Mayan Appreciation Thread

>tfw climbed the big pyramid at Chichen Itza the year before they closed it off to the public
Feels good man, shame people kept vandalizing it like the assholes they are.

I always wonder how the people back in the days felt when they stood in front of such a building. I mean we're used to high buildings and huge monuments through TV, pictures or because it's so easy to travel the world. But still we're amazed and baffled when we stand in front of such a building.
Now imagine a person that was in a fairly small village in the jungle and didn't know anything else until they had the chance to travel a few days (a few hours car ride for us now) to a big city / temple and saw such amazing buildings for the first time.

I need a time machine just to look at all those sites when they were at their peak...

It pains me that so many 1000+ year old ruins are tourist attractions completely open to the public. I love to see them in person, but not at the cost of random assholes being able to vandalize them.

What kind of books do you think you'd find in a Mayan or Aztec library? The Mayans had a fully developed written language, and the Aztecs had simple phonograms and made tons of paper. One of the original Aztec emperors, Nezahualcoyotl, supposedly had a library created in his city to collect all the knowledge he could. What did they write about?

I think the best job to have in those days was merchant. Travel the world, see all of the cities while avoiding the insane religious ceremonies.
Aztec nobles got some of the more interesting jobs but were held to higher standards and faced extremely severe punishments. Warriors, ball players and slaves were sacrificed in horrible ways. Priests, warriors, nobility all practiced blood letting rituals involving cutting and puncturing legs, ears, or genitals.
You'd probably want to be a commoner. Farmers might have lived comfortable lives but it would be labour intensive and boring.
Merchants had the best deal I think.

I read that the ones who brought up that the Aztecs had sacrificial ceremonies were priests and that when modern archeologists went to the site and found a large amount of bodies that they "could draw no other conclusion than that they were sacrificed". Made me wonder how trustworthy the notion is. Any supplemental evidence? There's also that Incan girl who got mummified, because she was dying from tuberculisis. So what if that was how they treated their terminally ill? And we know that illnesses were making em drop by the bushes prior to the arrival of the Spanjards. So where's the actual evidence?

Fuck off you bleeding heart little bitch. Thats part of the way they get funded. Don't make my taxes, which are already too high, worse by insisting all the oldest sites need to be 100% state funded because it's something you like and appreciate.

The evidence, as far as I know, includes depictions of sacrifice in their art, the eye witness reports of multiple conquistadors (sometimes unreliable, their writings sometimes contradicted each other and were written with bias), and the work of forensic archaeologists on the human remains. It seems very unlikely that the sacrifice rituals were made up by the Spanish.

You fucker, I'm the president of Mexico. I'll raise your taxes for having a giant stick up your ass. Little bitch.

Labna

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Machu Picchu

Nice thread I'll add some pics to contribute.

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Mayans need to revive the mayan script
youtube.com/watch?v=lgsQndSyfHg

The aztecs burned texts inorder to erase the history or their enemies

>Machu Picchu
>Mayan

Why did they build on top of a mountain instead of in the valley?

Vaguely relevant video on the Meso-American sprachbund, including the Mayan languages.

youtube.com/watch?v=4oXwlvjld_o

>Hill Mexicans
>Not Mayan

Look at the view though...

>Or any ancient civilization of the Americas.

We can only guess. Possibly because the mountains held religious significance, or possibly it was a nice retreat with a view.

They had a culture of astronomy/astrology, man. You ever see the sky from the top of a remote mountain?

I agree. It's interesting how independent origins for writing can lead to completely unique symbols and word structures.

Itzcoatl may have burned history books, but he had no jurisdiction over the cities of the other emperors.

The Maya were pretty far from the Aztecs, he didn't touch Texcocos library which was Nezahualcoyotl and reputed to have been the largest of Mesoamerica. It was like the library of Alexandria of the Americas. There's also entire regions whose codices never survived like the K'iches and other Guatemalan Maya, Xoconochco, Pipil etc. We also have very few of Mixtec codices and no examples of codices from the Classic period of Mesoamerica, just books with pages stuck together or flakes of remains.

the classical Mayan civilization was some next-level shit

How much do we know about the Maya? Do we have knowledge of them comparable to what we know of the Romans?

We don't but we know a lot more about them then we did 30 years ago. We probably know about them as much as we do about the Gauls or Germanic tribes.

Bump

But no word to mouth comments from the actual Mayans or remnant traditions?

lol forgot to do this. I'll contribute with Maya vase paintings.

That last pic was the Moon embracing the Deer, one of her consorts on the left, while the old deity, Itzamnaaj is dying and being attended to by a male, perhaps his son or one of the hero twins.

pic related is a scene of old men applying makup, getting fanned, and served drugs and alcohol by young female attendants, before the presence of a deity on a throne. These women may be the 'painted' ladies like the equivalent of courtesan or geisha seen in Maya culture.

Two couples (women on the left and men on the right of both pairs) dance and sing while facing each other. A musician in the middle plays music.

Also note in the last scene the woman with the brush in her headdress means shes a scribe.

pic related an old man tutors his students on proper writing spelling and math, the speech dots that meet the glyphs show what he is saying to them. Pointing out their mistakes down to the pages of an open book. The two scenes ashow different students but the same teacher in different situations.

A fat lord of a city is recieving gifts of chocolate while his dwarf assistant drinks some of the chocolate beverage and lesser lords bow to the seated one. Another dwarf holds a mirror for the seated lord. Musicians (conch and trumpeters) play behind the scenes.

The long nosed merchant god, Ek chuah acts out a performance of the impregnation of Blood Moon, the daughter of an Underworld lord who gave birth to the Hero twins by being spat on her hand. The one playing Blood Moon is actually a male dressed as her. Implying these are actors doing this performance and not a literal mythic scene.

Where could I go, travel wise, to experience surviving Aztec/Mayan culture?

"Snake Lady" entwined with the Underworld bearded Serpent, Och Chan, coming forth from the leg of K'awil (God K), invoked by the Lady. Out of the serpents maws the lecherous aged deity, Itzam (God N), comes out to have sexual relations with her. The woman is possibly the Moon Goddess, while another version of this vase painting suggests she could also be the Earth personified as a woman, giving birth to God N through her relations with Och Chan. Others suggest she may not be a deity but an elite woman having relations with deities.

For Maya go to the Yucatan peninsula, Chiapas such as San Cristobal de las Casas, and Guatemala, especially around Quetzaltenango, Lake Atitlan, Peten, and the departments of Quiche, Huehuetenango, Totonicapan. For Aztec I'd go to the states of Tlaxcala, Morelos and Puebla.

What am I looking out for here?

Markets, fashion, cermonies, diviners, food etc. I suggest checking out the play Rabinal Achi its one of the few precolumbian dramas still performed by the Maya.

A group of warriors do a dancing procession with standard bearers.

You did me a solid favor m8. I'll work it into my travel bucket list.

Permission to hijack this thread with the Navajo?

Aftermath of a war scene, crying and grieving women captives (probably noblewomen stripped naked for shame) some with their children and attendants of a conquered city. While triumphant warriors intimidate them.

A trimphant king sits on a throne with his booty from a conquest beneath him. Surrounded by his warriors who bring him captives from the conquered city, stripped naked some with their hair cut.

A captive warrior on a scaffold is about to be beheaded while warriors (one which has a trophy head) and musicians look on.

Combat scene between two forces.

>Two teams of 3 combatants boxers each using conch shell hand weapons, one team wearing G3 masks and the other team wearing G3 jaguar heads as trophy heads on the back of their belts. One of this team is lying on ground with mask fallen off. boxing hand to hand.

tight stuff
youtube.com/watch?v=d02DbJyRFrQ

These are great, thank you

To be 100% fair, that's basically what they functioned as in ancient times: town squares for families to hang out in.

Take a close look, those are not hills. Sadly was destroyed by Pedro de alvarado.

>The spanish burning of native codices was basically a second library of alexandria
>except even worse because there were basically no written records outside of what was burned
>we basically lost an entire parallel branch of human history and culture
>what we do know sounds rad as fuck
>Basically all of the huge metropolis's are either leveled and destroyed or are buried under itself historical colional structures or infanstructure that current mexicans are using and will never get dug up

Daily reminder the maya had siege towers

I didn't realize the scale of it until I saw those tiny people on the left

>mfw we know next to nothing about the olmecs history, language, mythology or daily life

Eh, I don't consider that as much of a loss. Even if the spanish hadn't came along, we'd still likely not know that much more about the olmecs directly.

