You may have scrolled past one
of their haunting, crumbling pyramids in the background of
your well-traveled friend's Instagram posts. But chances are,
you have no idea what everyday life was really
like for the ancient Mayans. From ballgames to body
piercings to getting hopped up on chocolate, the
ancient Mayan culture has a lot more in common
with our world today than you'd probably ever think. Today, we're exploring
what life was really like for the ancient Mayans. But before we get started,
be sure to subscribe to the Weird History Channel. Oh, leave a comment too and let
us know what historical era you would like to hear about. OK, time to get Mayan. The ancient Mayan
Empire was huge, spanning across most
of Central America, including southern Mexico,
Honduras, El Salvador, Belize, and Guatemala. The Mayans were an
advanced, brilliant society, and if you could avoid getting
sacrificed to one of the 165 gods that were
worshipped, you could spend your days working eating
and getting sick tattoos. The ancient Mayans may have
spent a lot of time worshipping their gods, but
they didn't do so without a few spiked
beverages in their arsenal. One ceremonial drink, balche,
came from fermented tree bark and was sweetened with honey. The Mayans considered this
drink to be sent from the gods. So if you're ordering
one, make it a double. They also got chocolate wasted
on cacao-based alcoholic drinks that were often spiked
with hallucinogens. If you're ever at a house
party with an ancient Mayan, watch out for that punch bowl. The Mayans definitely took
their drinking seriously. In fact, a lot of
Mayans would get enemas in order to be as intoxicated
as humanly possible. There is actual
written documentation that depicts the act of Mayans
getting bored and pouring wine off their bums, through a
tube making them officially the world's first frat bros. Mayans were around
thousands of years before gold teeth and grills
defined a generation of hip hop style, but that doesn't mean
that they weren't blinging way before it was on the trend. The Mayans had an advanced form
of tooth care for their time, especially when it came
to cosmetic dentistry. A trip to the dentist was more
like a trip to the beauty salon than a sterile, fluorescent
lighting-filled hell scape we know it as today. In fact, it wasn't
uncommon for mines to get gems drilled
into their teeth through skillfully
carved out holes. Miraculously, my dentists
were able to accomplish this without hitting any
nerves, unlike my dentist. Lack of nerve damage
notwithstanding, the Mayan dental practices
were not without pain. But it was worth it
to be able to show off a mouth full of gems. They may not have had
Novocaine or laughing gas, but at least, you'd
leave your root canal looking like Lil Wayne. And if there's a
chance you might get sacrificed to the
gods in any moment, you might as well look
cool while you do it. Probably one of the
most infamous aspects of the ancient Mayan
polytheistic way of life was their tendency to
sacrifice people to gods. Children were usually
the ideal sacrifices because of their
youth and innocence, but it is also common for
slaves, prisoners of war, and even average Mayan
adults to be killed in sacrificial ceremonies. And if that's not enough
to keep you on your toes, their primary method
of sacrificing involves cutting open the
chest and removing the heart. If that's not
dramatic enough, they do all of that on
top of a pyramid and throw the lifeless body
down the stairs afterward. If you had to climb
up that many steps, you'd want to be sacrificed too. The Mayans knew how to
drink, and they definitely knew how to eat. The three staples
of the Mayan diet were maize, squash, and beans,
an iconic basic food group trio otherwise known
as the three sisters. Aside from the
basics, Mayans also chili peppers, sweet potatoes,
avocados, tomatoes, papayas, onions, and garlic. For meat, they ate turkey,
venison, iguana, dog, wild pigs known as peccary, and fish. The Mayans were also
the first civilization to make corn tortillas. So if you love chips
and dip, better show some respect to the Mayan
root of that guacamole scoop. They also invented tamales and
were the first civilization to roast cacao seeds
to make chocolate. Thank you, Mayans, for that. If you think tattoo-covered
bikers are intimidating, be thankful you never ran into
an ancient Mayan man or woman. Their process for
getting inked up involved getting painted
on and then cut into, culminating in another coat
of paint over the open wound. That process sounds
just a tad more horrifying than
getting a peace sign tattoo gunned on your ankle. If you were Mayan
and you got a tattoo, you were considered one of
the bravest people to exist. Remember that the next
time your workplace sent you home for showing off
your infinity sign tattoo. You're just as brave
as an ancient Mayan who got cut open and painted. Men would wait until after
marriage to get their tattoos, and women would get tattoos as
well, avoiding the breast area. Piercings were popular too,
and not just for looking cool but also as bloodletting
sacrifice to the gods. In a move more punk than
any counterculture scenester could ever imagine, minds would
pierce their ears, genitals, and tongues with thorns
