Why do mayans sacrifice people

Numerous deities populated the Maya pantheon, including gods for physical elements like rain and demigod-like heroes who fought for the good of humanity. Based on differences in deities carved into stone or adorning temples, it seems likely that different Maya city-states held slightly different beliefs. And today, hundreds of years after the Spanish came to the New World, Maya people in Central America and Mexico practice a religion that draws from these traditional beliefs as well as Christianity.

We know about Maya religion today from a number of sources. This includes information from Maya glyphs, artwork, surviving Maya texts like the Dresden Codex , later works like the Popol Vuh and Maya people who still observe traditional religious ceremonies. Collectively, these sources reveal shifts and variations in Maya belief. Even during the Maya Classic period, the heyday of this civilization during the first millennium A. The civilization consisted of a number of disparate city-states, rather than a single, unified empire.

As such, religious beliefs and deities seem to have differed somewhat. Glyphs showing gods, for example, vary from place to place and time to time. But there are broad similarities, including a number of major gods and religious observances and beliefs. To appreciate the theology, you must consider how Maya people generally viewed the world. The physical and spiritual realms were intimately interwoven with each other, writes archaeologist and Maya scholar Stephen Houston. This often meant that things we might view as simple representations of concepts were far more real.

Statues of gods were actually gods. Buildings needed to be fed. Planting corn and building houses were rituals. In other words, to them, the gods were simply another part of their world. The Maya had many gods, both major and minor. Itzamna was the god of creation, considered by the Yucatec Maya to be the first priest, who invented writing and books and divided the lands among the people.

An elderly god known as Pauahtun was often portrayed as four different aspects, each of which held up a corner of the sky. Additionally, Maya gods often took the form of jaguars, such as the fearsome lord of the night sun, a god of the underworld. The maize god , who may have been called Hun Hunahpu, also featured prominently in Maya theology, often with a shaved scalp and leaves of corn growing from his head.

You get together, you prepare for it as you would for any religious feast with some kind of purgative and ascetic practices such as avoiding certain foods, getting little sleep and abstaining from sexual contact. Generally, it was a male sport and male game and male ritual. Because it was so heavily connected with war it became even a kind of substitute… ritualised warfare… not unlike football matches for us.

One of the things you notice is that there were all kinds of different ball courts. In a single city, you can have more than 20 courts. Some are small courts for local play while others are very big and adorned with reliefs and other things where you can these were representative places of a ritual nature.

Some scholars insist that some of the stately courts were never actually used for matches but only as places of ritual, where beheadings took place.

If we talk about Central Mexico and the Aztecs, they seemed to favour classical heart extraction on a sacrificial stone. But things are not that simple and are more complex. You have a geyser of blood and that was important as the blood was supposed to fertilise the earth and new plant life. I read it is a matter of debate whether the game was rigged: that the losers were meant to lose.

I would say that on stately occasions the outcome was probably fixed and that there would also be in cases when the ball game was more ritual than game. What we know is that there were different versions and some were played with the arms and legs but not your hands or feet — that is pretty much certain. They also played with an implement called a hacha which means axe which were bats to hit the ball which was solid rubber and large and heavy.

When there was a heavier ball, heavier protective gear worn was worn. What we know from the contemporary version where the hips are used, you had to get the ball through a certain space and a specific trajectory.

The core rule was that the ball was not supposed to touch the ground. The ball hits the ground and wakes the evil death gods and they get angry and decide to kill the players. E-mail: [e-mail]. Archiv clanky Human sacrifice in Maya culture. Human sacrifice in Maya culture. What were some of your conclusions, then and now?

Source: Shutterstock Was sacrifice always a part of it? Do we know much about how it was played? Contact Us. It seems apparent, however, that the Maya believed Earth to be flat and four-cornered. Each corner was located at a cardinal point and had a colour value: red for east, white for north, black for west, and yellow for south. At the centre was the colour green.

Some Maya also believed that the sky was multi-layered and that it was supported at the corners by four gods of immense physical strength called "Bacabs". Other Maya believed that the sky was supported by four trees of different colours and species, with the green ceiba , or silk-cotton tree, at the centre.

Earth in its flat form was thought by the Maya to be the back of a giant crocodile, resting in a pool of water lilies. The crocodile's counterpart in the sky was a double-headed serpent - a concept probably based on the fact that the Maya word for "sky" is similar to the word for "snake".

In hieroglyphics, the body of the sky-serpent is marked not only with its own sign of crossed bands, but also those of the Sun, the Moon, Venus and other celestial bodies. The image of the human face emerging from the jaws of the serpent is a recurrent theme in Maya art. In this case, however, the sculpture of the feathered serpent is a later Toltec addition to the Maya geometric mosaic design - part of an elaborate frieze on the West facade of the "Nunnery" at Uxmal.

Heaven was believed to have 13 layers, and each layer had its own god. Uppermost was the muan bird, a kind of screech-owl. The Underworld had nine layers, with nine corresponding Lords of the Night. The Underworld was a cold, unhappy place and was believed to be the destination of most Maya after death. Heavenly bodies such as the Sun, the Moon, and Venus, were also thought to pass through the Underworld after they disappeared below the horizon every evening.

Very little is known about the Maya pantheon. The Maya had a bewildering number of gods, with at least named deities. This is partly because each of the gods had many aspects. Some had more than one sex; others could be both young and old; and every god representing a heavenly body had a different Underworld face, which appeared when the god "died" in the evening.

His wife was Ix Chel , the goddess of weaving, medicine and childbirth; she was also the ancient goddess of the Moon. The role of priests was closely connected to the calendar and astronomy. Priests controlled learning and ritual, and were in charge of calculating time, festivals, ceremonies, fateful days and seasons, divination, events, cures for diseases, writing and genealogies.

The Maya clergy were not celibate, and sons often succeeded fathers.