The Mayan Religion and Gods

The Mayans were very religious people; their religion regulated almost everything they did in their lifes. Priests were the most important people in the tribes. The Mayan belived their Gods had destroyed and recreated their earths several times, that is the reason they always tried to please their gods with sacrifices. Their sacrifces included various animals that had many ties to them spiritualy. Each God represented something for them in one way or another. Their Supreme Being and creator of the universe was called "Hunan Ku"(Gallenkamp). The next important gods were the sun and moon gods. "Kinish Ahau" was the sun god. They believed that the sun and moon gods were responsible for harvest and various other vital things important to their lifes; statues show him wearing a headdress from ears of corn. Their were four rain gods called "Chacs", which represented rainfall, lighting, thunder, and storms. "Ixtab" was the goddess of sacrificial suicide (Henderson). Mayans believed suicided lead to heaven. "Yum Cicil" was the god of death (Gallenkamp). He was also called "Ah Puch", the god of the underworld. "Kakulcan" was the god of wind. Every job or activity in Mayan life had a god or goddess.



Gallenkamp, Charles. Maya: The Riddle and Rediscovery of a Lost Civilization. 3rd ed.
New York: Viking Penguin, Inc, 1985.

Henderson, S. The World of the Ancient Mayan.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press (1997.)

Beauty in the Mayan Culture

Beauty was a very important part of the Mayan Culture. Though beauty through the Mayans eyes was very different from todays definiton of the the word. To make their heads longer, Mayan babies were squeezed between two pieces of wood. Another thing they did was to break their nose and reshape it, to give it a more hooked shape (Stuart 34). Body peircing and body painting was another big part of how the mayans looked. Most Mayans were tanned and had black hair and eyes. Both men and women had long hair which was braided into two or four braids. They wore very little clothing but, it it was very decorative, with the fanciest peice of clothing being headdresses worn by nobles. Their bodies were painted differently according to tradition and occasion. Priest wore blue, warriors wore red and black, and teenager wore white. (Morley 223).


Morley, Sylvanus G. The Ancient Maya. Stanford University, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1946.

Stuart, George The Mysterious Maya. Washington, D.C.:
The National Geographic Society, 1977.

The Mayan Life

The Maya are one of the most well know of civilizations in mesoamerica. The Mayan originated in the Yucatan around 2600 B.C., they grew rapidly around A.D. 250 in present day southern Mexico, Guatemala, northern belize and western Honduras. They built on the inventions and ideas of earlier civilizations such as the Olmec, they developed astronomy, a accurate calender system and a advanced language. The Maya were known for elaborate and well decorated ceremonial architecture, including temple pyramids, palaces and observatories which were all built without advanced tools or machines. They were also skilled farmers, they cleared large sections of tropical rain forest and built huge underground reservoirs for the storage of rainwater. The Maya were very skilled as weavers and potters, they cleared routes through jungles and swamps to make extensive trade networks with people very distant from them.

Around 300 B.C., the Maya adopted a hierarchical system of government which was ruled by nobles and kings. This civilization developed into highly structured kingdoms during the classic period of A.D. 200-900. Their society had many independent states, each with a rural farming community and large urban sites which were built around ceremonial sites.

The Mayan society started to decline around A.D. 900 when they were still a very misunderstood culture. The southern Maya abandoned their cities due to loss of resources. When the northern Maya were integrated into the Toltec society by A.D. 1200, the Maya dynasty finally came to a end, although some areas continued to thrive until the Spanish Conquest in the early sixteenth century.