In Search of the Lost Empire of the Maya

If you like me love Mayan history, you got to read this very interesting article about the Mayan Snake Kings .

It's to long to make any justified quotes, so please go to the link, and sorry for the lack of content and laziness in this post, i'm just a messenger this time.

SOURCE

a reply to: Mianeye

I have not followed there history closely enough but I am not certain that Empire is a correct terminology, it grab's headlines but were they not a collection of warring city state's bount together more by a common culture and belief system with each city essentially a seperate mayan tribe or was there a true imperial period with a major capital ruling over the other vassel city's.

What grabs me with them is that they were so well developed hinting strongly are earlier meso-american civlization's and also that there are probably still the bulk of there sites undiscovered, also did the mayan's ever have spin off culture's themselves (other than the potential link to the Aztec's whom were a different people with a seperate language and religion) founded by the survivor's of vanquished mayan city's that perhaps refounded there culture much, much further away than the yucatan and it's surrounding environ's, did they perhaps settle other places in the america's were they have not yet been recognised or even officially discovered.

And even before them how big was the culture that built the pre mayan ruins Teotihuacan.

I am pretty certain this is an incomplete list of only the better known site's.
www.historvius.com...

The Mayan though were probably the most extensive and long lasting of these culture's that we know of today.

It always strikes me as a shame that the most beautiful city the Spaniard's had ever seen the capital of the Aztec's a kind of venice of the america's with floating gardens was also the heart of one of the largest human sacrificial cult's in history, still what a shame that such a city was destroyed and modern mexico city is all that remains of it.

Then again I read that the meso american culture's produced up to 60 per cent more food per year prior to the spanish conquest than they do even today (no monsanto or GMO anywhere).

a reply to: Mianeye

Wow. "The ballad of the snake kings"
A beautiful example why I love the English language so much.
And I understand why you didn't want to dissect it.
Just marvelous.

a reply to: LABTECH767

Considering the size of the cities and the relatively close position of some of them, it's possible there have been a bigger political connection between them, possibly with a one ruler and sub kings, but not sure how far the "Empire" reached as some cities are far away from the capitals and trade routes.

The constant fighting for power kind of ruining the picture of a one overlord and a capital where decisions were made for the entire "Empire".

So yeah... "Empire".

a reply to: Mianeye

One of my favorite legends, some say, that they came from the underworld.

Sometimes i find myself asking, are/were there, cities and tunnels beneath the earth?

Very interesting, I've saved the link to read later.

a reply to: Mianeye

That was a wonderful story; I read the whole thing, and slowly to grasp the meaning.

What a wonderful story that was.....inspiring. I'd never read much about the intricate history of the Maya kings.

Thanks for that; best read of the day.

a reply to: Mianeye

Yes you are right, I tend to equate it with the classical western view of empire such as the Roman model were the majority of city's were colony's of rome founded after it and the rest were conquered but then Romanized, you know all road's lead to Rome that sort of thing.

Though maybe there calander is not fully understood the Mayan's were definitely among the greatest astronomers of the ancient world as well and though they never used or perhaps knew the arch there architecture remains beautiful and powerful even today, they are a fantastic subject to study and I can certainly understant your fascination with them but like other meso-american cultures I am put off by there human sacrifice's, sadly something most ancient human cultures around the world and indeed not just the America's indulged in, even the Roman's had some human sacrifice though they mostly frowned on the practice and indeed wrote scathingly of lesser civilization's that performed it.
(example of that is how the portrayed the Druid's of the Gealic people's, wise men of learning but savage whom indulged in mass human sacrifice and of course the Celt's whom may also still have practiced head hunting as well but they left out the fact that Woman in the Gaul/Celt culture had equal right's and standing to the men and the fact the Celt's actually DID have road's as discovered at several archeaological sites in western europe though unlike the more durable roman road's they when paved were made of oak or other wood).

In fact in many way's the Mayan's were more sophisticated than most pre-Roman period European culture's and despite there obvious religiously motivated wars to capture men for sacrifice (like the later Aztec's) they may even have been less savage, I suspect that other than the bloody step's of there pyramid's that there city's were once very beautiful to behold.

Just going off on a tangent for a moment as this has brought it to mind, not related at all but still just a thought.

Even in Buddhism sacrifice has a place but not sacrifice of other's but of the self.
There was a village (I saw this on a documentary some time ago on the TV) in the lower Himalaya's on the Chinese side and they had a legend about a Buddhist monk whom had come among them at a time of great suffering, the village was suffering a great famine and many disasters so the monk had compassion on them and retreated to a cave, he instructed the people to seal him in and there he meditated taking on there karma (suffering) upon himself and sheltering them with his GOOD Karma and the village was saved.
In the mid twentieth century the monk was found in his tomb still in a cross legged kneeling praying position holding his prayer bead's were he had died like that many century's ago and the Chinese official's removed his body and were going to send it off to a distant university for research but when they removed it the valley started to suffer natural disasters almost immediately, the river broke it's bank's and the village pleaded with the official's to return his body which they then did and his tomb was resealed as life went back to normal for the people of that valley.
Not the same thing but a kind of sacrifice of the self for the sake of other's is probably more enlightened than the way that the Mayan and other people did it but the fact that so many have believed in sacrifice over the ages is almost as if the suffering of the sacrifice was used to appease something that needed the negativity to feed on.
Just a thought.

what an incredible detailed and rich account of the history of the mayans What stood out most for me was the Quote :

Enter the Snakes. No one’s sure where they came from; there’s no evidence of them ruling Calakmul before 635. Some experts imagine them hundreds of years before the Classic era, moving from place to place, creating one megacity after another

i may be only speculation, but it makes me wonder of how much more of the lost history of the Meso-Americas we are gonna find in the future

originally posted by: solve
a reply to: Mianeye

One of my favorite legends, some say, that they came from the underworld.

Sometimes i find myself asking, are/were there, cities and tunnels beneath the earth?

Spent much of my life researching the inner earth. The answer is yes, according to nearly every culture in the world. Still mindblowing.

Indian yogi says that although Mayans were highly advanced they couldn't invent wheel, so they were easily conquered by others.

a reply to: Suanna

Because wheels are so practical in the jungle.... haha