Kaylin Edwards
Seminar in Prehistory
Spring 2015
Apocalypto Review
Beginning approximately in 1000 BC and extending to about AD 1300, the Maya civilization developed many cities throughout the lowlands and highlands of Mesoamerica. This huge civilization adopted much of its system and organization from an earlier culture, the Olmec. Mel Gibson’s film, Apocalypto, depicts the Maya culture and civilization at the decline of its kingdom’s power. However, there has been much controversy over this film due to how the Maya civilization is depicted, which has given the film many mixed reviews. There have been several critics and researchers who have become outraged due to how violent the Maya are portrayed. The film depicts the Maya people as brutal
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The location and geography of the Maya civilization is extremely varied; there are two main zones in the Maya civilization. The first zone is to the north in the Yucatan Peninsula, which is known as the Maya lowland. This subtropical environment is made up of mainly dry scrub vegetation and limestone bedrock and hills (Demarest 12). This region was also covered by a network of kingdoms that were dominated by sacred elites and kings. The political and religious centers of the Maya included temples, stone tombs, and ball courts. Many of the farmers in the lowlands practiced a system known as “rainforest agriculture” (Demarest 1). The term “slash and burn” is used to describe the manual clearing of land for agricultural purposes. The Maya were very reliant on food production, hunting and foraging. Furthermore, the Maya were extremely advanced in their writing, art, architecture, mathematics, and calendrics (Demarest 89). The second zone of the Maya civilization was located in the south highlands. This was a very mountainous region, which was mainly covered in thick rain forests. The highlands also consisted of political and religious centers such as temples, altars, ball …show more content…
Most of the visual depiction of the Maya dress, art, city life are fairly accurate. In the beginning of the movie, we do not witness much artwork, statues, pyramids, palaces, or tombs. The community that we see residing in the mountainous highlands is basic but flourishing. This small community lives off of the forest and the surrounding waters. Their houses, buildings, and public meeting centers are all made out of resources from the rainforest. Also, the Maya people are dressed in very little clothing and had much body art and piercings. Furthermore, there is a scene, the night before the capture, in which this community comes together to have rituals and tell stories around a fire. After the invasion and long journey, we are introduced to a whole new community that resides in the lowlands. This community is much larger and resembles a more socially and politically advanced society. However, they are not flourishing as the mountainous Maya are. In this large city we witness drought, slavery, desperation, disease, and sacrifice. Also, we see more segregation and separation of classes. As the captives arrive to the outskirts of the new city, they witness slavery and those that are of the lower class. As they proceed to the center of the city they witness more slavery, a higher living class, artwork, trade, pyramids, and much more. Once arriving to
The Mayans were a native Mesoamerican group of people who erected one of the most sophisticated cultures in the Western Hemisphere. They inhabited areas in southern Mexico, and also surrounding Locations included Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and parts of Honduras. The Mayan religion civilization came into prominence in 250 A.D., administering a polytheistic approach to worship which included human blood sacrifices to honor their gods or to culminate the crowning of a King. Historians record that the Mayan civilization abruptly and mysteriously abandoned their cities between 900 and 925 A.D.; this also marks the end of the classical period in Mayan history. In this Annotated Bibliography, I will analyze and summarize key
Their empire covered an area of roughly 400,000 to 500,000 square kilometers. This area included the present day countries of Belize, Guatemala, western Honduras and El Salvador, and also southern portions of Mexico. These lands have a very diverse terrain, from the mountainous highlands to the tropical lowlands. The wide range of geographical features meant that the Mayans food sources varied depending on their location.
Maya societies were clearly divided into two classes, the elite and the commoners. This distinction was usually made by who had more power and wealth, a person was usually born into both. The Elite had control over the politics and religion in each city (Sharer, “Social Stratification”). The vast majority of people were considered commoners, but how do you tell which ones are commoners, and which are Elites? Architecture gives us the biggest clue to who had this power and wealth, and who did not. “Monument building and elaborate, vaulted tomb chambers indicate the presence of social ranking and ruling elites. It is likely that ancestor worship was acquiring more weight as the rulers became ever more responsible for acting as intermediaries with the gods and ancestors for the benefit of their people” (Fash). One of the biggest archaeological insights into Maya lifestyles is art...
When the Spanish began to arrive in Mexico and in Central America in the early 15th century, one of the many civilizations they found was the Maya. The Maya, building upon the Olmec culture, were located in present-day Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, southern Mexico, and the Yucatan Peninsula. Even though they had many similarities, the Maya were separated by language differences. Because of that they were organized into city-states. Since there wasn’t a single city-state powerful enough to impose a political structure, the period from 200 A.D. to the arrival of the Spanish was characterized by the struggle of rival kingdoms for dominance.
