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However, since these men had no soul and soon lost loyalty to the creators, the gods destroyed them by rain. Finally, man was constructed from maize, the Mayans staple and sacred food. The deity Itzamna is credited as being the creator of the calendar along with creating writing. [1] The Aztec people had several versions of creation myths. One ...
The use of Mayan languages came to an end in many important domains of society, including administration, religion and literature. Yet the Maya area was more resistant to outside influence than others, [notes 6] and perhaps for this reason, many Maya communities still retain a high proportion of monolingual speakers. The Maya area is now ...
The Maya made paper from the inner bark of a certain wild fig tree, Ficus cotinifolia. [1] [2] This sort of paper was generally known by the word huun in Mayan languages (the Aztec people far to the north used the word āmatl [ˈaːmat͡ɬ] for paper). The Maya developed their huun-paper around the 5th century. [3]
Unlike the Aztecs and the Inca, the Maya political system never integrated the entire Maya cultural area into a single state or empire. Rather, throughout its history, the Maya area contained a varying mix of political complexity that included both states and chiefdoms. These polities fluctuated greatly in their relationships with each other ...
History, power and legacy: Another large part of the pre-Columbian literature is found carved into monumental structures such as stelae, altars and temples. This kind of literature typically documents power and heritage, memorize victories, ascension to rulership, dedications of monuments, marriages between royal lineages.
During the 19th century, the word 'codex' became popular to designate any pictorial manuscript in the Mesoamerican tradition. In reality, pre-Columbian manuscripts are, strictly speaking, not codices, since the strict librarian usage of the word denotes manuscript books made of vellum, papyrus and other materials besides paper, that have been sewn on one side. [1]
Throughout the history of Mesoamerica, an unknown number of languages and language families became extinct and left behind no evidence of their existence. What is known about the pre-Columbian history of the Mesoamerican languages is what can be surmised from linguistic, archeological and ethnohistorical evidence. Often, hypotheses concerning ...
The Aztecs [a] (/ ˈ æ z t ɛ k s / AZ-teks) were a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished in central Mexico in the post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries.