often or how they perform sacrifices both cultures did. And by no means were the Maya. These holistic and peace loving people. But compared to the Aztec, they kind of were compared to compared to the Aztec. Most people were.
But predominantly the Maya defaulted to blood sacrifices, but again, not as extreme as you are thinking they would do bloodletting, which is a form of ritual in which they bleed into an effigy or cauldron of swords. And this blood is an offering to the gods.
They did sacrifice humans ever so often as one does, but it was it was rarely their own citizens, typically capturing an enemy combatant and sacrificing them, which I suppose is not much better than killing your own people, but a do what you got to do regardless the come, come.
This gives us a peek into the day, day to day of the Maya people in this region as their city begin to fold under the weight of this situation, some Maya people in cities began to flee in droves, in some cases leaving behind many important things. In one such case that in Kenya, people left the city so quickly that a child was left unburied, which is completely abnormal for the Maya. So this kind of speaks to the rapid nature of some of these evacuations.
The remainder of the Terminal Classic is much the same. People leaving the cities, traveling to new ones, new cities taking hold in the post classic period. There is also as movement of the Maya from the highlands into lowlands, the actual Yucatan Peninsula proper. This coincides with cities like Chichen Itza, although Chichen Itza itself has beginnings that date a little bit further back to Late Classic most likely actually have a piece of some of the ruins. some. This is it.
Some of my friends visited, visited the site and grabbed this. They grabbed it right off of the ruins when nobody was looking. I mean, is it super fascinating? Not not particularly, but this episode had kind of given me a little more interest in it and, respect for it as well. I did ask them to grab it. But here here's the thing is, I feel like I didn't ask them to bring me a whole temple. I just kind of wanted I just wanted a little piece of history. I like collecting things.
One of the more intriguing parts of, the city is actually called El Caracol, which I talked about earlier. Is that observatory. You know, these people were so in love with stars that they had observatory, which is super fascinating and not surprising. But, you know, they had rudimentary plumbing in some cities, but it's still pretty cool nonetheless. Sites also featured, the sports ball arenas that I told you about. And then also they had the step pyramids.
Most notable of these is the, Cuzco Corn pyramid, named after the feathered serpent god, which features an iconic step design. Part of this design actually casts a shadow that looks like a serpent on the side of the pyramid, around a spring and fall equinoxes, which, you know, kind of demonstrates the Maya's skill at both architecture and their understanding of the celestial universe around them.
The shadow of the serpent, ascending or descending the steps of the pyramid is visible for a week or so before and after the equinoxes, so it's not as if they have like an exact day down for this specific type of thing, but other buildings lining up with further away stars and planets on specific dates of the year, indicate that they were able to get fairly close. As stated, the city itself did grow during the Terminal Classic period, which is different from many other cities.
Other cities like Maya Pan, which is the namesake for the culture as a whole, had battled with people within Chichen Itza, but there no hard evidence pointing to any decisive victory. Chichen Itza is actually kind of unique, as it held many culturally different people within its limits. this is demonstrated by more diverse architecture and art style. Pizza were an ethnic group within the umbrella of the Maya. The name Chichen Itza translates roughly to at the mouth of the well of the Pizza.
Chichen Itza is a little easier to. The other one's a little wordy as the site. The site is near a major snow day, so notice, we're very much ingrained in the religion and rituals of the Maya. One video I watched, they described the fact that the mouth of these caves, these cenotes, look like actual mouths.
Sometimes they have stalactites and stalagmites that look like teeth in their dark, and the sounds that come from them when you know the air rushing past as you approach can feel very much like breathing, especially if that's your only interaction with them. I think people make fun of historical people and or like how silly I was. Silly. Why would they believe that there's so crazy? It's obviously just a cave, bro. You know? Or like whatever the thing might be.
But like considering how they had basically no information on a topic unless they or someone else had showed them or taught them about it. There's no wonder why there's so many like, deities to think about on a daily basis.
Mentioned Maya Pan, which, event which became one of the larger cities following the slight decline of Chichen Itza Maya and possibly grew from some traditional Maya people, feeling that the cultural assimilation within Chichen Itza was too, too much, and they wanted to return to some more Maya centric city. A little back to the basics, man. Sounds a little racist. No, I have no idea, but it's it's fun to be ridiculous like that, right?
This transition is actually part of a bigger cultural, cultural transition as well. The Maya had already begun to rely less on rituals, possibly because they weren't working or because, or whatever. But either way, the Maya focus less on religious fealty and more on practical methods of surviving. There is an asterix to this, since they still did pray to rain gods, probably having some sort of drought based PTSD. Maybe like like America after the dust bowls.
You know, overall, there was more militarization within the Maya cities, warring more frequently than before. There were inclusions of other groups, such as the Toltec as well, which I don't think played a part in the rise of violence, but I didn't know where else to add it in is the post Classic period, which began around 950 C.E., saw the last length of the Maya before the Spanish arrival. this period is not as easily studied and there's not as much information on it either.
I can't help feel like it relates to the arrival of Spanish in their pressure to suppress indigenous cultures, like a lot of, a lot of the things that they were doing at that time demolished, but like ruins that weren't really inhabited at that time, that were inhabited a couple hundred years ago. Still around. Right? Either way, the Post Classic period showed more abandonment of some of the longer lasting cities. I mentioned the one earlier. Come now, all the way back. Common knowledge area.
I think I think that's pretty close, which had been occupied for over 2000 years at that point. Larger theme could be that many of these cities found themselves susceptible to attacks and an increase in occupation of cities that were located on hilltops or coastline, which needed only, you know, one lane of events were more preferred.
Wasn't too long before other cities like Maya Pan were abandoned by, you know, around 1450, shortly after this first contact with Spanish occurred, known as contact period, beginning in the 1511, when the first explorers wrecked off the Yucatan coast, where most of the survivors probably ended up captured and sacrificed. I mentioned, you know, they would sacrifice their military opponents. So make sense?
The reclusive nature of the Maya at this point actually probably saved them from a faster fate that the Aztecs received, which, you know, kind of summarize because they deserve their own episode.
But while that the Maya had initial contact with their cities on the Yucatan Peninsula, you know, which was an excellent landing point for the Spanish coming from the previously discovered Carib Caribbean islands, they were super spread out, not connected by their, you know, overarching government and harder to maintain power over because you might take over one city, but another city has no real connection to that other than trade.
The Aztec, on the other hand, were a solid government centralized power.
Because of this, when their capital fell to the Spanish, more accurately, when their leader invited the Spanish in and gave them instant access to help their instant access to their interior, which further helped the Spanish infiltrate and recognize the weakness within, but more importantly, brought the European diseases directly into the heart of the largest and wealthiest cities in Mesoamerica, a city which traded with other indigenous people around the area.
You know, a lot of the issues surrounding the the, narrative of the Spanish conquest relies on first hand testimony of the conquistadors themselves, who often embellish their stories to make themselves look better than they did. The main thing I want people to know about the Spanish is that these were not even trained military men, like there was probably some, but they were the equivalent of like contracted explorers as Spain kept their real soldiers near the homeland.
You know, you might need those closer to England case. Things get crazy, or the Portuguese probably didn't. Portuguese. so these men, some of whom had military experience but not all, were outnumbered. And while they did have superior armor, we know that from the Magellan episode that does not automatically qualify us being superior fighting ability. We also know that, diseases, including smallpox, had reached the highlands faster than the Spanish conquistadors.
Despite this, by the time the Spanish top of the Aztec and set their sights on the Maya, the diseases were already wiping out the indigenous population all over. Still, the Maya fought on and actually put up like a really, really good fight.
I mean, first contact 1511. and it wouldn't be till almost so the 1700s when they actually, like, relented and even still like there was anyway, other indigenous people use the Spanish as lust for gold as a tool to help eliminate their opponents, which definitely didn't make any things better. But, you know, things like that make me curious if the indigenous people had, like, banded together instead of being so divisive, like, what would have the outcome have been?
Eventually the Spanish would have probably used more force sending more and more people. But like those trips take time and they could have only sent like 50 to 75 guys at a time.
I don't know, an alternate history is super fun topic to think about, but either way, the Spanish began to settle in the region and further push towards the upper Yucatan and in the late 16th century, like 1697 is when the last Maya city state of Egypt, Najib P10 located in the P10 basin, essentially the innermost section of the Yucatan like real main body of the Yucatan, I assume partly because they were so rural and isolated in the forest, is why it took Spanish so long to locate it.
But also like, you know, ferocity had to been a factor that the Maya city did fall of, even however hard they fought. And then the Maya disappeared forever. Right? Remaining mysterious, we all wonder what happened. This once great civilization. Not. Not now. I don't understand why people like to say they. That they are such a forgotten people. There are an estimated 15 million genetic Maya people living today. Not a super massive number, but still nothing like no slouch.
They definitely endure many issues and lack of recognition by governments of Central America, but they do exist. And they don't just live in small villages. They're not like the Mesoamerican version of like the people in the Seminole Island or something like they have their cultural centers where they do like, live authentically. but the Maya definitely faced, like the full brunt of Spanish, like the witch in the remote villages that they were found in.
I guess they were subjugate, they were subjected to harsh treatment in the name of the conversion, you know, to Catholicism, victims of annatto, to fe. Like I mentioned, you know, convert or die, we're going to burn all your, you know, your personal ethnic like things. Forget your culture. You're assimilating other indigenous cultures face the same, treatment.
All of them were either, you know, forced to assimilate under Spanish rule or subjugated to slavery while millions of the population died off thanks to the disease or the treatment themselves. Biological warfare wreaked havoc on the population, but there's no way to know exactly how bad it was. Estimates range from 70 to 90% of the population affected, which, you know, would have killed off tens of hundreds of millions, maybe more.
