Mayas

From Infocentral

Mayan Architecture

Mayan culture produced amazing art and architecture. Ruins remain at a large number of places in Central America. These sites were vast centers for religious ceremonies, and included a number of pyramidal mounds, with temples or other buildings, grouped around open plazas. Exteriors of buildings belonging to the wealthy people were decorated with painted sculpture, carved lintels, stucco moldings and stone mosaics.

Mayan architecture is one of the most dramatic and easily to recognize. Being based on the general Mesoamerica architectural traditions these pyramids were bases on carved stone in order to create a stair step design. Each pyramid has dedicated to at those who shrine sat at its peak. During this height a Maya culture, the centers of their religious, commercial and bureaucratic power grew into incredible cities, including Chichen Itza, Tical, and Uxmal.

Remnants of Maya architecture have become an important key for understanding the evolution of ancient civilization. The basic Maya structure was the hay huts which housed most of the Mayan population. The walls were made of mud or stone and were covered with wooden poles. These poles weren’t taller than 20m. On the top of these sticks, the structure rests and it has another3.5 to 4.5meters of height on top. These sticks hold together strongly tilted, two sided hay form. As for the stone huts, they were of course made of stone, lime stone to be exact. The reason for the use of lime was that they were very abundant and the shape of the very easy form. The many deposits of these stones helped build these higher class homes.

the hay huts. Of course, the main difference was the material used to make the two buildings. But the similarities would suggest that the roofs slope gave place in the beginning to the idea of sticking.

Almost every Maya structure varies in height according to the substance that was used on the building on the top. They range from the low terraces that ranged from 50cm to 2m high. Sometimes, there were no terraces so they were palaces and inhabitable buildings, elevated up to 45m in the case of a temple. An example is the 4th temple of Tikal. Temples generally have only two chambers, one behind the other. One could enter by a door which opened on the far wall. The interior chambers were sanctuary and the exterior rooms were used for less reserve ceremonies. In a palace, the type or construction was almost always too long file of chambers, one behind the other.

Mayas have cut and polished the stone blocks individually for their buildings. The exterior as well as the interior walls were originally covered with a substance called lime stucco. This substance is defined as a durable finish for exterior walls composed of sand, cement and lime, and applied wet. Stucco covered all of the joinings. One or the best known architectural sites for the 

Mayas are their huge and breathtaking temples. The Mayas built their temples on immense pyramids with steeped bases and each side of the pyramid had a set of steps that lead up to the temple. The temples were built out of beautifully carved stones and its only floor was adorned on the exterior with elaborate and wonderful stucco decorations. As for the interior it was decorated with mural paintings.

These temples were built for religious purposes. For example the Sun Temple was built to worship the Sun God. Inside these temples, the Mayas performed all type of ceremonies within two small, stepped dark rooms inside of this temple. The back wall of the inner room has a carved face of this god. The architects have also decided to have a sky roof to truly worship their god. This shows how creative and spiritual they were.

There are many more examples of these temples all around the Mayan areas. For example, there is an enormous one in Uxmal. It has a long flight of stairs which goes up one side and leads to a smaller temple on the top. In addition to normal temples the Mayas also have an observatory. In Chichen Itza, the Mayas studied the movements of the Earth, stars and Venus. This is yet another ingenious thing that the Mayas have thought of.

Maya Art

Mayan art gave almost free reign to the artist, who as not required to produce a work that fit any particular rules r guidelines. Individual genius and its variations from one place to another produced products which were indented to be given or sold to royalty of other cities. The study of this art works and the meaning they held for Mayans is called Iconography.

Copan, in Honduras is a site where many art works of the Mayan culture remain. In particular, carvings called “stelae” show that Mayans were capable of beautiful work and used a lot of color. Art has also been recovered from Guatemala and other nearby countries. In addition, the Maya in Mexico and the northern part of Central America part of Central America produced intricate relief carvings sculpture in which the figures project from a background surface. The relief art either adorned buildings or stood alone as stelae.

Mayan Technology

The Maya calendar is a system of distinct calendars and almanacs used by the Maya civilization. They used different types of calendars at one time: an astronomic calendar, a civil calendar and a calendar for the distributions of the days. These calendars could be synchronized and interlocked in complex ways, their combinations giving rise to further more extensive cycles. The essentials of the Maya calendar system are based upon a system which had been commonly used throughout the region. It shares many ideas with calendars employed by other civilizations as the Aztec. Along with those of the Aztecs, the Maya calendars are the most completely understood.

The Maya writing system was made of hieroglyphs. The first writings which were discovered are from the 3rd century BC. This writing was very similar to the Egyptians and the Japanese, because they also had symbols.

The tools that they had to work with were very simple. They used tools such as fire and basalt axes on wood. Fire was very unpredictable so they switched to basalt axes for a little more precision. On stone they used tools made of flint, obsidian, granite, limestone.

Glossary

Stucco: a type of plaster that is used for covering ceilings and the outside walls of buildings. Mayan made the stucco with sand, cement and lime.

Iconography: the use or study of images or symbols in art.

Synchronized: To happen at to the same time or to move at the same speed.

Mounds: a large pile of earth or stones, burial place.

Chamber: a bedroom or private room used for a particular purpose, for example a burial chamber.

Vast: A large area.

Structure: The way in witch the part of something are connected together. Capable: having the ability or qualities necessary for doing something.

Flint: a type of very hard grey stone.