Maya Expert Answers Maya Civilization Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED
I'm Dr Ed barnhard let's answer some questions from the internet this is Mayan [Music] support at Bill Ren music asks why did the Mayans tie boards to their baby's heads the Maya put boards on their baby's heads to shape their skull baby's heads are very soft and they put those boards on there so it would elongate towards the top we believe that what they were trying to do is make the skull look more like a husk of corn because the Maya of course were corn people only Elite people were allowed to squeeze their baby's heads this way and in public a head and an adult that looked like more pointed that meant overtly that that person was of high status I've always thought to myself there must have been Maya peasant people who were squeezing their kids head on the sly and just saying I don't know he just grew like that he looks like he's going places doesn't he at ssj Sergio says I appreciate the indigenous representation in Black Panther but kulan a literal Mayan deity taking a big L from a 19-year-old girl well come on he could have taken her he let her go that's what Heroes really do kulon is the Maya word for ketal coad or The Feathered Serpent and his costuming was straight on but Kul Khan was known not just for his power but for his wisdom his Grace and his good governance this character was right on the money and I can say that my Maya friends liked him very much so he hit the mark with real Maya people as well at astronic asks why did the Mayans make their calendar look like an Oreo right off the bat that's not even the Mayan calendar that's the Aztec calendar Stone also called the Aztec cosmology Stone the Maya also had that 260-day calendar that we see on the Aztec calendar Oreo now you might be wondering why 260 days 260 days is N9 months it's the human gestation period it's our first cycle from conception to birth no other civilization on the planet did this and I think it's a particularly beautiful and unique to humans cycle the Maya did make the most elaborate calendar system in the ancient world they use typically five different Cycles just to tell you what day it is they tell us the lunar cycle they were definitely obsessed with time one of the original archaeologists in the area J Eric Thompson said they're just esoteric time worshippers because clearly the texts were mostly about cycles of time at Nick Bloom asks what was the first ever clothing Trend maybe Mayan sandals I bet those shits were hot back in the day well they did make some pretty cool sandals it's true we can see them on on ceramic vessels like this this guy right here they've got this nice treatment on the top his whole wardrobe is great he's got a jade skirt it's got this hatch pattern they wear tunics the Maya had style at superpower armor asks anyone else pissed that the Mayans were wrong and the world didn't end in 2012 H not not me personally I I like still being here it turns out that the Maya are talking about a start day of their calendar at the year 3,14 14 BC specifically August 13th they say it's the last day of the third creation and the beginning of the fourth creation so if we do the math and like the odometer in your car the last time the calendar switched and reset we move our odometer forward from 3,114 BC and we get to the year 2012 specifically December 21st that's where we get that 2012 12 thing for people like myself that pour through texts related to the Maya calendar there are a few key texts that make it clear it's not going to be in 2012 it's going to be in the year 4,772 at tigerwood suck asks how are the Maya and the Aztecs alike well the Maya and the Aztec do share a lot of similarities the Aztecs were an Empire the Maya were independent city states the Aztecs were very much Focus focused on Conquest Warfare and sacrifice the Maya really didn't do that much sacrificing they did Auto sacrificing the Kings would actually bloodlet themselves in public as an act of protection of the people and to please the gods at dogs move silent asks what did the Maya do for fun they had a sport they adored we just call it the Maya ball game some people call it Poca to we can thank the Maya for making rubber but they didn't make it for a last and their underwear they made it to play the game they made balls just like this I made this ball out of the latex from rubber trees and the sulfur from morning glory seeds they would use balls much bigger than this and they built actual Sports courts they from above they kind of look like a capital I so they had a lane running down the middle of them and there was a center line and then two out of bounds places and teams would face off at the center line and bounce these hard kind of giant super balls up on a sloping wall back and forth kind of like tennis goes or volleyball trick was they could not touch it with their hands or their feet they had to use their hips or their chest some versions of the ball cord also had rings on either side and if you get it through the ring that's it game over so 3500 years ago is when this game began by the time they got to the Aztecs each Aztec city had their own football team like the chief Chiefs are the Dallas Cowboys sometimes when two cities were arguing instead of going to war they could settle it through a ball game they had big crowds that would watch and especially rich people would be able to sit up close and it was their job to throw out things like Treasures jewelry things that were gifts to the winning team if a rich person tried to sneak out just before the game ended the team had the right to run them down tackle them and take their Jewelry off of them it's not true that the winners of the Maya ball game were sacrificed you'd have a pretty hard time coming up with good players at Terrace West asks so who got sacrificed to the Mayan Gods it was mostly people that were warriors captured in some sort of ceremonial battle they'd go to these little Wars that were kind of Elites against Elites they'd stab them in the leg and they'd drag them back to sacrifice them up on top of a temple the Aztec sacrificed almost anybody at mdv Nasser asks did a young school boy really find a lost Mayan city or just a field a boy in Canada about 16 years old was using maps and Maya codes and he identified what he believed to be a Maya City now in that case it was not actually what he believed it to be but there is real potential for finding Maya cities and with now the Advent of liar wow we are