Mayan Facts For Kids – Fun Facts About The Mayan Civilization

♦ By the year 250 A.D. the Mayan civilization reached it’s peak power. Their population reached as much as 2,000,000 people.

♦ They called the Yucatan home. This is in the areas of western Honduras, Guatemala, northern Belize and southern Mexico.

♦ The Mayan’s did not use a central ruler with their empire. They employed more of a city-state system of government. They had as many as 20 separate areas where each city had it’s own leader and noble class. These larger cities were supported by smaller cities in the surrounding areas. You can compare it to a city with suburbs.

Mayan Hieroglyphs or Glyphs.

♦ The Mayan civilization is most famous for being advanced in certain areas. They developed a calendar system, used advanced hieroglyphic writing and showed incredibly developed knowledge of astronomy

♦ They were good at creating structures. Many of them are still around for people to see. They created pyramids, palaces, temples observatories and ceremonial structures. Maybe even more impressive is that they did all of this with no metal tools.

♦ They are also known for developing their own irrigation systems. They had little groundwater to work with, so they developed large underground reservoirs to store their water.

♦ The Mayans were very skilled at farming, they used their knowledge if irrigation to help them develop systems to help water their crops.

♦ Mayans were also very skilled at pottery and weaving. They thrived with trading amongst each other and would clear routes through the jungles to create trade routes.

♦ The Mayans were skilled with reading and writing with they glyph system. They created up to 800 different glyphs. Some glyphs represented sounds while others were pictures that represented words. They would chisel and record glyphs in stone and inside ancient books called Codices.

♦ Codices are an ancient book that the Mayans used to write in. The pages were a fig bark covered in white lime and the book was bound with jaguar skins. These books were important to the Mayans, they recorded their history, religion, astronomy and medicine.

Mayan Calendar

♦ Mayan society was made up of classes. The bottom of the class was made up of slaves and workers, the middle class was made up of traders, craftsman and warriors the top of the class was made up of priests and nobles.

♦ The Mayan civilization was very musical and artistic. They wove beautiful fabrics and made musical instruments like castanets, horns and drums. They also carved huge statues. Their artwork was a reflection of their daily life, gods and leaders.

♦ No one knows exactly what happened to the Mayan civilization. Around 300 to 900  AD something really bad happened to the Mayans. Some popular theories are that they were invaded by an outside people, there was a major natural disaster, disease. They believe the natural disaster could have wiped out trade routes that took years to make, this would have been disastrous to their economy.

♦ By the time the Mayan’s were at their peak power, they had over 30 languages and related dialects.

♦ The Mayans thrived for over 2,000 years.

♦ Mayans would take bark of the blache tree and fermented honey to create their most popular drink the Blache.

♦ Mayans would use sauna style sweat baths to help purify their body. It was common belief that this practice helped purify them.

♦ Mayan culture was very religious. They practiced human sacrifice for medical and religious purposes.

♦ Complex tattoos were common among both men and women in Mayan culture.