Belize's Mayan Legacy: A Rich Cultural History

The Maya are an ethnolinguistic group of indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica, with ancient roots in modern-day Belize, as well as parts of Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and five Mexican states. They are the direct descendants of the original indigenous inhabitants of the Yucatán peninsula. Today, the Maya of Belize account for around 11% of the country's population, and their language and some traditions survive.

Belize was the home of the earliest Maya settlements, with traces of Maya habitation at Cuello, in the Orange Walk District of Belize, recently carbon-dated to around 2600 BC. The Maya civilisation in Belize reached its peak between 300 and 900 AD, with a population of 1 to 2 million people, and large cities such as Xunantunich, Caracol, and Lamanai.

The Maya's rich legacy in art, science and mathematics

The Mayans were a diverse group of indigenous people who lived in parts of present-day Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. They had one of the most sophisticated and complex civilisations in the Western Hemisphere. Their scientific achievements and art are a testament to their rich legacy.

Art

Maya art was born from the interaction between societies in the Yucatan Peninsula and those of the Mexican Gulf Coast, known as the Olmec civilisation. Maya artists worked with stone, stucco, wood, bone, shell, and fired clay. They created sculptures, paintings, and intricate relief carvings. They also made ceremonial blades, royal sceptres, ritual regalia, and incense burners.

Mathematics

The Mayans developed a sophisticated number system, a base-20 system with only three number symbols. They were one of the first ancient cultures to use the concept of zero, which they denoted with a shell. They also had a unique way of representing numbers larger than 19, using powers of 20.

Science

The Mayans had advanced knowledge of astronomy, which they incorporated into their architecture. They built cities and temples aligned with the movements of the sun, moon, and planets. They could predict astronomical events such as solstices, solar eclipses, and weather patterns. They also developed precise calendar systems, including the Calendar Round and the Long Count, which were based on their understanding of astronomy and mathematical concepts.

Ancient Mayan ruins and sites

The Mayan civilisation spanned more than 2,500 years and covered southern Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Here are some of the best ancient Mayan ruins and sites to visit.

Chichen Itza, Mexico

One of the greatest Maya cities, Chichen Itza was a sacred site covering around six square miles. It was home to hundreds of buildings constructed during the classic Maya period and the later Maya-Toltec period. Chichen Itza is one of the New Seven Wonders of the World and is Mexico's most famous Maya ruin. The site includes the Kukulkan Pyramid, which stands at 75 feet tall, and El Castillo, a carefully restored pyramid that rises to 80 feet and has 365 steps.

Tulum, Mexico

Tulum was one of the last cities inhabited by the Maya and the only one built on the coast. The site includes El Castillo, a pyramid that sits on 40ft-high cliffs above the Caribbean Sea.

Coba, Mexico

Coba was once one of the most important Maya cities in Yucatán. The site includes Nohoch Mul, the tallest pyramid in the Yucatán Peninsula, which stands at 120–138 feet.

Calakmul, Mexico

Cloaked by the second-largest tropical forest in the Americas, Calakmul is one of Mexico's wildest Maya ruins. It has the largest and tallest pyramid in Yucatán and more than 6,000 structures, many of which are covered by jungle.

Ek Balam, Mexico

Ek Balam, which means 'black jaguar' or 'jaguar star', was at its height in the 8th century when more than 20,000 people lived there. Its largest pyramid is 160 metres long and 105 feet tall.

Uxmal, Mexico

Uxmal is a UNESCO World Heritage site and was once a huge population centre on the Yucatán Peninsula. The site includes the Pyramid of the Magician, which was built in stages.

Caracol, Belize

Caracol was one of the most important political centres of the Maya lowlands. The site includes several plazas, ball courts, incredible art and over 100 tombs. The highlight is the Caana, or Sky Place, which has four palaces and three temples.

Xunantunich, Belize

Xunantunich was a ceremonial centre in the Belize Valley. The site includes El Castillo, Belize's second-tallest structure, which stands at 130 feet tall.

Tikal, Guatemala

Tikal is a UNESCO World Heritage site and was one of the great cities of the 8th century, housing over 100,000 people. The site includes several towering pyramids and a myriad of trails connecting them.

Copán, Honduras

Copán was the capital city of the Maya civilisation from the 5th to 9th centuries AD. The site includes large, open plazas, altars and monoliths.

Mayan culture and traditions

The Maya are an ethnolinguistic group of indigenous people of Mesoamerica, with ancient roots in modern-day Belize, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and five Mexican states. The earliest record of the Maya in Belize dates back to around 2000 BCE, during the Preclassic Period (2000 BCE to 200 CE).

Language and Religion

The Maya speak many languages, including Mayan languages (Yucatec, Quiche, Kekchi, and Mopan), Spanish, and English. They believed in many different gods, and religion was an important part of their lives. They also believed that every living thing was imbued with a sacred essence called "k'uh", or "divine or sacredness". Caves were especially sacred to the Maya, as they were seen as portals to the underworld, or "Xibalba".

Astronomy and Mathematics

The Maya were highly advanced astronomers, with observatories to study the skies. They believed that the sun, the moon, the stars, and even planets were gods, and played a great part in their day-to-day life. They built their temples, pyramids, and palaces in positions determined by the placement of celestial objects. They also developed complex calendar systems, such as the Calendar Round, based on 365 days, and the Long Count Calendar, designed to last over 5,000 years.

The Maya invented the concept of "zero", and improved the mathematical and calendar systems in place at the time.

