Introduction
I believe the Mayan Empire was one of the greatest empires ever lived. For three thousand years, this great civilization maintained its existence in one of the harshest environments in society. The Mayans developed a complex language based solely on hieroglyphic-type characters that humanity still needs to solve. This language helped the Mayans build a complex monarchy. It enabled them to keep records of the amounts of stone used to construct great stadiums that housed massive ball games. This also helped them stay close records of how many crops they produced. They maintained these crops based on rain-water catching only. They fed up to 10,000,000 people based on crops watered by rain. There was no irrigation, just rain. They cleared acres upon acres of pure rainforest to build huge metropolises filled with temples, shops, houses, and countless markets. The Mayans also made a great army that was to rival the Aztec military. This army repelled the Olmecs and the aforementioned Aztecs. It also allowed the Mayans to sustain their existence and enabled them to control their borders until the Spanish arrived. In the many markets in their cities, they sold jade and gold from the mines in the Mayan rainforest. In addition, they sold pieces of pottery carefully crafted from the faraway Mississippi and Cherokee lands. These other people also built great canoes that could traverse the Gulf of Mexico and bring in more high-quality canoes from North America and modern-day Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, and Alabama. Because of this trade and because of the armies, the Mayans sustained their existence for a little less than 4,000 years.
Farming Practices
We still need to find out how the Mayans got the rain into their fields, but we know it was impossible to irrigate the land because there were no rivers. Also, the soil in the rainforest was fragile. They had to clear miles upon miles of dense rainforest land to farm and sustain their existence. They couldn’t hunt because there wasn’t anything to hunt. Monkeys, hawks, toucans, and maybe one or two leopards were there. But these were all predators and did not know how to make grass into food efficiently. In addition, they needed to learn how to make steel or iron. In fact, all of their tools came from the rainforest mines. However, they did use flint to make their weapons and tools when they tilled their fields. They farmed fields upon corn, beans, and squash fields – The Three Sisters. Their fields were so close to the city centers because they didn’t have pack animals to transport the food. They didn’t have any animals to domesticate at all, even. They didn’t have pigs, sheep, cattle, or llamas. All they did have were bees that they used to make honey, but that was something other than domesticating. They also technically domesticated hornets for weapons in battle. They would send a regiment of soldiers into battle holding hornet nests sealed with wax. They would then throw these nests, and when they hit the ground, the hornets burst out and sting the enemies. Besides these, they really had no animals to speak of. They were almost purely vegetarian, including the rich. Besides farming the thin rainforest soil, they also gathered from the rainforest. They gathered many fruits, including bananas, papayas, and mangoes, to eat for their essential vitamins. These fruits and vegetables sustained the Mayans long enough for them to write down their language and make an army.
The Great Army
Because they were attacked by the Aztecs and the Olmecs, we know that they had an army of some sort. As I mentioned before, they had soldiers armed with hornet nests, and they also, as I mentioned before, had weapons made of flint. They also would have had clubs purely made of wood from the rainforest. Sometimes, these clubs had flint spikes on them, which they would use to penetrate their enemy’s cloth armor. Their armor was also made of cloth layered to provide extra protection against flint. Besides maintaining the border and keeping the Aztecs, Olmecs, and Toltecs away, they also used their army as bodyguards for the high priests and chief of the Mayans. Even when the Spanish arrived, this army could defeat the Conquistador’s guns, steel, and horses. But it wasn’t about the steel, horses, and guns the Spanish had to battle the Mayans. The Spanish’s and, later, English’s real trick to defeat the Mayans was the trickery they played on them. But sadly, that wasn’t how history went. The Mayans were conquered by the Spanish and English. However, before they were conquered, they had developed a complex monarchy and hierarchy system that was one of the most efficient and effective in the world.
The Government
This government was mainly used to command the army and collect taxes throughout the empire. They ruled from the central capital of Tikal, which was in the northern part of the Yucatan Peninsula. There was a high chief elected by the council, which included many high priests and many others who vied for the position of high chief. However, the high chief only had complete authority over some Mayans. The high priests had the most independence from the high chief. These influential figureheads could challenge the chief’s authority to a certain extent. However, if they went past this limit, they would be punished. But the exciting thing is that they couldn’t be executed because that would anger the many gods of the Maya. Women participated in the government much more than women in different European and Asian countries. They got to go onto the council and had an equal chance to be on the council as men did. They had a higher chance of getting on the council than in other places because the primary role given to upper- and middle-class girls at birth was to become doctors. From the doctor’s position, you could become a high priestess. These female doctors held valuable knowledge for the whole Mayan civilization. They knew how to cure any disease in the empire. However, a myth still persists today that said that the Native Americans did not know how to cure the diseases in their tribes. In fact, they did, but they did not know how to cure the diseases brought over by the Spanish, Portuguese, French, and English. They were familiar with the diseases of North America because of the vibrant and thriving trade community.
The Trade Community
Finally, the Mayans sustained their existence for a long because of trade. This trade network stretched as far north as Massachusetts and the Powhatan tribe. It stretched across the Rio Grande watershed into the desert of central North America. It was exceptionally well established among the Mississippian people and other people in the southeastern portion of the modern United States. They traded food and other materials, but they mostly traded pottery. Pottery was considered very valuable in the Native American tribes, who used it to symbolize power. In fact, the more decorated your pottery was, the more wealth and power you had. The Mayans traded this pottery for jade, which was very valuable to the Mayans but especially valuable to the tribes of the modern-day United States. This was mainly because jade was unknown in the modern-day United States. There were no mines for jade there, and even if they discovered jade in one of their flint minds, they wouldn’t know how to mine it. The Mayans had a lot of jade compared to the other tribes of North America. But they didn’t have enough to make it not valuable. However, they did have enough, so it became valuable to them. Still, it was also not so valuable that they could trade it with other civilizations. The different civilizations would trade anything for it. They would trade their most prized canoes, their most prized cloth beads, and their most prized feathers. Because of this, the Mayans became very wealthy. Even though they had no currency, we still know how rich they were by the amount of jade they had and how much they traded it.
Conclusion
So, in conclusion, the Mayans were a tremendous and fascinating society. They repelled invasions from all sides with their army. They established strong trade partnerships with civilizations across the Gulf of Mexico. They gained pottery, canoes, and knowledge from these civilizations that they traded with and wrote great treatises on what they found. But they mined countless amounts of jade out of the rainforest to trade. They figured out how to farm in the thin rainforest soil and clear acres of rainforest to farm the Three Sisters. They didn’t use irrigation for farming. Instead, they used the rain from the sky to farm these three essential plants. They managed all of this with a government beyond comparison. It was a great system that combined a democracy, a theocracy, and a monarchy all in one. With this, they managed their army and collected valuable taxes in the form of resources. They developed medicines, hospitals, temples, and marketplaces and built countless houses in huge metropolises. But, all of this fell with the arrival of new civilizations across the ocean. They deceived the Mayans, Aztecs, and Inca. They also spread diseases that killed these tribes in massive numbers. But today, we can ponder about what could have happened. What if the Spanish had never arrived? What if the Mayans had killed the Spanish? What if the diseases never spread? But most of all, what if the Mayans were still around today? What would they look like?