You know, it's it's hard to tell what the actual original population was, but still, it was actually partially due to this fact that these indigenous slaves were dying off.
That fueled the transatlantic slave trade to give an influx of free labor for the lazy settlers and greedy countries looking to make fast cash off the New World, Maya cities return to the jungle, becoming overgrown and ignored largely until the 19th century, when explorer exploration and history became a bigger interest of the wealthy American and European citizens. Two men are responsible for a larger increase of interest in the Mesoamerican culture, specifically the Maya.
John Lloyd Stephens and Frederick Cather Catherwood explore Maya as sites, Catherwood providing illustrations of these places which are honestly pretty, pretty sick. John makes kind of want to, work on my still life and landscape skill a little bit. These drawings and the writings of Stevens inspired many people to search out these ruins and learn more about the forgotten culture. So, so that's that's kind of the history of the Maya people as far as timelines go.
So that is the history of the Maya people. As far as timelines go, there's plenty more information about the Maya to go through, but I will leave you with some more interesting aspects in this little summary here that, you know, they invented the spherical ball game, which was played without using feet or hands that I mentioned. this game, intense, used to settle disputes. some cases a player from the losing team would get sacrificed.
So that's pretty hardcore. I don't know if they like if, like, Tom Brady was still playing and they're like, all right, well Tom Brady lost and they just executed. That'd be crazy. when the Maya did fight, they, incorporated some interesting weapons like that of the Hornet bomb. That's exactly what it sounds like. They threw a hornet's nest at their enemies, which is hilarious and evil like, super useful.
I also want, again, to call your attention to the level of engineering for being essentially a Stone age civilization. They were able to craft magnets for neck magnificence and structures, incredibly well designed systems of early plumbing, and they informed incredibly well until they didn't. I guess they just mold themselves in the end. But, they're adorning of jade and obsidian, as well as ceramic and natural gems from the region made their outfits look pretty badass.
They had the handsome staff look it up. Look, look up some ancient Maya clothing. They had it figured out. I also want to point out some pop culture representations of the Maya. Starting off with a misguided attempt. Mel's with Mel Gibson's Apocalypto take takes place during the beginning of the fall of their civilization and early contact.
The depictions of the people are done in a relatively accurate manner, kind of, but it blends a lot of Aztec imagery and incorporates a lot of their sacrificial methods as well. More recently, we have, the character of Namor in Black Panther two Wakanda Forever goes by his native name, Coco Khan, who is the feather serpent, right? I mentioned earlier name War also speaks Yucatan Mayan. So that's pretty cool.
also not really recognized as Maya, but in Star Wars, the, the Yavin four base, there's Mayan ruins. Like, that's what that's the ruins at there in the shot. It's Maya temples sticking up over the. I'll put the picture. It's fine, but those are the ones that I've seen myself. I mean, I'm, I'm assuming there's more. So I'm going to be looking out for some good movies that, you know, represent the Mesoamerican people in a good way.
I feel like, might be might be fun to watch with all this newfound knowledge or might just be like when I watch military movie and point out all the inconsistencies. I try not to do that, but sometimes I can't help but notice. You know, let me know if you have any, if you seen any of these or what genuinely learned, like what you genuinely learned from this episode, I want to know if I made this interesting at all. I feel like that was a lot of information. but it is super interesting.
I mean, the, the timeline of the Mayan, like how how well they succeed did when they did, I think is super impressive. I think that the way that they built I like that they like, use their hieroglyphics in such a way where it was like, we're dating buildings as we build them. Like, that's that's pretty badass. I mean, I mean, just because, like, we had to date castles and ancient ruins and other places and they're like, this is when we made it right here. Check it out. Super handy.
it's probably because the aliens told them to, you know. Hey, like, hey, there's going to be some confused guy in his in his two bedroom apartment doing research on you guys, and he's going to really need to know when he dated these. When when they built them. anyway, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I think this is a good episode to kind of return to form with. I, you know, I do have some pretty exciting ideas coming down the pipe, but I also, you know, want your input.
What topics would you like to know more about? What types of ideas have you enjoyed so far? Do you like these timeline based topic episodes, or do you like when? I do like group episodes where I discuss a few different stories with an overarching theme, like what kind of things do you enjoy? You know, I I'm putting out this podcast because I enjoy history, but I also, you know, I enjoy it from my perspective.
I want to have a little more of a community thing going on, so let me know in the comments. Facebook Instagram, comment on the YouTube video and share us wherever possible. Also want to shout out to my friends The Makeup Emporium, the Real Creature feature Dark Windows Podcast, and of course, West of Nowhere. Don't forget to click all of the links in the description. Find out all things related to the show, including merch store. You know I'm wearing where my NASA shirt right now.
but that's all I have for you today. Thank you and I will see you guys next time. Bye.