or stingray spines for both cosmetic and
ceremonial reasons. The Mayans were partly so
into piercing because they were master jewelry makers. Only men wore nose
and lip plugs, though. Whether the piercing was for
religious reasons or secular, you can definitely say
the practice made all of their faces, ahem, holey. If you were an
ancient Mayan and you wanted to blow off some
steam on the court, you'd probably
play a game called pok-a-tok, the oldest team sport
in the history of the world. Unlike a casual game of
playground basketball, pok-a-tok was not for
the faint of heart. Even LeBron James might have
struggled with bouncing around a 10 pound rubber ball with
only the use of his midsection and hips. The game was notoriously
brutal, and players would die of internal bleeding
just from the shear force of getting hit with the ball. Often, prisoners would be
forced to play each other in a game of pok-a-tok
to determine who would get sacrificed to the gods. That is the epitome of
a sudden death game. If you ever feel like your
looks aren't measuring up to society's standards,
be grateful you weren't alive during the
ancient Mayan times when the peak standard of beauty
was being cross-eyed and having an elongated skull in the
shape of an ear of corn. Mayans wanted so badly to
look like a far sighted yellow vegetable that
they, in a practice similar to the
Egyptians, would bind their infants malleable skull
between two planks of wood for long periods
of time in order to achieve the look du jour. But hey, it's still probably
more natural than botox. Imagine a world
where everyone was racing to get a
receding hairline that resembled George Costanza. The five head look was big
amongst the ancient Mayans to the point where men
would shave or even burn their hair lines
to create a more drastic receding hairline. The elite class also wore
elaborate headdresses consisting of
animal skins, jade, and other precious materials. Our elite class today
isn't so different. Just look at the headdresses
of the people who attended the Fyre Festival. The Mayans thought
to treat asthma with tobacco, a sav that made
about as much sense as curing alcoholism with a shot of vodka. They were also guilty of
some other medical mistakes, like thinking the cure
to an upset stomach was getting drunk on
balche or vomiting. Definitely sounds like a drunk
person came up with that one. Various medical gaffes
aside, the Mayans were an incredibly hygienic
people and consistently bathed. While other cultures were
living in feces-covered castles, the Mayans had figured out the
practice of washing their hands and mouths after eating and
often took cold water or steam baths before
religious ceremonies. With all the piercing,
tattoos teeth jewelry, and crazy hairdos, the
majority of ancient Mayans knew to keep it simple
when it came to clothing. Men typically wore
basic loin cloth. And sometimes, they added
ponchos in colder weather. Women wore blouses
and long skirts. But what would a society
be if their elite didn't take their fashion up a notch? At ancient Mayan
fashion week, you'd probably see wealthy
men and women wearing elaborate getups,
bejeweled with shells and jade. Among commoners, women
typically worked in the home, raising children,
collecting honey, sewing, and making pottery. It may sound stale compared
to our modern society, but hey, at least gender roles
helped create clay bowls. While women worked
domestically, men typically worked in the fields
known as milpas. And that was no easy
task, considering ancient Mayans didn't use
animals like horses or oxen to help them tend to crops. Farming was all done by the
brute force of man's own hand. Talk about DIY. Most minds, regardless
of economic class, lived in residential compounds
that included extended family all under the same roof. Even if you were a
rich Mayan, there was no escaping your in-laws. Their houses consisted of
several buildings arranged around patios and terraces
and were typically made from limestone
with packed soil floors and adobe-covered walls. The Mayans are often lauded for
their advanced technological genius, but coming up with a
floor made entirely of dirt sounds pretty smart. You never have to sweep. You'd probably get some
blisters on your feet if you had to get around the
way the ancient Mayans did. Cities were connected through
a system of paved roads, or sacbeob, which were raised
above ground, sometimes as high as eight feet. And since the Mayans didn't
use animals to help move goods, slaves had to carry
everything on foot often in large slave chains. To get to more remote
areas, the Mayans traveled by canoes that were
sometimes 50 feet in length. In any case if you wanted
to travel long distances in ancient Mayan times, it
was probably a lot easier to just stay at home and chill. Life for the ancient
Mayans was intense. If you could survive
walking a mile in their human sacrificing,
tattoo bleeding, 10 pound basketball playing
shoes, then you'd probably also be jonesing
for that funnel of anal wine. Bottoms up! How would you like to live
like the ancient Mayans? Let us know in the
comments below. And while you're
at it, check out some of these other weird
videos from our Weird History.
