1. SSWH8 The student will demonstrate an understanding of the development of societies in Central and South America.
Explain the rise and fall of the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, and Inca empires.
Compare the culture of the Americas; include government, economy, religion, and the arts of the Maya, Aztecs, and Incas.

2. Cult of the Jaguar continued
Maya Civilization
Cult of the Jaguar continued

3. Political Systems City states united in a loose confederacy
Nobles own most of the land and are the important merchants
Priests
Maintained an elaborate calendar
transmitted knowledge of writing, astronomy, and mathematics
Population largely rural used cities for primarily relgious centers
Tikal

4. War Maya kingdoms fought constantly with each other
warriors won tremendous prestige by capturing high- ranking enemies
Captives were usually made slaves, humiliated, tortured, and ritually sacrificed

5. Temple of Jaguar
Tikal was the most important Maya political center from the 4th-9th Centuries
Meeting place for all Maya city states on important astronomical/religious dates
40,000 people lived here

6. Economic Systems Agricultural society Terrace farming
Shifting cultivation
Maize, cacao
Architects, sculptors, Potters
Cacao used as money
Merchants traded in luxury goods like jade, fancy textiles and animal pelts

7. Religion Polytheistic; gods made people out of maize and water
Human Blood Sacrifice and ceremony keep the gods happy
That kept the world going and agriculture good

8. Human Sacrifice and Bloodletting Rituals
Bloodletting involved:
war captives
Maya royals
piercing the tongue and/or genitals
dripping the blood down a rope into a bowl before offering it to the gods

9. Religious Ritual Who got sacrificed: When:
Animals
Slaves
Children
prisoners of war (were important parts of their culture)
When:
on important dates
when priests demanded it
as punishment for crimes.
Burned copal resin along with the sacrifice, creating more smoke and a sweet smell.
Offerings to the spirits were to insure agricultural success.

11. Priests responsible for keeping calendar,
holding ceremonies to the gods
Human sacrifice
Two special priestly functions involved in human sacrifice:
the chacs, who were elderly men that held down the victim,
the nacon, who cut the living heart from the victim.

12. After life The Maya believed in an elaborate afterlife
heaven was reserved for those who had been hanged, sacrificed, or died in childbirth.
Everyone else went to xibal, or hell, which was ruled over by the Lords of Death.

13. Maya beauty prized a long, backward sloping forehead
infants would have their skulls bound with boards.
Crossed-eyes favored
infants would have objects dangled in front of their eyes in order to permanently cross their eyes (this is still practiced today).

14. Intellectual Developments
astronomy, calendrical systems, hieroglyphic writing, ceremonial architecture, and masonry without metal tools
Could plot planetary cycles and predict eclipses of the sun and moon
calculated the length of the solar year at days– about 17 seconds shorter than the figure reached by modern astronomers
Chichin Itza

15. The Calendar Round
Two gears that inter-mesh, one smaller than the other.
One of the ‘gears’ is called the tzolkin (“count of days”), or Sacred Round.
The other is the haab, or Calendar Round.
The smaller wheels together represent the 260-day Sacred Round
the inner wheel, with the numbers one to thirteen (think of this like our ‘week’), meshes with the glyphs for the 20 day names on the outer wheel.
Day of the month
weekday

16. The Calendar Round
The expanded count was called haab (or a civic calendar)
A section of a large wheel represents part of the 365-day year
The haab consisted of 18 named months with 20 days each
Not ideal for hundreds of years.
To do this they used a vigesimal (i.e. based on 20) place-value number system, analogous to our decimal place-value number system.
weekday
Day of the month

17. The Long Count
one month of 5 days called Uayeb and were considered evil/bad.
If all wheels turn for approximately 52 years then it will take a total of 18,980 days (52*365) before the same date reoccurs this is called a calendar round.
The Maya invented the long count which starts at zero :
these five positions in the date refer to five smaller cycles the: baktun . katun . tun . uinal . kin respectively
on the date 4 Ahau 8 Cumku.
This correlates to 13 August BC in the Gregorian calendar
this great cycle due to end 23 De cember AD 2012

18. October 11,
11 Manik- year bearer (solar year, or 1970)
12 Baktun
17 Katun
17 Tun
3 Winal
8 Kin
10, Lamat (my name)
1, Yax
5 Lord of the Night (5th of 6th lunar cycles in a year. The time between 2 new moons.)

19. Writing ideographic elements and symbols for syllables
Used to write works of history, poetry, and myth and keep genealogical, administrative, and astronomical records

20. Maya Decline
By about 800, most Maya populations had begun to desert their cities
Possible causes include:
foreign invasion,
internal dissension and civil war,
failure of the water control system leading to agricultural disaster,
ecological problems caused by destruction of the forests,
epidemic diseases, and natural disasters

21. SSWH8 The student will demonstrate an understanding of the development of societies in Central and South America.
Explain the rise and fall of the Olmec, Maya, Aztec, and Inca empires.
Compare the culture of the Americas; include government, economy, religion, and the arts of the Maya, Aztecs, and Incas.
List five facts which will help you remember this lesson: