Maya Religion Explained

when did the world begin bishop james usher is famous for pinpointing the first day of creation according to genesis to exactly october 23 4004 bc the ancient maya however believed it was a little bit younger they pinpointed the dawn of the human era to exactly august 14th 3114 bc didn't they also say something about the world ending in 2012 well not exactly in this video we'll examine classic maya religion what the maya believed about god's ancestors and their extremely complicated calendar but first who were the classic maya the word maya actually refers to a diverse collection of ethnic groups from areas around mexico guatemala belize honduras and el salvador the word maya itself was created after the arrival of the spanish based on the yucatec city of mayapan but scholars collectively refer to these ethnic groups as maya because they speak similar languages and share certain cultural and artistic traditions the first maya people probably came from the kuchimatan mountains in southwestern guatemala and spread from there starting around 2000 bc today maya people living in this area often use more specific names for their own local languages and ethnic groups that's right the maya never disappeared today there are millions of maya people that live across the maya region as well as in the united states therefore when we speak about the maya religion we need to be more specific about which maya religion which specific maya group and at what specific time many viewers might be familiar with mel gibson's movie apocalypto but it compresses features from several different time periods together even though it's set at the time of spanish contact in the 1500s we're focusing on the classic period which lasted from around 250 to 900 ce and we'll concentrate on the central region called the southern lowlands which at this time was dominated by speakers of the mayan language we call classic chaotian we'll focus on this region because it was the most heavily populated during the classic period and therefore has the greatest amount of information about its society and culture one final note before we continue the word maya is used both as a singular and plural noun to refer to the ethnic group as in the phrase the classic maya as well as an adjective to refer to things related to the maya such as maya religion scholars use the term mayan with an n only as a noun or adjective to relate to the language as in the mayan language so with all that terminology out of the way let's get into it the classic period took place before any contact with europeans but the classic maya did not live in a vacuum in fact they interacted extensively with other native american peoples the cultural region that stretches from northern mexico to costa rica is often referred to as mesoamerica as one of many mesoamerican groups the maya shared religion and culture with others in this region and were integrated into a wider political and economic sphere careful viewers of this channel will notice lots of similarities between classic maya religion and that of the aztecs another famous mesoamerican group that we covered in a previous video the aztec empire rose and fell centuries after the classic period that we're examining today it was also located in central mexico to the northwest of the maya region during the classic period central mexico was home to another powerful empire based at the great city of teotihuacan teotihuacan had an enormous influence on the classic maya and in fact one important maya god originated from there the war serpent washock lahoon ubakan but today we'll focus on the maya themselves unlike the aztec or the people of teotihuacan the maya of the classic period did not belong to a single empire instead they were divided into many small independent kingdoms each with its own ruling dynasty and local traditions including each with their own religious customs some of these kingdoms eventually became powerful enough to dominate others through strategic wars alliances marriages and economic exchange but even the most successful maya kingdoms did not become an empire in other words they did not incorporate their subordinates into larger territorial units instead the political maya landscape remained fragmented another important feature of the classic period was the blossoming of maya hieroglyphic writing which had first developed in the later part of the previous period creatively named the pre-classic period the boom of legible texts during the classic period gives us a window into maya religious beliefs that remain invisible for earlier periods simply due to the lack of evidence in addition to these carved monuments we can learn about classic maya religion through archaeological excavations and through artwork depicting maya religious rituals moreover we can gain some insights by examining maya religious practices in later periods such as after spanish contact yet we need to be careful when we use these sources because maya religion like any religion changed over time using these sources of evidence today we're going to focus on three important aspects of classic maya religion gods ancestors and the calendar the classic maya word for god was the classic maya worshiped lots of gods each of which could take on different local traits in different kingdoms today we know the names of many maya gods but even just 40 years ago they were much more of a mystery this ambiguity led the scholar paul shelhas to create an index of maya gods in 1910 labeling each god or god as with a letter of the alphabet in his work representation of deities of the maya manuscripts these labels are still used for some of the lesser understood gods but in most cases once we know the proper name of the god we use that name instead of the shellhouse label in many cases maya gods were identified with natural phenomena for example some of the most prominent gods of the classic maya pantheon include the sun god initial the rain god choc the god of lightning wheel and the maze god ishim the classic maya venerated goddesses as well especially the goddess of the moon but goddesses were depicted and mentioned far less often than male gods the maya wove mythic narratives about these gods which are depicted on painted pots carved in stone and described in hieroglyphic texts some of these narratives we can reconstruct others are fragmented or unknown one myth for example includes the death and raising of the maze god as we can reconstruct it the maze god died and was buried his soul journeyed to a watery underworld in a canoe which was ruled by the god we simply label god el next the maze god's twin sons journeyed to the underworld to find their father where they resurrected him as a maze plant together maze god and his twin sons then publicly humiliated god el by kicking him and stripping him of his clothes all told this mythic cycle appears to be an allegory for the life cycle of the maize plant its kernels are planted in the ground and then it's carefully tended and raises as a new maize plant as in all mesoamerican cultures the maya relied heavily on corn squash and beans for subsistence and the presence of the maize god in their mythology shows just how important corn was for the maya during the classic period maya rulers compared themselves to characters in these myths by undergoing god impersonation ceremonies these ceremonies involved wearing the mask and regalia of the god and involved ritual dancing entire mythical scenes could be reenacted using different courtiers to play the relevant roles for example in this scene from palenque the ruler wears the guise of the god that scholars simply designate g1 while his courtier impersonates a god that we call the principal bird deity together they act out a scene in which g1 is crowned as lord of his kingdom and in so doing simultaneously crowns the living king imagine the political and social significance of your ruler literally impersonating one of your gods the identities of classic maya gods were fluid sometimes they were depicted with more animal-like features sometimes with more human-like features some scholars have proposed that like the aztec concept of tayot the maya word for god actually doesn't mean god in the traditional sense but instead refers to a kind of impersonal natural energy of which different maya gods were merely manifestations other scholars have noted however that classic maya hieroglyphic inscriptions treat this word as a noun that refers to specific beings rather than a more abstract divine principle so the debate is ongoing in many cases these individual gods were supernatural patrons to certain communities not unlike the patron gods of the ancient mediterranean world athena for the city of athens for example and while different kingdoms often recognize similar or identical patron gods each had its own unique combination effigies of these local patrons were housed in temples fed on incense food and drink and ritually bathed and dressed by rulers and priests this temple at palenque for example today known as the temple of the cross was in fact a temple to the palenque patron god g1 the pyramid-shaped platform represents a mountain while the structure here on top contains a small inner shrine called a pibna or underground house here g1 was believed to sleep between ritual occasions other palenque inscriptions describe how g1 and his fellow patron gods received periodic gifts of clothing and adornments patron gods at palenque and other sites were brought out for important occasions such as political events and calendar rituals and they were carried into war to divinely protect the army sometimes these patron effigies were even captured by the enemy armies and brought back to be adopted by the victors patron deities could be adopted in other ways as well they didn't need to be captured in war it seems that sometimes my rulers simply introduced new gods often in times of political change or strife this practice meant that over the course of the classic period maya kingdoms gradually collected patron gods in larger and larger local pantheons the best example of this can be seen at copan a kingdom that gradually accumulated dozens of gods stretching from the 5th century to the end of the 8th century a real god-collecting kingdom in addition to gods the classic maya also venerated their ancestors dead relatives were often buried within the household rather than in separate graveyards the dwellings of most ordinary maya consisted of several platforms and houses arranged around a central courtyard when an important individual died a grave would be dug into one of the household's platforms the platform itself would then be enlarged and a new wooden structure built on top over time each household would accumulate several graves of its most important ancestors just imagine that literally living on top of generations of your ancestors this would intimately tie your living family to that household location and on a societal scale it served as a reminder to the entire community about your household's ancestral rights to that land and its resources maya rulers followed a similar practice but on a much grander scale dead rulers were also buried under stone platforms but these platforms were often stepped pyramids some of these funerary pyramids contained the graves of several rulers that accumulated over time while in other cases newly deceased rulers were given new pyramids nearby large cities therefore developed huge multi-pyramid necropolises where their ruling lineage was buried a great example of this is the tikal north acropolis a large terrace that was the site of royal burials for hundreds of years it was home to dozens of pyramid temples dating back to the earliest days of the tikao dynasty in addition to building tombs for the deceased ancestors the classic maya also gave them offerings this stila from piedras negros shows the living ruler offering incense to his deceased mother in the tomb below we also know that maya rulers would sometimes open tombs and conduct rituals with the bones although we don't exactly know what these practices involved on this altar from tikal we can see the king and another nobleman conducting a ritual with the skull and bones of a deceased female ancestor probably after moving her tomb for political reasons we know very little about classic maya commoners belief of the afterlife as you can see from all of this monumental architecture most of the material that's accessible to us today comes from the religion of the elite so we might be looking at a somewhat skewed view for the religious reality of the classic maya but we do know that maya rulers believed that their deceased ancestors gazed down on them from above sometimes multiple ancestors were fused together as a single supernatural entity looking on from the sky in other cases royal ancestors were depicted in the guise of the maze god sun god and moon goddess this sculpture from hulmul in guatemala shows the deceased ruler probably in the guise of the sun god he's accompanied by two star deities who offer him tamales glyphs inform us that the star god on the left represents the common people while the figure on the right represents the nobility in other words the entire body politic has been reborn in the heavens and now let's talk about that calendar one of the most important features of classic maya religious ritual was observing special rites to mark the passage of time and we don't have the time in this video for a complete description of the very complex maya calendar but there are some important aspects that we should highlight first the maya like all mesoamerican groups recognized a ritual cycle of 260 days this cycle was defined by the permutations of 20 repeating day names and 13 repeating numbers each day number combination was believed to have a special significance that affected the fortunes of that day in addition to this 260-day ritual cycle mesoamerican groups including the maya marked the passage of a 365-day solar cycle divided into 18 months of 20 days each plus five additional days that were often considered unlucky days the underlying rhythm of each of these cycles is a 20-day period that the classic maya called a winal or winik which means 20 but it also means person as you might have guessed by now the number 20 forms the basis of all maya mathematics and numerology including the calendar innovation that we know as the long count though the long count first appears in pre-classic texts that are likely not even mayan in the first place it was the classic maya more than any other mesoamerican group who used this system to mark the passage of time for reasons that remain unknown the maya believed that on august 14th 3114 bc the gods created the earth as we know it today now the maya believed that the gods also did plenty of other things before this date so this was not the beginning of time itself merely the beginning of the human era in fact there's still some debate about the exact day in august not because the maya themselves were unclear about it but because scholars are still debating exactly how the maya calendar lines up with our own calendar and for the scholars and super fans in the audience here we're using the 584286 correlation or the gmt plus one advocated by the scholars simon martin and joel skidmore source here on screen now you know time was divided into units of different sizes the smallest unit was the day 20 days made a month or a weenique 18 months made a year or a hob 20 years made a winning cob also known to scholars today by its post-classic name the katun and 20 winnikabs made a bak tun a period of 400 years the maya used the long count to measure time since date zero so by counting backwards in time using the maya long count we arrive at the date of creation 3114 bc it was on this date that the maya believed that the earth emerged from a dark body of water sometimes called a primordial sea a decade ago there was a lot of talk about the meaning of the year 2012 and the maya long count calendar some speculated that the maya believed 2012 to be some sort of doomsday as in the disaster movie 2012. others thought the classic maya predicted the dawning of a new era of some sort the reason that this date is special is that december 24 2012 represented the end of the 13th bok tun since the creation date in 3114 bc and when the maya wrote about that ancient creation date they referred to it as the completion of a previous cycle of 13 baktuns in other words the long count is simply a very long cycle measuring 13 bucktunes long which theoretically repeats if the classic maya believed that the world as we know it was created at the beginning of the last long count cycle some have wondered did they believe something important would happen at the end of this long count cycle in fact there are only two maya inscriptions that mention the 2012 date and both of them are rather vague so we don't really know what the classic maya thought might happen there is no evidence that they thought the world would end nor any of the other popular theories that were circulated back in 2012 there's no doubt though that if classic maya society had persisted unchanged into the 21st century they definitely would have marked the end of the 13th bactun as an extremely important ritual occasion no doubt about it and in fact many modern maya people did ritually celebrate it at several ancient maya sites we know the classic maya would have done the same because they frequently celebrated important dates in the long count calendar they were especially interested in the completion of cycles every 20 years on these dates which we call period endings maya rulers dedicated stone monuments in the presence of patron gods ancestors and human subordinates these monuments usually consisted of a standing stone paired with a round stone altar rituals associated with these period endings included wrapping stone pillars and cloth and the burning of offerings of incense upon the stone altars the maya recognized many other calendar cycles in addition to these for example they routinely recorded a nine-day cycle and a lunar cycle we also know that in the post-classic period they kept almanacs of planetary cycles and were even able to predict when eclipses might occur while no classic period books of this nature have survived it's very likely that maya priests had similar practices in that period as well so why were the classic maya so focused on these cycles and calendars well the maya believed that each station of each cycle governed what might happen on that day including things like the weather political events and how well your crops would grow or other kinds of fortunes or misfortunes