Maya architecture is best characterized by the soaring pyramid temples and ornate palaces which were built in all Mayan cities across Mesoamerica from El Tajin in the north to Copan in the south. Pyramids were the epicenter of all Mayan cities because the culture was based on a theocratic design; the famed stepped pyramids had both political and religious significance and unifying Mayan civilization. With large quantities of limestone and flint available, plaster and cement were easily produced. This allowed the Mayans to build impressive temples, with stepped pyramids, multi-level elevated platforms, massive step-pyramids, corbelled roofing, monumental stairways, and exteriors decorated with sculpture and moldings of Mayan hieroglyphs, geometric shapes, and iconography from religion such as serpent masks are all typical features of Maya architecture. On the summits were thatched- roof temples, known as "Triadic Groups".
Carlsen, Robert. The War for the Heart & Soul of a Highland Maya Town. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997.
The Maya are an indigenous people whose culture had built a thriving ancient city-state civilization in Mesoamerica.
Chase, Diane Z. and Arlen F. Chase. Changes in Maya Religious Worldview. Boulder: University Press of Colorado, 2009. Print.
The Mayan civilization was located in southeastern Mexico on the Yucatan Peninsula. One of the first American civilizations, it lasted from about 1000 B.C.-1542 A.D. Their civilization flourished during the Sixth Century. They built many temples and over forty cities. The Mayan population consisted of almost fifteen million people who were all living in one of the many cities. The Mayan people were extremely religious and believed in multiple gods which meant they were polytheistic. Their most commonly worshiped god was the Maize God, or god of corn, as corn was the most grown and most relied on crop. The Mayans grew all of their own food so they needed to have useful farming methods. The one they used most often was the slash and burn method, which involved cutting down trees and burning them to make the soil fertil which was necessary to grow crops. This method worked for many years, but soon started to backfire. The Mayans were ahead of their time, but that did not prevent their mysterious decline which occurred between the years 800 A.D.-900 A.D. Although it is not known exactly why the powerful empire fell, but there are various probable theories. The mysterious decline of the Mayans may have been caused by
The European and Mayan civilizations had inverse experiences during the Classical era, but they were similar in some aspects. While the Mayans were basking in their glorious success as a civilization, the Europeans stood in their shadow. However, after the Renaissance Era, it was as if the Mayans stood in the shadow of the European revival. These two societies have a definite inverse relationship, in that while one was succeeding, the other was squandering. For example, the forward thinking of the Mayans and their knowledge of arithmetic and science was overshadowed by the revolutionary ideas created by European scientists, the fact that the Mayans had created a complex, and accurate calendar wasn’t nearly as celebrated as a European man who got hit by an apple.
Thompson, john. The Rise and Fall of Maya Civilization. 2 edition . Univ of Oklahoma, 1973. 335. Print.
Maya cities saw a very low number of houses within a typical city which would leave the people the room for food production from small fields as various types of gardens. These houses were very like that of a suburban home in the 1950s, so in this rural area you were afforded a decent amount of privacy within this city. This also allowed for a more domestic lifestyle for the residents which would typically lead of the father, let’s say he is a farmer, working his field with the mother and children doing various chores around the house and weaving baskets etc.… Due to the nature of how living was within these rural areas, they did not hide social inequality very well, and the more elites would have bigger, more lavish homes. Life in the rural areas was also not that different from living outside of the walls of the rural area or the wild. This meant that living in the rural area did not have a type of allure that a big city like Teo had, with the difference being that within this rural area there was a little more protection than living out in the wild. This however led to a more of a community developing as while these areas were crowded sure, they were not as crowded as city life. This led to a more face-to-face knowledge of the people around out as well again forming more of a community type living. The sanitation was ok here mainly because since they were more spread out than in a
However, from 950 CE- 1524 CE, recognized as the Post-Classic Period, the Maya Civilization commenced its declined and mysterious disappearance. This decline was the result of several environmental factors. Because of deforestation, ‘slash and burn’ agriculture, drought, and unexpected natural disasters,
The movie Apocalypto attempted to recreate what the Mayan civilization once was but fell far from that. If anything that Mel Gibson recreated successfully it would have to be that they were Mayans, and the clothing they wore. From the very beginning of the movie you can see a flaw, Jaguar Paw asked the villagers that were passing by who they were. The Mayans were very interconnected people, the larger towns were given tribute by the smaller towns for hundreds of years. Now although the Mayans did perform sacrifices of their owns they did not perform them in the way Apocalypto portrayed them. Apocalypto portrayed the Aztecs rituals, in which the kings would rip out the heart so that it would rain and so the gods would not be mad, and even then, the movie did not portray the Aztecs right because the man performing the rituals was not the king, it was another elite of the civilization, the priest.
The Maya culture has a long history that started in about 1000 BC. The history of the Maya is divided up into four different time periods: The Middle Preclassic Period, Late Preclassic Period, Classic Period, and Postclassic Period. The Middle Preclassic Period was when the small areas started to become city-like in the way that they started to build larger temples. The Late Preclassic Period was when the cities began to expand with paved roads and massive pyramids. The Classic Period was the time the Maya civilization hit it’s peak. Populations were growing rapidly and the structure of politics was formed. The Postclassic Period was when warfare was on the rise and cities were being abandoned(Coe 2005). This paper will focus on the Classic Period due to the fact that that is the greatest time period in Maya history.