Agriculture and Food

The Maya were skilled farmers, using advanced farming techniques, including underground water storage, irrigation canals, raised plots, and terracing. They grew corn, cacao, maize, squash, beans, cassava, and other crops.

Corn is the staple dish of the Kekchi Maya, served in a variety of ways. They make masa by cooking corn with white lime, grinding it, and converting it into masa to make tortillas, tamales, pouchu, and korech. Tortillas are often served with caldo (soup), which contains chicken, fish, or game meat, peppers, annatto, cilantro, culantro, salt, cooking fat, and water.

Arts and Crafts

The Maya were skilled artisans, creating elaborate jewellery mostly made of jade and gold. They also wove and embroidered clothing, with Kekchi Mayan women decorating their blouses and skirts with colourful embroidery in geometric designs.

Traditions and Rituals

The Maya have a tradition of elaborately costumed dances with carved wooden masks, such as the Dance of the Deer, unique to Belize. This dance portrays the marimba calling all the animals from the woods and mountains, with dancers wearing deer masks and colourful costumes. The dance also includes Spaniards, adorned with mirrors, who shoot all the deer—but end up facing retaliation from nature.

The Maya also had sweat baths, stone constructions with holes in the ceiling that created steam. They believed these baths cured illnesses and revitalised them.

Mayan language and writing system

The Mayan writing system, also known as Maya glyphs, is the only Mesoamerican writing system that has been substantially deciphered. It is thought to be the only true writing system native to the Americas. The earliest Mayan script dates back to around 250 BCE, but recent archaeological finds suggest that the Mayan civilisation may have begun much earlier, around 3000 BCE.

The Mayan script is logosyllabic, combining logograms (which represent whole words) and syllabograms (which represent syllables). There were also glyphs representing place names and the names of gods. Mayan glyphs were pictorial, directly representing objects, people, and concepts from daily life. The script was written in paired vertical columns, reading from left to right and top to bottom in a zigzag pattern.

The Mayan writing system was highly complex, using pictographs and phonetic or syllabic elements. It was likely that only members of the higher classes, such as nobility and priests, were able to read and write. The Maya believed that writing was sacred and invented by the god Itzamna. Rectangular lumps of plaster and paint chips found in Maya archaeology are the remains of books after organic material has decayed.

The best-preserved examples of Maya writing are often found on stone monuments, altars, stelae, and architectural sculptures. Pottery is another important source, as vessels often carry painted or inscribed writing. Examples of painted writing have also been found in caves and on interior walls of buildings. Other sources include inscribed artefacts made from jade, greenstone, shell, and bone.

The Maya also created written books, or codices, from bark paper coated with lime to create a fresh white surface. These were screen-folded and bound with wood and deer hide. Unfortunately, most of these books were destroyed by Spanish conquistadors, who regarded the symbolic writing as the work of the devil. Only four codices remain today: the Dresden Codex, the Madrid Codex, the Paris Codex, and the Grolier Codex.

Mayan diet and food

The ancient Mayan diet was varied and extensive, with many different types of resources consumed, including maritime, flora, and faunal material. Food was obtained or produced through strategies such as hunting, foraging, and large-scale agricultural production.

Agricultural Techniques

The ancient Maya adopted a number of adaptive techniques that allowed for the clear-cutting of land and the re-infusion of nutrients into the soil. One such technique was slash-and-burn, or swidden, agriculture, which involved clearing and temporarily fertilizing an area. This technique, common throughout the Maya area, is still practised in the region today. Complementing swidden techniques were crop rotation and farming, employed to maintain soil viability and increase crop variety.

Staple Foods

The ancient Maya diet focused on four domesticated crops: maize, squash, beans, and chilli peppers. These crops, known as the "Three Sisters", provided necessary nutrients when incorporated into the diet together. Maize, however, was the central component of the ancient Mayan diet and played a prominent role in Mayan mythology and ideology. It was always nixtamalized, a process in which maize is soaked and cooked in an alkaline solution to release niacin, a necessary B vitamin that prevents pellagra and reduces incidents of protein deficiency.

Once nixtamalized, maize was ground and prepared in a variety of ways, including tortillas, tamales, atole, and pozole. Tortillas, made from corn dough, were commonly used to wrap other foods such as meat and beans. Tamales were made by wrapping corn dough and various fillings in a corn husk and steam-cooking them. Atole and pozole were liquid-based gruel-like dishes made by mixing ground maize with water, with atole being denser and used as a drinking source, and pozole incorporating whole grains of maize into a turkey broth.

In addition to maize, the ancient Maya diet included a variety of other foods such as squash, beans, tomatoes, avocado, breadnut, guava, papaya, pineapple, and sweet potato. Herbs such as vanilla, epazote, and achiote were also used to flavour dishes.

Meat and Seafood

While the ancient Maya diet was primarily vegetarian, they also consumed meat when available. Meat was obtained through hunting, fishing, and the domestication of animals such as turkeys and dogs. White-tailed deer were the most commonly exploited animal, followed by other mammals such as monkeys, manatees, armadillos, peccaries, and guinea pigs. Birds, turtles, molluscs, and other aquatic resources were also consumed, with evidence suggesting that live marine resources were transported to inland sites.

Fruits

The ancient Maya consumed a wide variety of fruits, most of which were gathered from rainforests. These included avocados, mangoes, pumpkins, papayas, sour oranges, saramuyo, nance, pitahaya, and mamey. Fruits were consumed directly, used in drinks, or put to other uses such as salting meat for preservation.

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