finding them faster than ever Google Earth gets refreshed all the time and and as people move out into these jungle areas and cut down the trees all of a sudden they reveal these temples what I tend to look for are irregular or unnatural geometric shapes or Arrangements Maya pyramids are usually arranged in groups around plazas so if you see a hill with a square in front of it and two other Square hills around it that's a good chance that that's actually man-made the city I found in believe which I named masna was back in the 1990s so I didn't have the pleasure of all of this great new technology I used a topography map looked at the area and said to myself if I was a Maya where would I want to live so I looked for the tallest mountain in the area when I found that I saw two little mountains right next to it and I said right off the bat in my apartment in Austin Texas if I was a Maya I would build a city there and two years later after hacking out there with the crew and machetes I was right there I was standing on top of a 70ft tall pyramid looking down into a plaza with a ball cord it was something that I really just didn't ever think was going to happen to me CU I was only 25 and this was supposed to be my life goal in some ways I stood on top of that Temple and said well God what am I going to do now at Wayward Jim asks so for at least the Mayans money really did grow on trees you're referring to cacao of course chocolate beans and yes the Maya did use them as a at least standard in their barter system they're easy to dry and transport they're small by the time the Aztecs were using it as a currency there was also a counterfeit ring there were people that were making little seeds out of Ceramics and making them look like they were chocolate beans when really they were counterfeit and they were Aztec police who would walk around the market looking for counterfitters and bust them with their ceramic beans chocolate was the drink of the elite it was a pleasure it was something that they frothed up they put Chili Pepper in it never sugar it was a spicy drink it was only grown in the Maya area it was something about that tropical forest that allowed cacao chocolate to grow at Ole wua asks timeline period for my civilization you could actually take it back to 10,000 years but something that we pretty much all conservatively agree would be 2,000 years so that really starts the Maya world so then we get to 200 CE its current ERA that's when we really get classic Maya civilization they start building their giant cities in the jungles of northern Guatemala tial gets built so the classic goes on for a full 400 years we have dynasties of Kings we have fully elaborated hieroglyphs and them telling us their history carving it into monuments that goes on all the way to about 800 CE and that begins a very short period we call the terminal classic the transitional everybody's moving around cities are being abandoned new ones are starting up but it settles out into the final period and the postclassic period goes from about 900 all the way up to the moment of Spanish contact somewhere around 1500 maybe even a little earlier at JP njiru asks what's the difference between Mayan and Egyptian pyramids for one thing the pyramid standing in Giza Plateau is the tallest pyramid on the planet it's 150 M tall the tallest Maya pyramid is about 68 M tall so only a third of that size for the Egyptians they built those pyramids from the beginning purpose-built as tombs the Maya the Kings would use the temple in life and then when they died the temple would be retrofitted dug into and their tomb would be put inside when it comes to who built the most pyramids the mayia Excel virtually everyone on the planet we have seen all of the Egyptian pyramids there's about 140 of them we're not going to find anymore the Maya built thousands of pyramids and there are definitely thousands more hiding under the jungle so if one culture owns the name and the right to Pyramid Builder it's the Maya not the Egyptians at r King wood asks what tools did the Mayan use the Maya were not a metal using culture none of their tools were made of metal when it came to building things like their temples tools were made of church we also call that Flint it's a harder Stone and they would shape that into axes and those axes could cut the softer Limestone into whatever shape they wanted for finer cutting they used obsidian obsidian is a volcanic glass it never gets dull I have taken pieces of obsidian out of an excavation and cut my finger on the glass it lasts forever and it's very very sharp at fg1 1133 asks do you believe the aliens helped out the Aztec and the Mayan empire no if they did we'd have all sorts of evidence of cooler Technologies than Stone and temples I really feel like a question along those lines is just once again disparaging the abilities of people that were not originated in Western Society so no I think they did it on their own at Android Pharaoh asks King pakal is an ancient alien astronaut King pakal sarcophagus lid shows man tilting back surrounded by glyphs and symbols what do you see when you look at that well I definitely don't see an alien spaceship what I see is King pakal at his moment of death falling down the world tree into the skeletal jaws of the underworld where he will go down and then eventually he will rise up to meet his ancestors and the Gods in the sky pakal was the most important King in the history of the city of pelen he became king at the age of 12 he died at the venerable age of 80 but he brought that City back to its height his sarcophagus is honoring the greatest King in the history of pan and it is not a spaceship at D Perry 9113 asks in your opinion what is the best Mayan ruin pen pelen is definitely my favorite Maya ruin and it's because I spent so much time there I spent three years of my life making a map of the site anything in Orange is a building that we've actually excavated or investigated all the buildings in Gray archaeology has never touched so you can see how little of this city we've actually excavated that there were probably less than 10,000 people living there at any one point but despite that small population it was the height of Maya scientific and artistic knowledge engineering they made a kind of coral Arch and a kind of cement that was stronger than anywhere else in the Maya world world one of the great buildings of this site is the palace it has a thre Story Tower nowhere else in the Maya world ever attempted such a tower and in a testimony to how well they made it is still standing today that city was abandoned 12200 years ago and yet the tower lasted through all those rainy Seasons it has not settled more than 2 cm in a thousand years at Ross sandylands asks did any indigenous people in North America have any type of writing like the Mayan people developed yes there were certainly other writing scripts especially in meso America the zapex thex but no one did it like the Maya the distinguishing characteristic of Mayan writing is that it reflects the spoken word there are actually symbols that mean sounds this is one section of one page of one of our four surviving Maya books they're writing system was one of only four in the entire history of the world that was an original writing system and we have Mesopotamian which is CA form we have Egyptian Chinese script those are our four but the Maya distinguish themselves in all of the Americas as the only civilization that did it on this side of the world each one of these glyphs is a word and it's broken up usually into syllables the first symbol here that kind of looks like a comb that that's the word ooh here these top say ma this says C so they're both vowel syllable combinations so um Maka spells umak which is his burial this is the death God these are telling us whether it's a good day or a bad day to do something is it a good day to plant my corn or is it a bad day and this first glyph here that says o his burial that's a kind of a Maya collo ISM to say no it's a bad day to do that and the bars and Dots here are the different days these are day names and they take a long strip of bark off of a tree and then they fold it like an accordion then they'll paint that with Limestone paste and stucco they open the whole thing up and maybe a book is 10 ft long they flip it over and they read the whole other side and then they accordion it up and they put it back in their bags at Trish King 6 asks what does Mayan sound like we have the great benefit of having millions of Maya people still speaking their language on the planet the biggest of those language groups is yucatech Maya and there are about 5 million people that speak yucatech if you wanted to hear a good example of it I'd recommend the somewhat dubious movie Apocalypto here's some of it right here they actually made the effort to have the actors speak Act ual Maya there are a number of sounds that they'll make that have a stop at the end of it TZ apostrophe and that's the word in yucch Maya for fire is and that's K Apostrophe a k apostrophe one thing that Apocalypto overdid was the human sacrifice that was really the Aztec's thing when the Maya met the Aztec yeah guess they got a little bit more into the human sacrifice but the scenes of people being killed one after another on top of Maya temples that's not how the Maya rolled at Rat Lab Museum asks how did the ancient Maya build such large cities far away from lakes or Rivers tial is a great example there are no rivers near tial but what they did is they quarried for all the stone they needed to build the city the quaries became reservoirs bars they lined them with stucco so they were like giant swimming pools the plazas between the temples they caned them just one degree so with every rain that fell all of those plazas funneled water into their reservoirs he call Kings love to put water lies in their headdresses a way that the Maya have always detected whether water is fresh enough is water lies water lies are a very fragile plant if the water is polluted they don't grow there so if there's water lies on the surface it's pure water when I made the map of pan I could see that there was a sewer system running through the neighborhoods they crisscrossed it using gravity probably also had makeshift toilets getting fresh water from above and sending the gray water down below and into the larger river system well away from the city at its Rob Law wants to know bro how did the Mayans figure out the Stars like how most ancient astronomy is what we call Horizon based a priest would stand in a single spot every night and watch what Rose and set what day it Rose and set and where along the horizon it set if he did that again and again and again he starts recognizing the cycles of planets the moon and the Suns an astronomer could spend his entire life recording cycles and then hand that data to the Next Generation and after just a few Generations they got darn good at it the ancient Maya also oriented their buildings to interact with the cycles of the Sun the most famous of those is El Castillo and chichin chichin has this big pyramid in the middle and it's oriented just right so that on Equinox as the sun sets the shadow of its Terraces cast onto the ballustrade of one one of its staircases the Shadows look like an undulating body of a snake going down the staircase at soft touch 25 asks anyone out here in xland understand Mayan math I do yeah the Maya had only three symbols they had a DOT meaning one they had a bar meaning five and then they had the all important zero like a shell for zero but they could also use a flower so if you wanted to write the number seven you'd use two dots one one and then a five let's say we want to add the numbers three plus 5 so that would be eight in the way we'd write it but that eight has nothing to do with the three and five but watch when you do that in Maya if I take three which is three dots and I add five which is a bar it becomes a bar with three dots over it it's this actual symbol plus this actual symbol equals the symbol for eight the Maya managed to make a more elegant mathematical system than the one the Western world is so proud of at M Brianna asks but where the Mayans go the Maya are actually still here by my count there's about 15 million Maya still on the planet yes said contact they were persecuted their culture in many ways ended and 12 infectious diseases wiped out probably 90% of them but their Community is continued and they've grown over the last 500 years in fact many of the Maya people live right here in the United States at your convenience store on your corner if that nice little Mexican woman is under the height of 5'2 she's probably a Maya there's a big misunderstanding about The Disappearance of the Maya about 700 years earlier when classic period Maya abandoned their cities they moved out they didn't die off they didn't disappear they weren't picked up by aliens so those are all the questions for today thanks for joining me in Maya support
2024-05-23 02:41
