Rise of the Maya

[Music] this video was sponsored by the great courses plus go to the great courses plus calm today to start your free trial deep in the Yucatan Peninsula lie ancient stone cities reclaimed by the jungle where a calendar dominated lives majestically feathered kings ruled like gods and tall stone pyramids soared above the treetops there in those jungles stand ancient stones etched with dates and writings that tell the story of one of history's most fascinating and dynamic civilizations these belong to the ancient Maya the Maya have a 4,000 year long history something that is near impossible to realistically cover in this video we will look at who the Maya were and the intellectual achievements that made them one of the most remarkable civilizations of their day unlike the other cradles of civilization which mostly arose around fertile river valleys the Maya realm in the Yucatan Peninsula made up of parts of modern-day Guatemala Belize Mexico Honduras and El Salvador was rather a hot limestone shelf that protrudes into the Caribbean with few navigable rivers and thin soils with only bees ducks and dogs as potentially domesticable animals despite receiving hundreds of centimeters of rain per year this region is extremely prone to drought as the rain falls between June and October and immediately seeps dozens of meters into the porous limestone landscape the region is dotted with water filled sinkholes and swamps but they are too salty to drink from and cannot be to water crops it was remarked by a US Mexican research team that the Maya environment was geo chemically hostile and more resembled settlement on the moon or Antarctica than most other terrestrial habitats by filtering their salty water through limestone making use of some freshwater caves and building thousands of cisterns to collect rainwater the Maya managed to maintain a safe supply of water the Maya made their environment habitable and its constant upkeep and management was essential to their existence however there were some Geographic benefits to this environment such as the abundance of limestone and excellent building material and obsidian a volcanic glass as sharp as surgical steel now that we have established the setting in which the Maya developed let's take a look at their history which historians divide up into three parts the pre-classic the classic and the post classic during the pre-classic period the Maya emerged as a distinct and unique group in Mesoamerica between 2000 BC and 300 AD we see city-states begin to emerge under the rule of divine kings and queens transforming the area into something very similar to ancient Greece along with a similar amount of Shakespearean drama and conflict it is during the pre-classic that we see the rise of city-states such as El Mirador an enormous city-state with a population that could have totaled around 250,000 people El Mirador was home to El Tigre and ladontay pyramids comparable in size to those at Giza unlike the Aztecs or Inca the Maya never formed a united polity there was never a Maya Empire but rather dozens of unique and competing city-states united by a common culture language family and reliance on maize by 300 AD the Maya entered what we consider to be their classic period an explosion of activity commenced as powerful city-states began to arise along with massive irrigation projects beautiful stone monuments and gorgeous plazas the Maya writing system became widespread and it allows us to read about the Maya in their own words Tikal one of the most powerful Classic Maya city-states has dozens of examples of this writing by reading the stele a located across Tikal we can learn of such rulers as yaqeen con car wheel or Sun sky rain he ascended to the throne on the 8th of December 734 ad a date we are certain of because we can rely on the advanced Maya calendar dates inscribed at the site Tikal like most Maya cities was constructed around plazas the center of the city where the main ceremonial places temples pyramids and bull courts were under the rule of yek in conquer will one of the most famous structures of Tikal the temple of the great Jaguar was built this massive 47 metre tall pyramid was dedicated to his father who was buried within it it soared above the treetops and could be seen from across the city so how did the Maya construct these incredible stone structures Maya architects had invented a concrete like fill they piled up rubble and limestone rich mud to form an incredibly durable foundation the foundation which initially appeared rough and ugly was then covered with another invention Maya stucco this was a white plaster made of limestone covered rubble with a smooth finish that could easily be molded into works of art once this process was complete the pyramidal structure was usually painted a bright red color using this method the Maya could continuously build taller and taller structures by simply covering the old pyramid in rubble and then plastering over it again thus over thousands of years Maya cities constantly grew by paving over themselves from the top of these pyramids rituals and ceremonies were carried out in full view of the city they towered above priests painted a bright blue color and kings or a howís as the Maya cauldron would carry out these vital ceremonies many of which needed to involve the most sacred substance in the Maya universe blood in the Maya worldview the gods created everything and therefore demanded something in return this debt to the gods could be paid in many ways their dancing burning of incense and even elegant words could be offered but blood acted as the ultimate payment unlike the later Aztecs the Maya did not rely heavily on mass human sacrifice instead the most common offering was to pierce oneself lead into some paper and then burn that as an offering however sometimes the gods required more it was vital that the gods were provided with enough energy by way of sacrifice or else the Maya world would cease to exist as human life was considered the most sacred and precious thing in the world it therefore meant that a human life was the most powerful offering commoners were rarely if ever sacrificed as they were not seen as worthy enough for the when a human sacrifice was offered it was almost always a captured Noble or King as they were highly prized by the gods the heading was the common way of carrying out this sacrifice located near these pyramids there was almost always a ball court the ball game played by the Maya and other Mesoamericans was an intense sport the people watched these spectacles with a fanaticism that could have rivaled or even surpassed how the people of Constantinople would have watched chariot races the game took place in a massive stone court and was played with a three to four kilogram rubber ball the exact specifics of the game are unknown but we can piece together that the goal seems to have been for players to use only their hips upper arms and knees to move the ball in the air with the goal of making the other team drop the ball or pushing past a certain defensive line the ball game was so important to the Maya that it had a central role in the Maya religion the gods themselves would play it against each other maze as the staple crop of the region also had divine status and was even central to the Maya mythological origin story as recorded in the great epic the pop over of the key ek Maya the universe began as nothing into this great void the two guards tempo and kuru kumite spoke the world into existence creating all the animals and plants but as these could not speak the gods need to be worshipped could not be fulfilled thus they created a race of men from mud who promptly collapsed back into mud then a race of wooden men but these proved to be unintelligent and so were destroyed by a great flood finally the gods formed humans out of maize dough and these proved capable of worship and sacrifice during the Classical period which lasted from 380 to 980 more cities than ever had booming populations some ranging in the tens of thousands there is estimated to have been between five and thirteen million Maya inhabiting the Yucatan cities like Tikal may have had populations of up to 90,000 in their urban cores it is during this period that the Maya nobility became much more organized we see elegantly feathered a house ruling over large and complex royal courts priests servants courtiers dancers princes scribes and generals all vied for the houses attention the nobility would have looked bizarre to us as it was common for the Maya elites to intricately tattoo themselves create intentional scar patterns file their teeth into different shapes along with carving holes into their incisors in order to place Jade in them and they practiced a form of skull defamation which elongated their foreheads all of these things were done to make the nobility stand out and signify their social class the Maya also considered that to be genuinely beautiful the Maya scribes wrote thousands of bark books in their hieroglyphic script all but four have been lost to time and the flames of the Inquisition so it is the hundreds of remaining still a spread out across the Yucatan that we must rely on to piece together Maya history and it is similar to trying to understand French history only by reading their monuments and plaques however the Maya calendar dates usually inscribed on the steel I have allowed us to accurately date many events and rains in Maya history we know for example that one of the greatest Maya Kings Park al the great was born on the 21st of March 603 and rained from July 6:15 to the 26th of August 683 the Maya could only leave these exact dates for us because of their advanced Maya mathematics and calendar systems they used a base 20 counting system with only three symbols a dot for one a bar for five and a stylized shell symbol zero and this system worked vertically unlike our own number system arguably their greatest intellectual feat was the invention of the zero the mathematician tobias Danzig said that the discovery of zero was one of the greatest single accomplishment of the human race true zero wouldn't appear in Europe until the 12th century but it was invented in the Americas on Maya carvings between 32 BC and 357 AD the Maya along with their Mesoamerican contemporaries like the omegant Zapotec believed that movements of celestial bodies such as the Sun Moon and especially Venus could influence their daily lives in order to track these the Maya had to continuously watch the skies and develop a calendar capable of keeping track oddly enough the Mesoamericans developed three calendars a solar calendar of 365 days a sacred calendar of 260 days and the famous Long Count calendar that tracked every day uniquely from the 11th of August 3114 BC using these calendars the Maya could calculate dates millions of years into the past or future and thus track the movements of planets and celestial bodies over long periods of time the farthest date calculated by the Maya was a period of twenty three billion 40 million days which is about 63 million years while the Maya were intellectual Giants of their time politics greed and ambition still dominated the lives of the upper classes these will come to a bloody peak in the next episode when two Maya superpowers will smash against each other in the great Maya cold war when we create these videos we often use the series of lectures called the peoples and cultures of the world from Professor Edward Fisher provided by the sponsor of this video the great courses plus this 24 part series dives into the theory of how civilizations and cultures were formed and functioned you can subscribe to the great courses plus to get access to the vast library of over 10,000 lectures on history science literature and other subjects from the top-notch professors from the best universities in the world the great courses plus is giving viewers a great offer of a free trial show your support to our Channel and learn more about the decisive battles of history by subscribing to the great courses plus through the great courses plus com forward slash kings and Generals or the short link in the description we are planning more videos focusing on these civilizations of Mesoamerica and beyond so make sure that you are subscribed to our Channel and have pressed the bell button to be notified of our videos we would like to express our gratitude to our patreon supporters and YouTube sponsors who make the creation of our videos possible this is the kings and Generals Channel and we will catch you on the next one