when they recorded historical events maya scribes were careful to contextualize them within these cycles looking for parallels with past and future events this is how the maya made sense of the seemingly random and unpredictable nature of daily life in human history by ordering it within multiple and overlapping cycles of time so far we've talked about three kinds of maya religious practice the veneration of gods the veneration of ancestors and the marking of cycles of time but many of you have probably also heard about their practice of human sacrifice where does this come in the movie apocalypto makes it seem as though the maya sacrificed people on a massive scale terrorizing the countryside for the sole purpose of feeding their gods this is an exaggerated and sensationalized depiction however the classic maya did practice ritualized violence and killing the most common kind of classic maya blood sacrifice is called auto sacrifice or bloodletting in this ritual a practitioner used some sort of blade to pierce their own body collect the blood and burn it as an offering before gods and ancestors as depicted on this lintel from yash jilan while the maya did not frequently depict the actual act of bloodletting we know from archaeological evidence that rulers used obsidian blades and stingray spines and that they bloodlet from the genitals depictions of female bloodletting are even more rare like this scene from yoshilan which shows a queen passing a thorn-studded string through her tongue the maya referred to this act as ji'ab meaning penance and it was an important part of a ruler's ritual duties conceptually jiab was linked to the ruler's power as the caretaker of gods and begetter of children rulers defeated in battle were described as being without penance a shameful state of ritual impotence there is also evidence that the classic maya killed people as part of religious rituals evidence for this practice includes human remains found in ritual deposits and rarer depictions and descriptions of sacrificial acts this image is probably the most explicit in its depiction of ritualized killing it shows a human sacrificed on top of an altar and a decorated stone stila behind him this event likely would have taken place as part of a period ending ritual there is no evidence that human sacrifice on the scale depicted in apocalypto took place among the maya of any period no mass graves have ever been found nor descriptions or depictions of large-scale sacrificial rites so who were the unfortunate victims who were sacrificed among the classic maya as in other mesoamerican societies enemies captured in war are the most likely candidates because of their fragmented political system classic maya warfare was common and would have been a danger frequently faced by the common people we have evidence that sometimes entire communities were destroyed in military campaigns and maya kingdoms took steps to fortify themselves against attack descriptions of maya warfare universally include the taking of captives and the more important captives such as kings and nobles were subjected to public display and humiliation by the victors however unlike the narrative presented in apocalypto the purpose of these wars was primarily political and economic classic maya warfare was not conducted for the sole purpose of acquiring sacrificial victims in fact we know that some captives were ransomed and allowed to return home others were likely enslaved still others died in more ritualized ways for example the ruler was the king of kopan was famously captured and then beheaded by his vassal the ruler of kirigua in this light we should probably view most examples of classic maya human sacrifice as a ritualized form of political conflict to summarize then in this video we've highlighted the important aspects of classic maya religion including gods ancestors and calendar rights we've also tried to dispel some common misconceptions the maya did not disappear they're still around today they did not belong to an empire they did not predict the end of the world in 2012 and their ritual violence was not massive in scale all of these aspects of my religion can be understood as embedded within the social and cultural forces that shaped their dynamic society during the classic period hey everyone thanks for watching so this video was a massive undertaking some videos are easy to make because i'm a scholar of early christianity i like making videos on ancient mediterranean religion because it's easy for me to write those episodes and some videos are easier to make because there's just a lot of easily available images and footage online that can help accompany my presentation this was not the case with the classic maya i know nothing about this topic so i needed to collaborate with two amazing scholars of maya religion shout out to dr joanne barron for helping me with all that pronunciation the classic maya word for god is so we have inich we have the taiyo war serpent i can't do glottal stops and i'm sure i still messed up the pronunciation i'm sorry and as for the images this video required me to spend hours tracking down obscure maya artifacts i was scrubbing through all the b-roll footage to make sure i was showing classic era ruins on screen and not post classic era ruins so all this to say this channel is a labor of love i'm fascinated about the world's religions and i want to share that fascination with the broader public but more importantly i want to try to boost everyone's religious literacy and the best way to support that mission of religious literacy is to join our community on patreon ad revenue does this month to month which makes it very hard to plan very hard to budget very hard to plan for the future but our patreon community is a community of amazing viewers who help smooth out these precipitous drops in the google adsense so if you would like to support the channel and support our mission of religious literacy head on over to patreon.com religion for breakfast and consider donating monthly thanks everyone and i'll see you next time

Channel: ReligionForBreakfast

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Length: 24min 27sec (1467 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 05 2021