WORK AND LIFE MAYA

The ancient Maya were a group of American Indian peoples who lived in Southern Mexico. Their descendants, the modern Maya, live in the same regions today. Agriculture was the basis of the economy of the Mayan and corn was the principal food. Other crops included avocados, tomatoes, and chili peppers. They cultivated an enormous variety of plants. In hieroglyphic writing, astronomy, and mathematics, the Mayan Indians were far ahead of any other people in the New World. Mayan cities served as centers for the surrounding countryside. The people gathered in the centers for important events such as markets and religious festivals. The Maya had no schools. The children learned by observing adults and helping them. Maya farmers lived in rural homesteads for small villages near their fields. They built their houses from poles all tied together. The man could have two or even three wives. Each one would tend to her own fire and cook for her own children. Entire Maya families, including parents, children, and grandparents lived together. Everyone in the household helped with the work. Very little is known about the government of the Maya. Each Maya city governed itself and the area around it and larger cities may have had control over several smaller cities. The rulers of the government probably consisted of both chiefs and priests. The Maya never united to form a central governmental unit. As population rose, the nobles of the independent city states both intermarried and made war on one another. Ultimately, the system of rule that had served the Maya for centuries had failed. Faced with famine, foreign invasion, chronic warfare, and perhaps disease, an era ended what is generally called the Classic Maya collapse.
Archaeologists have recently shown that the Maya began to develop intensive agriculture and sophisticated water management during the Middle Preclassic. The early Maya gave great gifts to the people who followed. Some four million or so Maya speak one of the thirty or more Mayan languages and retain traditional customs, diet, dress, or housing. For most of the 20th Century, only the extensive calendrical data of the Maya could be read, and as a result, Maya scholars hypothesized that then inscriptions were pure calendrical records. Because little evidence of warfare had been recognized archaeologically, the Classic Maya were thought of as peaceful timekeepers and sky watchers.
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