The Maya tribe is an ancient civilization that has inhabited Mesoamerica since approximately 2,600 B.C. When modern Americans hear the term “Native American” they automatically think of the American Southwest on the North American Continent. It is entirely possible that ancestors of the Maya crossed the Bering Strait 20,000 years ago and may have made their way down the western coast of North America and the ancestors of the North American tribes may indeed be the same as the ancestors of the Maya, certainly some of their beliefs are very similar. The ancestors of the Maya probably continued their journey south along the gulf coast of Central America since evidence of human habitation has been found along the Gulf of Mexico that dates from 5,000 B.C. to around 1,500 B.C. Eventually the tribe that became known as Maya settled in the Yucatan peninsula. Archaeologists have found evidence of the Maya tribe that dates back to 1,000 B.C. and it is believed that some of their complexes were constructed as early as 600 B.C.

The Maya were largely an agricultural tribe with only the priests and elite living in their “urban” centers. The Maya used a method called milpa, which was a slash and burn method, to clear land to grow their primary food source, maize. Most of the Maya population lived in tiny farm communities because of the labor involved in clearing enough of the land covered by thick rain forest to feed large numbers of people. Some Maya today still practice this farming method.

There was a wide division between the peasant farmers and their priests. The large complexes and pyramids, such as the one at Chichen-Itza, were religious centers where the Maya worshiped their god, the Sun, and observed sacrifices to the Sun. Only the religious leaders lived in the ceremonial complexes. They performed religious ceremonies daily and possibly daily sacrifices. It is true that sacrifices involved bloodletting, which included the priest piercing a body part or many times a human would be sacrificed especially if the priests believed that a crisis was coming upon them.

The religious belief of the cycles of the universe, on which their lives and crops depended, is probably why the Maya were so obsessed with keeping time. It is this obsession with time that may have inspired the Maya to create a calendar which is far more accurate than the Gregorian calendar we use today. The Mayan calendar is only off one day every 6,000 years unlike the Gregorian calendar which is off one day every 4 years. The Maya devised a written language and recorded events on folding tree books. They also developed a complex mathematical system which they used in their astronomical calculations.

The Maya were great admirers of art and it is at the sites of their religious centers that beautiful art, their paintings and sculptures, of the ancient Maya artists are seen adorning the religious complexes. Most of these religious complexes also included a ball court, which the Maya loved as much as modern Americans love baseball. Physical beauty was also greatly admired and in particular a long sloping forehead and crossed eyes. Babies’ heads were strapped to boards to elongate their foreheads. Trinkets would be dangled before their eyes so that babies’ eyes would be permanently crossed, which still is practiced today by some Maya.

Most cultural and artistic achievements of the Maya are believed to have occurred during the Classic Period between 300 A.D. and 900 A.D. and it was during this period that the largest Maya population inhabited the central Mexico and Belize. Between 900 A.D. and 1,000 A.D. the Maya migrated to the Yucatan peninsula which is called the Post Classic Period. It was between 1,300 A.D. and 1,500 A.D. that the Maya seem to have lost faith in their priests or perhaps adopted the belief of others who were invading the peninsula in the 1,500s, the Post Columbian period. Once there were no followers, the religious complexes were abandoned. By the end of the 1,500s the vast majority of the Maya had been massacred or they had died of disease of famine. But the Maya did not disappear entirely. Although the Maya suffered greatly through the next four centuries at the hands of others, around 6 million live modern lives in the Yucatan and 350,000 work in tourist related fields but still speak the language of the Maya as their primary language.

Today, the Maya continue to be the victims of abuse by the government agencies in the area, and some of them have abandoned the metropolitan areas and returned to the agricultural ways of their ancestors.