Channel: Kings and Generals

Views: 611,693

Rating: 4.9301548 out of 5

Keywords: maya, kings and generals, Maya calendar, maya documentary, machu picchu, full documentary, history lesson, documentary film, animated documentary, world history, extra credits history, ancient battle, incan empire, roman empire, inca civilization, bbc documentary, francisco pizarro, incan history, inca history, ancient greece, cortez, aztec, history documentary, pyramids, tikal documentary, El Mirador, Pakal the Great, central america, ancient aliens, maya civilization

Id: sK9yv5wAoY0

Length: 15min 24sec (924 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 12 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/milkermaner]

I love that channel. There's a bunch of cool historical documentaries on it.

[u/Takodanachoochoo]

How I wish the History channel, Science channel etc were more like this. Maybe soon the pendulum will swing back towards more factual presentations instead of the hyperbolic bullshit we get now .

Good to see this stuff getting attention and there is an outlet for it

[u/trackedonwire]

Seen it. Highly recommend. Yah, take that chariot of the gods crap and fly away.

The actual science utilizing LIDAR uncovers the vast complexes and cities hidden beneath the jungle canopy.

[u/Fredasa]

I know this is really off-topic, but is there an actual documentary discussion Reddit or forum out there? I mean, I'm looking for a place where I can ask for documentary suggestions, not so much one where I can find linked videos to generally random though mostly recently-made documentaries.

[u/Taqubayo]

I am from Honduras. We barely learn mayan history in our school which is a total shame. Most of the things we learn are about the popolvuh and how savages they were but somehow they were also artists.

Basically, we never learn anything good from it. Like, for example, they incredible commercial routes, or they iconographic language... or how the race still exists. Fuck we are all brown here and yet we aren't 'maya descendants'.

Bleh.

[u/el__Chandoso]

Great share, thank you!

[u/[deleted]]

Without aliens? :(

[u/mname]

So are we just letting a bunch of executives white wash the aliens out of our shared history. #CrystalFeatherPeopleArePeopleToo #GreenLivesDeserveThierHistory

[u/tankyiu]

Thanks for sharing, too many documentaries start with the good stuff then descend into aliens and other bs.