Published on January 14, 2012 by Amy
Mayan Indians mainly occupied areas in Mexican and Central America. Unlike many of the Indian tribes the Mayan Indians are still around today and populating the same regions they have for centuries. The modern Mayan Indians are obviously more modernized but many still practice the traditions of old and many still speak the Mayan language as their first language.
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The Mayan Indians are well known for several things, some of which are included here. The Mayan Indians had developed a form of calendar; the Mayan calendar was very intricate and quite a bit different then our standard three hundred and sixty five day calendar year.
The Mayan calendar could include many different disc shaped calendars that could be used in combination to create different cycles. Another major thing to note is that the Mayan Indians calendar is based on the 260-day cycle used in the past by many Mesoamerican tribes. The Mayan calendar was not the same calendar as that of Mesoamerican tribes; it was actually a more refined and sophisticated adaptation.
The Mayan Indians writing style was very similar in style to the Japanese writing in that it used logograms enhanced by a set of syllabic glyphs, which is very similar. Although to look at Mayan writing you would notice that it more resembles the Egyptian hieroglyphs then Japanese script. In fact when first discovered it was thought to be the same style and called hieroglyphic writing, which then changed to Mayan hieroglyph due to the difference. This form of writing was the primary form in the Mesoamerican tribes from around the 3rd century BC to around the 16th century. The time length shows how prevalent and widely understood this was to have lasted such a vast time frame.
Finally we come to the architecture of the Maya Indians. The most commonly seen architecture of the Mayans is the stepped pyramids that have become quite famous. When researching the Mayas you will generally see several photos of these pyramids. Looking past the pyramids you can see that the Mayans were great builders, many of their structures seem to have been built in accordance to the land, if they had a flat surface that would build from that, if there was a cliff they had to work with they would build taller structures using the cliff face as a form of foundation. Many of their structures were created using limestone which was soft enough to work with their stone tools, and a majority of the common homes would be made of adobe, a form of baked mud brick.