The Maya praised over 160 gods and goddesses including a sun god, Kinich Ahau, a moon god, Ix Chel, and a rain god, Chac. Festivals that honored certain gods took place daily. The sacrifices of deer, dogs, and turtles were made to these gods at the religious ceremonies each day. Mayas also offered their own blood spread on pieces of bark paper as well as actual human sacrifices to please and honor the gods. Victims of human sacrifice were either thrown into deep wells or killed at the funerals of great religious leaders.
Religious burial procedures also occurred. Corpses were painted red and covered in straw mats. Normal citizens were buried under their own houses but Maya rulers were buried within pyramids and under temples. Rules were often buried in their finest garments along with jewelry and utensils so they could be used in the following world. Their servants were killed and buried with them because they too were considered a belonging and they would be needed to serve in the next world.

Social Structure:
The entire Maya family lived together under one roof. This includes the parents, children and grandparents. Each family member had a specific job to make the house run smoothly. The men and older boys were the farmers. The weeded and planted the crops as well as did the fishing and hunting for the family. The women and older girls did the housework. They made clothing for the family, made meals, and raised the children. They also gathered firewood and water for the household. The Maya had schools for children in which they learned many of these skills by watching the adults and assisting them.
Recreation:
At the religious festivals, the Maya played a certain ball game, Pok-A-Tok, that still exists in a slightly altered form in northwestern Mexico. Two teams consisting of several players participated in the game. The ball was made of rubber and traveled at high speeds around the court. The players must not use their feet or open hands to hit or touch the ball. The ball was often struck with a player’s hip. Due to the high risk of injury, large padding on the knees, elbows and hips were worn for safety. Ceremonies that took place after the game included the sacrifice of the team captain or other members of the losing team.


Architecture and Engineering:
The Mayas were some of the best architects of the 16th century. One great-unknown mystery of their civilization is how they were able to achieve such perfection with only the use of stone hammers and rough sand. While this civilization was flourishing they managed to make some of the greatest roads and buildings ever constructed. Many believe that the Maya were the best roadbuilders in Central America. They made these magnificent roads by cementing large boulders together. These roads crossed swamplands, lakes, and forests. One of their most popular roads is the Yaxuna. This road is sixty miles long, 30-feet wide, and is about 2 feet above surrounding land. The most remarkable things about these roads is that for large stretches they are perfectly straight, and also the fact that the road-beds have not collapsed which shows that Maya engineers had calculated the resistance of the terrain down to the millimeter. The Maya were also far more advanced than neighboring civilizations in the building of their sacred buildings. The Maya invented a building technique called the “corbelled arch”. This technique is the laying of stone blocks so that each one slightly overlaps the one below, until there remains in the center a narrow gap, which is closed with stone, laid horizontally. The Maya were the only people to cement blocks together to make buildings. The only problem they faced with cement was that the cement was very weak before it dried. Archaeologists still have no idea on how the Mayan architects solved this problem. Some of the arches build were nearly 300-feet tall. Many believe that the Maya build these incredible constructions for the exclusive use of their gods.
Hieroglyphics:

One of the Maya’s own unique traits that made it a civilized civilization was its ways of communication. They did this by means of writing. Their system of writing was known as hieroglyphics, it was the only true system of writing developed in the pre-Columbian Americans. These hieroglyphics contain more than 800 characters and are usually pictoral, representing animals, people, and objects of daily life. Until the mid-20th century, little of the Maya’s writing could be deciphered except for the symbols representing numbers dates, and rulers names and denoting such events as birth, death, and capture. The Maya’s system of writing can also be viewed as logographic, which is the theory that each glyph, or sign, represents an entire word. A single logoraphic sign may be used to represent several words that are pronounced in the same way. The Maya’s writing system also contained both logograms and phonetic signs representing syllables. These glyphs represented places or the ruling families associated with those places. They also recorded events in the lives of Mayan rulers and their families. Books of the Maya written in hieroglyphics are called codies. They existed before the Spanish conquest of Yucatan around 1540, but Spanish priests destroyed most codices. Only four know codices still remain today. All of these inscriptions can be found on stelae, standing stone slabs, stone lintels, paper from fig tree bark, sculptures, and pottery. This extensive system of writing is proof of the Maya’s great intelligence and the existence of a civilized community.

Government:
Government is also another role played in the civilization of Maya. Government was an important part to the Maya civilization. The Priests are the ones who ran the governments, ruled the cities, and led ceremonies and performed many other jobs. Everyday the priest would perform services after climbing the hundreds of temple steps. Some say that the collapse of the Maya could have been because when the lesser Mayas, the farmers, got tired of obeying the commands of the priests and abandoned the cities. One of the most famous Mayan rulers was Lord Pacal. He became king at the age of six and legally took the throne at the age of twelve. Pacal was a priest, a ruler and a king for nearly 50 years until he died. In many situations one family ruled the kingdom for hundreds of years, because a city ruler was usually succeeded by his younger brother or by his son. Only the priests were allowed to be in the temples. These were very scared places and were off limits to just common people because they were not worthy enough to withstand the glory of the gods brought upon the temples. These priests were treated above everyone else. They lived in huge palaces and in small villages. They were known as godfathers and assisted in births. Everyday the priests led ceremonies like the ch’acak to please the gods. The government for the Maya is not like most today, but this doesn’t make it less important. This shows that they had ruling and devotion to their tribe and were very much civilized.

Trade:
The Maya was a part of the trade network that linked a number of groups in Central America. Their main trade locations were in Mexico, Honduras, and Guatemala. The Maya’s main crop was maize (corn), which was used for many of their cuisines. Using irrigational canals, the Mayas also grew avocados, melons, beans, and chili peppers. Some of the things that they traded for were cotton, gold, copper, honey, granite, marble, salt, feathers, jade, and cacao. The people of the low lands exported many items, this included handicrafts, forest and sea products, and jaguar pelts. They imported jade, volcanic glass, and feathers from a bird called the Quetzal in Guatemala. The Maya of Yucatan sent salt and finely decorated cottons to Honduras. In return they received cacao beans, which are used to make chocolate. The Maya transported goods as far as the Valley of Oaxaca in Mexico and the city of Teotihuacan, near what is now Mexico City. To export and import these goods they would carry most of the items on their backs or on rivers in dugout canoes.

Calendar:
The Maya were very advanced in their understanding of time. They were so advanced that they created an elaborate calendar system that was the most accurate until the introduction to the Gregorian calender. Their year began when the sun crossed the zenith on July 16 and consisted of 365 days. 360 days of the year are divided into 18 months, with 20 days in each. In addition, 364 days of the year are divided into 28 weeks with 1`3 days in each. Both months and days work at the same time and independently. Mayas associated time with Religion. Each day was two different gods; one was the number and one was the day. They saw the subdivisions of time as so many burdens. Carried in turn, threw eternity, by teams of divine porters. Porters carried their numbers on their back like large boulders. Mayan mathematicians were able to calculate time threw measuring the distance traveled by the moon. In one city called Quiriqua there were accurate calculations going back 400,000,000 years. The Mayan mathematicians also tried to predict the future. The calculations only went to 400 years because they believed that due to evil forced the world would end before this point.

Bibliography:
1) Calvari, Vittoria. The Maya. Trans. Bridget Baily-Galeotti. Spain: Editions Minerva S.V., 1976
2) "Maya (people)." Microsoft (R) Encarta (R) 98 Encyclopedia. CD-ROM. N.p.: Microsoft Corporation, 1997.
3) Hill, Amy, ed. The Visusal Dictionary of Ancient Civilizations. New York: Dorling Kindersley Publishing Inc., 1995