The mystery though is intriguing and it triggers me at the same time. All we can hope for is clues in archeology.

did mayans do this too?

A Tikal lady visits and greets the King of the city of Ik'.

Hair dying? Yes, they did. Vase paintings show them using yellow, red and white. Though some may be wigs some are also dyes. As for teeth dying, some darkened it black in the Yucatan during the Spanish arrival.

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Somewhat related to the thread a recent publishing of new findings in the excavations of Teotihuacan.

>INAH Finds a Possible Tunnel Under the Pyramid of the Moon
INAH has found another possible tunnel underneath the Pyramid of the Moon. It was found by electrical resistivity tomography. The tunnel appears to go from the center of the Moon plaza to the pyramid. This would mirror the tunnels beneath the Pyramid of the Sun and the Temple of Quetzalcoatl. The tunnels equate to the idea of Teotihuacan being related to the underworld and to agricultural fertility.

>There are indications there may be other underground sites under the same pyramid. INAH will move to excavate the tunnel. This kind of excavation takes years of slow careful work.

>INAH has the best report of this discovery

Original article

inah.gob.mx/es/boletines/6309-especialistas-del-inah-localizan-posible-tunel-bajo-la-plaza-y-piramide-de-la-luna-en-teotihuacan

for english speakers

abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/ct-scans-find-tunnel-mexicos-teotihuacan-ruins-48440212

Gracias.

Salu2

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What are the chances there's a vault of codices under there?

1000%

It's possible. Codices have been found before the thing is finding one still in tact and in a condition well enough to read.

if they do find one which civilization is it going to be becuase as i understand teotihuacan changed leadership alot.

I'm pretty sure Teotihaucan's builders are considered their own culture.

Probably Maya as they had a neighborhood in Teotihuacan and they're artists have likely been commissioned in the area before like in Cacaxtla where they painted the battle scene. Or possibly one of whoever ruled Teotihuacan which we don't know. In which case I'd speculate it looking like the Puebla or Mixtec codices only drawn in Teotihuacan style using the glyphs they used.

if it was from the totihuacan builders than it would have to be pre 300 ad which would be really old for a meso american codex no

Not him, but it is possible. Writing began at least since 1000 bc in mesoamerica. We don't know when writing on books itself began.

>Codices have been found before the thing is finding one still in tact and in a condition well enough to read.
which?

The olmecs were more advance than follow up civilizations. they made huge islands to live on and had running water with stone fountains.

I'm mexican and never got to do that one fucked.

But did the moon pyramid in Teoutihuacan

I find it cool how the big three Amerindian civilizations all had their own unique ways of producing food in their unique environments that was lost when the "advanced" Europeans showed up. Aztec had Chinampas, Maya made large scale use rain catching of cisterns, and the Inca used terrace farms.

it wasn't lost, they still use all 3 to this day

They also invented writing in the Americas. The Zapotecs and Maya followed after them in this regard. With the Maya refining it to proper writing.

For one, the Maya civilization fell apart and stopped using rain catching cisterns as much before the Spanish even arrived. I don't know how long it took for Chinampas to disappear. And the land that the Inca occupied produced more land back then than it does now because they don't use terrace farms.

They have found disintegrated flakes of Maya codices from the Classical period. Or books disintegrated so much the pages glued together. The climate of the region was really poor for preservation. The Maya only codex discovered that wasn't in such a poor state was the Grolier codex found in the 60s in a cave dating to early Postclassic probably contemporary to Chichen Itza or Toltecs which is why the style (Mixtec and Toltec influence)is different from the other 3 Maya codices we have made around the time of the Spanish arrival 500 years later.

Amerindians aren't genetically stupid, I consider them "humans"

However, Aryan Europeans (Germanics, Fins, etc) are Super human "Ubermensch"

Don't bring your race autism to this thread.

When exactly did the Mayan written language die? Was it completely lost or on they way to being completely lost when Mayan civilization collapsed before Europeans even arrived? Or was the ability of Mayans to read and write holding on past the collapse and was only wiped out by European domination?

>/pol/ tries to make a foothold in thread
>autism so great they either link to the wrong post or fail utterly at a segue