The Maya
Introduction
All remnants of the distant past are romantic, but ancient Maya civilization has a special fascination. It is a "lost" civilization, whose secrets lie deep in the mysterious tropical forest. The style of Maya architecture and sculpture seems alien and bizarre.
The breathtaking splendor of ornate cites, the beautifully constructed grand temples, and the ingeniously developed and advanced caledretics, mathematics, and astronomy easily mark one of the most interesting and prosperous periods in Latin American history. Over period spanning approximately six centuries, the Maya of Central America reached artistic and intellectual heights that no other group in the New World had seen or imagined possible.
This period in Mayan culture is believed to be a time of relative peace and tranquility, the ultimate decline of their society is still a great mystery and the cause remains speculative in the minds of many archeologists and anthropologists.
I order to categorize Mayan cultural development, most scientists divide Mayan civilization into three distinct periods: Pre-classic, Classic, and Post-classic. The Pre-Classic period is the birth of the Mayan civilization. It is shrouded in mystery, as researchers have a myriad of opinions on where the Mayan people originally migrated from. The first theories were that the Maya were either one of the Lost tribes of Israel or descendants of the lost city of Atlantis. Unfortunately, the most historians can agree on is that the Maya migrated across the Bering Strait from some part of Europe or Asia.
In establishing their means of existence, the Maya utilized a system of agriculture and were primarily farmers rather than hunters. Their primary crops consisted of maize (which they considered to be the staff of life), beans, squash, pumpkin, sweet potatoes, cotton, and tobacco; the later they grew for export to Europe.
As the Maya became established in the processes of